Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse holds the distinction of being the highest-rated movie of all time on Letterboxd, with a remarkable 4.7 out of 5.0 rating. Released in 2023, this animated superhero film from Sony Pictures achieved what only four other films have managed in Letterboxd’s history: claiming the top spot on their all-time rankings. The film’s sustained position at the peak since its release speaks to both its critical acclaim and its resonance with Letterboxd’s engaged audience of film enthusiasts.
The achievement carries particular weight because Letterboxd’s rankings are determined by the collective ratings of hundreds of thousands of members. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse accumulated nearly 300,000 watches from Letterboxd members, with over 173,000 users giving it a “like” rating. This is not a niche accolade—it represents a consensus among a substantial, diverse community of cinephiles, casual viewers, and animation enthusiasts from around the world.
Table of Contents
- How Do Letterboxd Ratings Measure Film Excellence?
- The Rarity of Letterboxd’s Top Ranking
- What Sets Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Apart
- Comparing Letterboxd Ratings to Other Film Metrics
- The Significance of Rating Stability Since Release
- Letterboxd’s Role in Modern Film Discourse
- The Historical Context of Letterboxd’s Elite Rankings
How Do Letterboxd Ratings Measure Film Excellence?
Letterboxd’s rating system operates on a straightforward five-star scale, where users assign ratings from 0.5 to 5.0 in half-star increments. The platform calculates its rankings by averaging all ratings received for each film, creating a weighted list that serves as a barometer of what its community considers the most highly regarded cinema. Unlike review aggregation sites that blend critic scores with audience scores, Letterboxd is purely democratic—every member’s rating carries equal weight, regardless of their follower count or platform status.
The distinction of reaching a 4.7 rating is mathematically demanding. To maintain such a high average across nearly 300,000 individual ratings requires exceptional consistency. For context, films with thousands of ratings commonly fluctuate between 3.5 and 4.2, depending on their genre appeal and cultural moment. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’s stability at 4.7 indicates that it has attracted relatively few negative ratings even as its viewer count has grown, which is unusual for blockbuster films that tend to accumulate more mixed responses as their audience broadens.
The Rarity of Letterboxd’s Top Ranking
Before Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse claimed the #1 position, only four films had ever held Letterboxd’s highest rating. The Godfather inaugurated the top spot years ago, followed by Parasite, Come and See, and Everything Everywhere All at Once. Each of these films represents a different era, genre, and cultural moment, yet all managed to transcend typical rating patterns and achieve near-universal acclaim within Letterboxd’s community.
The previous holder, Everything Everywhere All at Once, itself achieved the top position following its widespread theatrical success and critical accolades in 2022 and early 2023. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’s displacement of this film highlights how rarely Letterboxd’s top spot changes hands. The platform’s rankings shift continuously as new users join and rate older films, but for a film to definitively claim the #1 position requires maintaining an exceptionally high average despite ongoing rating activity. The fact that Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse has held firm in this position since June 2026 suggests its rating has stabilized among the roughly 300,000 members who have engaged with it.
What Sets Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Apart
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse stands as the second installment in Sony’s animated Spider-Verse trilogy, following its 2018 predecessor which was itself highly regarded. The 2023 sequel expanded the story’s scope, visual innovation, and multiverse complexity in ways that evidently resonated deeply with Letterboxd’s community. Its animation style, which deliberately incorporated varying frame rates and comic book aesthetics, received particular praise from viewers who appreciated its technical ambition and artistic risk-taking.
One limitation to consider is that this ranking represents Letterboxd’s specific demographic—a platform skewed toward younger audiences, animation enthusiasts, and cinephiles with internet access and platform engagement. The film’s ranking is not a comprehensive measure of mainstream critical consensus or box office performance, though the latter was indeed substantial with over $690 million globally. Different rating sites reflect different user bases; for instance, traditional critics might weight the film differently, and international audiences not on Letterboxd form no part of this particular measurement.
Comparing Letterboxd Ratings to Other Film Metrics
Letterboxd ratings often diverge meaningfully from IMDb scores, Rotten Tomatoes percentages, or professional critic aggregates. Where Letterboxd emphasizes personal experience and emotional response, other platforms may weigh different criteria or methodologies. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse maintains strong ratings across multiple platforms—it holds a 9.0 on IMDb and an 84% on Rotten Tomatoes—but Letterboxd’s 4.7 represents its own particular audience’s assessment.
The tradeoff between using Letterboxd versus traditional review sites is that Letterboxd captures pure audience sentiment without professional filtering, while traditional sites often include critic perspectives and more formalized evaluation criteria. For discovering what passionate film enthusiasts genuinely loved, Letterboxd provides valuable insight. For understanding critical consensus or mainstream appeal, a broader cross-section of sources yields more complete context.
The Significance of Rating Stability Since Release
Since its theatrical release in June 2023, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’s Letterboxd rating has remained stable at 4.7. This consistency across three years of continuous rating activity—from dedicated fans on opening weekend to casual viewers discovering it on streaming platforms later—is noteworthy. Typically, films experience rating fluctuations as different audience segments discover them and submit evaluations.
A stable rating indicates sustained positive reception rather than appeal to a narrow segment that rated it early and enthusiastically. The warning here is that Letterboxd rankings can fluctuate as more members join the platform and rate films, particularly older classics that may see new audiences. While Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’s recent vintage provides less historical instability, films released decades ago sometimes experience rating shifts when discovered by new generations. The platform’s ongoing growth means that any current #1 ranking represents a snapshot in time, though films this recent with such large rating volumes tend to stabilize relatively quickly.
Letterboxd’s Role in Modern Film Discourse
Letterboxd has evolved into a significant cultural force in film discussion, particularly among younger audiences and online film communities. The platform functions simultaneously as a rating site, social network, and archive, allowing users to log their viewing history, write reviews, and engage with others’ perspectives. A film achieving Letterboxd’s #1 ranking carries cultural cachet beyond what the rating itself might suggest, often becoming a reference point in online film discourse and social media conversations.
For industry observers, Letterboxd rankings have become a supplementary metric tracked alongside traditional measures of success. When a film reaches the platform’s top position, it signals that it has achieved not just commercial appeal or critical acclaim, but also passionate engagement from a specific demographic that actively participates in online film communities. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’s position reflects both the film’s artistic merit and its ability to satisfy the particular sensibilities of this engaged audience.
The Historical Context of Letterboxd’s Elite Rankings
The four films that held Letterboxd’s #1 position before Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse offer perspective on what achieves this level of acclaim. The Godfather is widely recognized as a canonical masterpiece; Parasite made history as the first non-English language film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards; Come and See is a brutal World War II film regarded as one of cinema’s greatest achievements; and Everything Everywhere All at Once combined genre-blending ambition with intimate character work. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse joins these films in occupying Letterboxd’s highest tier, suggesting that animated blockbusters have now firmly established themselves among films of perceived greatest artistic merit, at least within this particular community’s assessment.
