16 Films in the DC Extended Universe, Ranked from Worst to Best
16. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
Well, now that the powers that be have officially laid the DC Extended Universe to rest, it seems like a good time for us to do what the internet does best: arbitrarily rank things. Back when this highly anticipated movie hit theatres, I wrote a few thoughts about it. And now that I’ve had some time to reflect on those words I uttered in the heat of the moment, I can honestly say… yeah, no new notes to add. My feelings on this film can be summed up by this quote from film critic Bob Chipman: “Billed as a two-and-a-half-solid-hours universe-building DC Comics fanservice exercise, the resulting film plays more like a Producers gambit gone sentient and homicidal… Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is a travesty wrapped in a disaster inside an obscenity.” None of the fault for this colossal train wreck (well, maybe some fault in Jesse Eisenberg’s case) lies with the actors who did their best with what they were given to work with, and I could almost forgive director Zack Snyder’s choice to shoot every scene in his patented Slo-Mo EmoVision™ while banishing 80% of the visible light spectrum from his set. No, the real problems with this film lie in the script, which is completely batshit insane in terms of explaining why anything in the story is happening at any given time. Savaged by the critics, BvS suffered one of the biggest second-weekend box office drops in history and tore the DC fandom apart as fans argued over just how badly Snyder and his writers missed the mark when given the three biggest superheroes on the planet to play with. The verdict: badly. (Remembers that one scene with the jar of piss) Make that very badly.
15. The Flash (2023)
It’s tempting to put The Flash at the bottom of the list based on the fact it is literally the biggest Warner Bros. flop of all time, costing the studio at least $200 million and earning its place among the worst-performing films in history. But a big difference between The Flash and Batman v Superman is that there was never any real chance of The Flash disappointing fans for the simple reason that nobody had high expectations to begin with. By the time this massively delayed film hobbled into theatres, the DCEU had already been pronounced a dead franchise walking, making the whole “we’re building a multiverse” point of the film so far beyond moot there was no point in anyone pretending to be excited about it. It also didn’t help that years of production delays (pandemic-related and otherwise) allowed Ezra Miller plenty of time to torpedo their public image, making them a liability in promoting the film and forcing the studio’s marketing team to clumsily shift gears and hype the film as Michael Keaton’s triumphant return to the Bat-suit… only for the script to depict Keaton’s Bruce Wayne as a shaggy-haired, pasta-loving hermit who hasn’t seen action in decades but just happens to have a fully fueled and prepped Bat-Plane ready to take off. It’s about the only thing in this film that does.
14. Suicide Squad (2016)
Not The Suicide Squad, mind, just Suicide Squad — the first film starring DC’s ragtag team of press-ganged super-villains who are let loose from prison to save the world from (checks notes) one of their own out-of-control super-villain teammates let loose from prison. Whoopsies. Writer/director David Ayer somehow created a movie that’s both overstuffed and underdeveloped at the same time, a film that introduces some members of Amanda Waller’s “Task Force X” with a dizzying array of onscreen graphics that required viewers to hit pause to read all of them while others get the barest of introductions (“This is Katana. She’s got my back.”) before we leap right into the action. And what action! At one point, Will Smith’s Deadshot sums up the team mission as battling “the swirling ring of trash in the sky,” and the film’s writers really should not serve up such easy lines to the critics. Armies of disposable CGI bad guys, a giant sky-beam that has to be shut down, a strained “we are family” subplot that’s completely unearned, a ridiculously overpowered adversary who’s evil for evil’s sake and brought down by a literal deus ex machina… there’s very little happening in this film that would surprise anyone who has ever watched literally any other movie before this one. You’ll notice how I haven’t even brought up Jared Leto’s Joker to discuss how important he is to the plot. There’s a reason for that.
13. Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)
With Patty Jenkins back in the directing chair and DC heavyweight Geoff Johns co-writing the screenplay, Wonder Woman 1984 had all the makings of a solid follow-up to Jenkins’ first Wonder Woman film. And the film’s opening sequence, a flashback to Diana’s days as a child on the hidden island of Themiscyra, certainly gave moviegoers hope the film would be a worthy sequel to Wonder Woman’s first film outing. But as soon as the action shifts to the year 1984, everything seems… off. For starters, while the first act fight scene set inside a shopping mall firmly positions the story in the 1980s, it also raises the question of why Wonder Woman — whom we were previously told had spent the century following the First World War keeping her identity a secret — would “out” herself in full costume just to foil a jewelry store heist. The plot itself seems lifted from a wacky ’80s teen comedy (magic wishing rock makes everyone’s wishes come true, with hilarious and ironic consequences) and fans really didn’t know what to make of the fact that Diana’s wish to reunite with her dead boyfriend results in a random dude having his body snatched and snogged without his permission. Also, Kristen Wiig is a socially awkward co-worker of Diana’s whose wish to be cool turns her into a furry, snarling were-cheetah. All right, then. Like the decade it’s set in, Wonder Woman 1984 promises much in terms of glitz and glamor, but ultimately there’s just too much weirdness going on to make this film a wondrous experience.
12. Justice League (2017)
“Frankenstein” is a word that comes up often when discussing 2017’s Justice League, the DCEU’s answer to the first Avengers film. When a family tragedy forced Snyder to leave the project during post-production, a nervous Warner Bros. asked Avengers director Joss Whedon to step in and finish the film in time for its scheduled release date. With reshoots and additional VFX work bringing the film’s budget up to $300 million, there was extra pressure on everyone for the film to become a huge hit, and while Justice League didn’t cost the studio as much as The Flash later would, it also didn’t bring in Avengers-level box office numbers, either. Part of the blame can be laid at the feet of studio interference (Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara personally ordered that the film to be kept under two hours, causing much of the story to get left behind on the cutting room floor, and the studio wouldn’t push back the release date for fear of jeopardizing executive bonuses), but the cold reality is that Whedon and Snyder are fundamentally different filmmakers with very different storytelling styles, and there was simply no way for the film to reconcile those two styles into a coherent final product. If you don’t think too hard about how much money and effort went into this film, Justice League is inoffensive enough to rate as mildly passable entertainment, even with the CGI’ed yawnfest it offers up as its designated Big Bad. But the more you learn about what happened behind the scenes, the more you start to understand exactly why Warner Bros. had such a hard time getting its superhero universe off the ground.
11. Man of Steel (2013)
Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel was meant to be Superman’s re-introduction to moviegoers and served as the formal introduction to the DCEU, and on the whole it’s… not entirely terrible. Just not terribly good, either. With his previous comic-book film adaptations (Watchmen, 300), Snyder established a visual style that was all his own, and there was little reason for fans to think that style wouldn’t have worked just as well for a film starring Superman… even if Snyder’s approach to storytelling can be, shall we say, a bit on the nose. (Did you know Superman and Jesus have a lot in common? Zack sure does!) The film did well enough at the box office to make the follow-up Batman v Superman (and the rest of the DCEU) possible, but in a sign of things to come the fans were sharply divided in their opinions over whether the film captured the true essence of Superman, with some fans applauding the film’s attempts to show Clark’s struggle with his alien heritage and others aghast by storytelling choices like Superman outright murdering an opponent (though feeling really bad about it), or Kevin Costner’s Pa Kent telling his young super-son that maybe it would have been better if he had let a bus full of kids die rather than exposing his secret. “On my world, it means hope.” Well, on this world, the idea that we would want or need a film about one of our biggest heroes getting a pep talk from his dad about how maybe he should let his classmates die is… kind of the opposite of that.
10. Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)
All of the criticisms leveled at Justice League because of its sharp tonal shifts and patchwork storytelling definitely do not apply to Zack Snyder’s Justice League; this is a Snyder production through and through, and whatever words might be hurled against it, “inconsistent” isn’t one of them. Almost immediately after Justice League hit theatres with a thud, an army of online Snyder fans mounted a campaign to #releasethesnydercut, insisting that all the 2017 film’s flaws were Whedon’s fault and the world needed to see Snyder’s undiluted vision. While fans of the “Snyderverse” took credit for their campaign making the film a reality, it’s also worth nothing WarnerMedia basically greenlit the project because it saw an opportunity to push traffic to its then-new HBO Max streaming platform for the bargain price of only $70 million for reshoots. But putting all the behind-the-scenes stuff aside, is the film actually good? Unlike the original Justice League, critics were more divided this time, with some praising Snyder’s visuals and other pointing to less promising aspects of the film like its four-hour runtime, an over-reliance on visuals at the expense of storytelling, its cart-before-the-horse approach to world-building, and yet another Jared Leto Joker cameo that adds nothing to the plot. As one critic put it, Zack Snyder’s Justice League “may not be a great film, but it has the madness, strangeness, and obsessiveness of a real work of art.” Sounds about right.
9. Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023)
The first Shazam! film was a breath of fresh air in the DCEU, a superhero movie that embraced the inherent goofiness of its source material’s premise and — despite a few bumps tone-wise — managed to be a rollicking good time. Its follow-up Fury of the Gods tried to replicate that same feeling but came up woefully short. Embracing the “more is more” philosophy of sequel-making, Fury offers more Marvels, more villains, more CGI beasties, and more blatant product placement (taste the rainbow, indeed) than the first Shazam! film… but all the more-ness only succeeds in proving the old adage that lightning doesn’t strike twice. Most baffling was the decision to let Zachary Levi turn his mugging for the camera up to 11; where his acting choices in the first film worked because he was playing a literal child transformed into an adult superhero, here he seems to slide backward into insecurity and immaturity while the brief moments we get to see his younger self (played by Asher Angel) show the teenage Billy to be more thoughtful and mature than his older self, to the point where they come across as completely different characters (so much for the wisdom of Solomon). Then there’s the small matter of not one but two mid-credits stinger scenes setting up future films that will never happen and sound far more entertaining than the paint-by-numbers CGI slugfest that audiences were just forced to sit through.
8. Black Adam (2022)
Black Adam first showed up as Captain Marvel’s arch-nemesis in 1945, and by the early 2000s he was re-invented as an anti-hero who acts as the self-appointed protector of Kahndaq, a fictional Middle Eastern country in the DC universe. Despite the character’s long history in the comics, he wasn’t a big name in pop culture outside of hardcore DC comic fans, and even with a reliable box office draw like Dwayne Johnson wearing the black tights it was going to be an uphill battle getting audiences to come down with Black Adam fever. Johnson does his best to convey the haughtiness and tragedy of his man-out-of-time character, but without the chance to use his trademark everyone’s-charming-older-brother persona, his performance comes across as something best described as “confused.” Not that anyone can blame him; it’s a film with much to be confused about. For instance: why is everyone making a big deal about how “heroes don’t kill” when the DCEU has already repeatedly established that, uh, they kind of do? If Amanda Waller has the Justice Society on speed dial, then why is the Suicide Squad a thing that exists in the DCEU? How does this Justice Society operate, that it can go into any sovereign nation and kick butt? More importantly: how is it that this film about a guy with magical super-powers bestowed by the same wizard who empowered Billy Batson never once makes any reference to that other DCEU film starring Black Adam’s comic-book rival, and in fact goes out of its way to avoid making the connection by having a cameo at the end by someone other than Captain Sparkle Fingers? (He’s still working on the name.)
7. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023)
Long-haired, party-loving hero with a dad-rock soundtrack starring in a sequel where he teams up with his good-looking and envious half-brother who acted the part of the villain in their previous film outing, with the two of them bickering and bonding throughout the story before they face off against a common foe that threatens to destroy the world… hmm, this sounds awfully familiar. Which, alas, is part of the problem. Director James Wan and the cast from 2018’s Aquaman got the band back together to tell the next chapter in the soggy superhero’s saga, and it’s fair to say that of all the DCEU sub-franchises the two Aquaman films have the most consistent level of quality between the first and second films. Unfortunately, “more of the same” wasn’t what fans were looking for by the time this movie came out; whether it was “superhero fatigue” or the fact that this was the last official DCEU film to get a release, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom came out of the gate as one of the lowest-performing DCEU films at the box office. It didn’t fare much better with the critics, either, with most of them lambasting it or offering up a tepid “it’s… fine” tone in their reviews, and that seems to be the right word for it: it’s… fine. As in, if you liked the first Aquaman then you’ll probably find this one entertaining, too, but overall there isn’t a whole lot here that’s hasn’t been seen before in other films, up to and including gags about babies peeing into their daddies’ mouths. Not that a film with octopus robots or buff mermen as sitcom dads needs to be an epic for the ages, but aiming for something more than “meh, let’s wait for it to come out on streaming” shouldn’t be too much to expect, either.
6. Blue Beetle (2023)
It’s hard not to feel bad for the people who made Blue Beetle. After all, it wasn’t their fault the film ended up with a release date that arrived after Warner Bros. announced it was closing down the DCEU in favor of a rebooted DC Films division, just as nobody could have predicted a months-long actors’ strike that dealt a serious blow to the studio’s efforts to publicize the film. Those two factors — plus the fact that Blue Beetle isn’t the most well-known superhero name outside of hardcore DC fans — help explain how the movie ended up with the dubious honor of being the lowest-grossing film in the DCEU. And that’s a shame because there’s a lot here to love in this story about a Latino kid who accidentally becomes bonded to an ancient alien relic that turns him into a weird amalgam of Iron Man and Green Lantern. Granted, the film isn’t perfect — Susan Sarandon’s villain could have used a bit more camp, and the script hits more than a few overly familiar beats in this very standard superhero origin story — but the cast is endearing, there’s lot of good-natured humor (especially where the hero’s family is concerned), the cinematographers came up with a memorable visual style that draws on Latin influences, and (maybe most importantly) there’s not one giant sky beam, or army of faceless CGI monsters, or mention of a multiverse anywhere to be seen. As of this writing, James Gunn has confirmed there are plans to bring Xolo Maridueña’s Blue Beetle into his new “DCU” universe, so we might not have seen the last of this plucky young hero. Heck, we might even find out what happened to that Ted Kord fellow…
5. Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
Of all the DCEU films, Birds of Prey is probably the one that got hit the hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic. Released in the U.S. on February 7, 2020, the film saw only a few weeks in theatres before the entire world was shut down to contain the virus; by the middle of March, Warner Bros. announced the film would be available digitally in the United States and Canada through premium video-on-demand, just a month after the film’s theatrical debut and well before the end of the usual 90-day theatrical run. Because of this (and the fact that the film’s R rating, the first in the DCEU, limited its release in international markets), the film grossed only about $200 million when it needed to make about $250-$300 million to break even, dashing hopes for a Birds of Prey sequel. That’s a shame, because the film is a lot of fun; Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn was one of the few bright spots in 2016’s Suicide Squad, and here she gets a chance to shine in a role that Robbie (who also served as producer) was born to play. Like its lead, the film is equal parts goofy, hilarious, and unhinged — sometimes all three within the span of a minute, like during the scenes in which Ewan McGregor’s brutal gang lord leaves us laughing and gasping in horror almost simultaneously. Campy, ultra-violent, and feminist AF (do the kids still say “AF”…?), Birds of Prey offers up plenty of paradigm-subverting fun and vicious stabs (not all of them metaphorical) at the patriarchy… plus glitter bomb fights! Can never have enough glitter bomb fights, I always say.
4. Shazam! (2019)
Before Shazam! came along, nothing in the DCEU could be properly described as a comedy. Yes, Wonder Woman and Aquaman had their lighter moments, but even those films had an epic quality to them, a sense that we were supposed to take them seriously in spite of the fish rock bands and jokes about Chris Pine’s boy parts. There was also the sense — by virtue of both characters having roles in other DCEU films — of those films functioning as parts of a larger whole. Shazam! plays in its own sandbox and never takes itself too seriously, and it shines all the brighter because of that. This is a movie that’s happy to be about the reasons why kids love superheroes and wish they could be superheroes themselves. The best scenes are the ones in which Billy in his new adult form (played by Zachary Levi with wide-eyed perfection) learns how to use his powers with the help of his friend and foster brother, Freddy; most learning-to-use-their-powers montages in superhero movies can feel forced, but these are the moments in Shazam! that show the most heart thanks to how well Levi and his young co-stars sell that sense of wonder. Not that other parts of the film fall flat; Mark Strong’s Sivana is a sympathetic villain (even as he does monstrous things to further his goals), and the other child actors populating Billy’s foster home offer up some of the best child actor performances to be found in any recent big-budget film (it helps that their characters have more to do in the plot than serve as rescue bait or comic relief). A lot had been said during the course of the DCEU’s existence about how Warner Bros. and DC shouldn’t try to imitate Marvel’s it-all-fits-together approach to building a franchise, and instead focus on creating standalone films that fit the tone of each individual DC character. Shazam! is Exhibit A of why that’s a good idea.
3. Aquaman (2018)
On paper, it sounds like the perfect disaster. It stars a superhero that has been the butt of jokes (“He talks to fish!”) for decades. The director, James Wan, was more famous for his horror output (Saw, Insidious, The Conjuring) than anything else. It had a ridiculously huge budget (fueled by the outrageous amount of visual effects needed to bring its fantasy worlds to life) that would have required the film to earn a billion dollars to be considered a success. And the script about a half-human/half-Atlantean globetrotting the world to find a trident and prove his worthiness to lead his people — oh, and there’s also an angry pirate out for revenge! And a resentful half-brother who doesn’t like him much, either! — sounds completely over-the-top bonkers… and that’s before you get to the parts of the film that sound like the by-products of a cocaine-fueled production meeting where no one was capable of saying no to any crazy idea (“Julie Andrews playing a mythical sea monster? Love it! Get her agent on the horn!”). But you know what? It works. Maybe it’s because Jason Momoa is simply incapable of projecting that self-serious vibe that dragged down earlier DCEU efforts like Man of Steel and Batman v Superman; his commitment to the bit is so infectious you can’t help but throw up your hands and enjoy the ride. The film isn’t perfect; actors like Willem Dafoe and Dolph Lundgren are criminally underused, there’s a drinking game to be made from the multiple ways in which explosions are used to move the action forward, and the CGI depictions of underwater wildlife dip a little too much into “The Flintstones are going to Sea World!” silliness. But no matter. It’s a ride where everything and everyone involved is giving 165 per cent the entire time. Silly or not, you have to respect that.
2. The Suicide Squad (2021)
After the tepid welcome that audiences gave 2016’s Suicide Squad, the idea of a Suicide Squad sequel seemed about as dead as, well, most of the Suicide Squad. But fate works in mysterious ways; after James Gunn was let go by Disney for reasons beyond his control, Warner Bros. immediately offered him a job directing any DC property he wanted. He chose the Suicide Squad, perhaps because it offered him the best chance of blowing away Pete Davidson in the messiest way possible (and who wouldn’t jump at that?). More a relaunch than a sequel, The Suicide Squad (even the “The” in the title is there because of a joke) brings back Rick Flag, Harley Quinn, and Captain Boomerang to join a whole new crew of degenerates and ne’er-do-wells who invade the island nation of Corto Maltese and complete a mission that can only be described as suicide. Standouts in this new crop of criminal cretins include John Cena’s Peacemaker, Idris Elba’s Bloodsport, Sylvester Stallone(!) as King Shark, and cast MVP David Dastmalchian as a daft supervillain from 1960s Batman comics (so… very daft) whose one moment of triumph sums up everything that’s gloriously unhinged about this film. The Suicide Squad scores bonus points for being the only DCEU film to spawn a TV spinoff (Cena’s Peacemaker, a hoot and a half in itself), but that’s not why it’s one of the better films in the DCEU, nor is it because it’s one of the most shockingly violent offerings in the line-up (it’s a well-earned R, that’s for sure). No, it’s because — like Robbie’s maniacally mercurial Harley Quinn — you have no idea from one minute to the next which way the film is going to go. And that’s a damn rare thing to find in modern blockbusters.
1. Wonder Woman (2017)
Years from now, when film historians look back on this era and try to figure out why the DCEU didn’t succeed as well as its Disney-owned competition, I imagine a few fingers will be pointed at Snyder or various executives at the Warner Bros. offices. But it’s a safe bet that no one will put the blame on the casting directors. Cavill, Affleck, Momoa, Robbie, Maridueña, Cena, Elba, Levi — almost every actor cast in these films proves to be the perfect choice for embodying their respective characters. And that goes double for Gal Gadot, who simply is Diana of Themyscira from the moment she appears in Batman v Superman. Casting the former Israeli model/combat instructor and member of the Fast & Furious club is just one of the many good decisions that resulted in Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman. Following the back-to-back disappointments of Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad, Warner Bros. was eager to change the conversation with an unqualified hit, and Wonder Woman delivered exactly that. If it has any flaws, it’s that its final big action sequence devolves into a murky and messy CGI extravaganza that has come to be de rigueur for most superhero movies these days; aside from that, this is a film that’s as kick-ass as the guitar riff that screeches on the soundtrack every time Diana makes a dramatic entrance. But what elevates Wonder Woman above the rest of the DCEU isn’t just how well it’s constructed, but also how it’s actually about something other than punching baddies — how it charts our hero’s journey from wide-eyed naïveté and belief in absolutes to disillusionment to the realization that love and forgiveness are the only paths away from the futility of war. It’s a message that frankly we need to hear more often these days; let’s hope it joins Blue Beetle in migrating over to the new DCU.
A Dispensable List of Comic Book Lists 