Summary

  • The DCEU is officially over after 10 years, offering a chance to finally rank every movie released.
  • Justice League (2017) is considered the worst DCEU movie due to production issues and a lackluster plot.
  • But where does Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom rank?

What's the best DCEU movie? Some fifteen movies in, the franchise initially built on Zack Snyder's vision has suffered several identity crises over its 10-year run. Man Of Steel was a triumph, even as it was divisive, and almost every release since has come with at least one caveat. Into that context, Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom was always going to face significant struggles. James Wan's final DCEU movie could have been something of a free hit, but with so much behind it and the DCU reboot looming large, the scrutiny has been even greater.

There's been controversies, missed opportunities and as many high profile exits and fall-outs as there have been perfect castings, but how does every DCEU movie rank? Here's a run through of every film in this franchise so far, ranked from worst to best. Every movie will be critically assessed, with strengths and weaknesses carefully examined to justify its placement, including 2023's Aquaman and the Last Kingdom.

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1

16 Justice League (2017)

Release Date
November 17, 2017
Runtime
120 Minutes
Director
Zack Synder

When Warner Bros. first announced Justice League, they intended it to be the triumphant culmination of everything the DCEU had been working towards since 2013. Unfortunately, it all went badly wrong; director Zack Snyder left partway through production, with Joss Whedon taking over and conducting a massive amount of additional photography. The result is a Frankenstein's Monster of a film that's true to neither Snyder nor Whedon, and fails to complete the plotlines seeded in previous movies. Henry Cavill's CGI-replaced mustache is infamous, but the whole movie suffers from the enforced changes.

Previous DCEU movies Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice were essentially social parables told through the lens of a superhero film, but Justice League plays it straight - and as a result, feels very much lacking when compared to its predecessors. It's telling that, several years after Justice League's release, the only conversation about it is whether or not the Snyder Cut is better (and the fact this version of Justice League is at the bottom of our lists serves as our answer).

15 Suicide Squad (2016)

Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn with a Bat in Suicide Squad
Suicide Squad
PG-13

Release Date
August 5, 2016
Runtime
123 minutes
Director
David Ayer

Before Justice League, Suicide Squad was another DCEU film fundamentally altered once production had wrapped. In early 2016, Warner Bros. grew concerned the tone of David Ayer's film didn't match with the inspired marketing campaign, with the disappointing box office performance of Batman v Superman reportedly leading them to change strategy. In the end, the final theatrical cut was essentially two different versions - one from the director, one a trailer house - stitched together during post-production and feeling more than a little unfinished.

The introductory sequence presents the team's backstory in a series of flashbacks, interspersed with the kind of fun graphics that featured in the trailers. Unfortunately, and rather jarringly, those graphics are then ditched completely for the rest of Suicide Squad. To give a sense of just how disted this movie really is, there are no less than two scenes in a row in which Viola Davis' Amanda Waller explains why the world needs Suicide Squad and just what the team is supposed to be about.

As choppily edited as Suicide Squad may be, it has some inspired casting. The real stars are Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn and Davis' aforementioned Waller, both of whom inhabit their roles perfectly. Indeed, it's telling Warner Bros. has moved Harley Quinn to the forefront of their plans, with the troubled antihero leading Birds of Prey.

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14 Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice (2016)

Batman (Ben Affleck) Faces Superman (Henry Cavill) in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice

Release Date
March 25, 2016
Runtime
152 minutes
Director
Zack Synder

The second film in Zack Snyder's loose trilogy of DC movies, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice marks the point at which the DCEU truly became divisive. Batman v Superman was scorned by critics, but is viewed as a cult classic by fans of Snyder's cinematographic style. The difference in opinions is best exemplified by the film's scores on review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes; it has a Critic Score of just 28 percent against an Audience Score of 63 percent.

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Few would deny Batman v Superman has problems; incredibly, it even fails to deliver on the promised battle between DC's two iconic heroes. The fight is set up, but ends with remarkable speed and in a way that frankly feels as though it comes out of the left-field (Martha remains infamous). It then pivots into an entirely different movie, one that makes the bold but questionable decision to kill Superman.

It's possible to be too critical of Batman v Superman, though. Its greatest strength is undeniably the remarkable depth of imagery and symbolism woven into the film by Snyder, with Superman portrayed as a complex and conflicted Christ-figure set against a contemporary backdrop. The introduction of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman is one of the high points, with Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer creating an iconic and unforgettable score for the scene.

13 Shazam! Fury Of The Gods (2023)

Shazam and the Shazam Family in Fury of the Gods
Shazam! The Fury of the Gods
PG-13

Release Date
March 17, 2023
Runtime
130 minutes
Director
David F. Sandberg

After the wholesome, feel-good DCEU antidote offered by Zachary Levi's Shazam!, the child-like superhero grates a little too much in the sequel. Let down by a poor marketing campaign, Shazam! Fury of The Gods never quite justifies why it deserved a better one, with Levi's character losing a lot of his shine in the service of meta-jokes and not very funny ones at that. How the mighty had fallen.

The plot is stretched too thin over too many characters, the villains aren't as interesting as their casting may have suggested, and the attempt to tie Shazam!'s comfortable annex to the wider DCEU proves distracting to the point of near-disaster. The wise-cracking proves tiresome all-too-quickly, some of the pop references felt dated even on release, and Fury of the Gods may be ed more for the on-release marketing that saw Levi draw more attention than the sequel managed on its own.

12 Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

Gal Gadot in Wonder Woman 1984

Release Date
December 25, 2020
Runtime
151 minutes
Director
Patty Jenkins

Expectations were high for Wonder Woman 1984, which had the misfortune of releasing at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. Unfortunately the film is rather disappointing, largely because of a muddled plot and some very strange creative decisions - notably a bizarre body-swapping decision so uncomfortable it was excised from the junior novelization. Gal Gadot and Chris Pine are excellent, and the chemistry between them comes close to justifying the decision to bring back Wonder Woman's lost love Steve Trevor.

Pedro Pascal shines as Maxwell Lord, the power-hungry billionaire whose quest for an ancient artifact called the Dreamstone risks dooming all life on Earth, but that performance is likely to date Wonder Woman 1984 significantly; he's certainly channeling Donald Trump.

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11 Black Adam (2022)

dwayne johnson as black adam in dceu
Black Adam
PG-13

Release Date
October 21, 2022
Runtime
125 Minutes
Director
Jaume Collet-Serra

Despite a marketing campaign that saw Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson so heavily lean on Superman that the Man Of Steel might have felt compelled to buckle, Black Adam ended up not quite being a sum of its parts. The introduction of the Justice Society, and spot on casting that included Johnson himself but mostly nailed all of the heroes was absolutely the high point, but generally, Black Adam was not the Earth-shaking DCEU revolution its hulking lead actor promised.

The anti-hero focus meant Black Adam could explore darkness without turning the lights out or going as brazenly evil as the two Suicide Squad iterations, but it's still very much a tale of another DCEU movie with a wayward plot and an underwhelming villain. Johnson is good for his money as Black Adam himself, and there's a confident swagger in the way the movie promises more beyond its credits, but Black Adam will not be ed as the very top tier of the DCEU when the dust finally settles.

10 Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom (2023)

Release Date
December 22, 2023
Runtime
124 minutes
Director
James Wan

Another frustratingly underwhelming marketing campaign preceded the release of the final DCEU movie, James Wan's Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom. Despite initially tepid critical reviews and disappointing box office performance, the belated sequel to 2018's colorful romp hits most of the greatest hits of the original. Jason Momoa's anarchic king of Atlantis is zanier, and dials up the dudebro energy (channeling it into some of the worst parenting ever captured on film, in fact), and there's a commitment to imaginative spectacle that is really impressive.

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The stand-out of the whole sequel - which marries a buddy cop, macho romp with slightly heavy-handed ecological anxiety message - is Patrick Wilson's Orm. Rightly called "Loki" at one point by his hairy brother, he plays the malcontent fugitive forced into helping Aquaman take on Yahya Abdul-Mateen II's Manta. He is deliciously grumpy, clashing beautifully with Momoa's labrador energy. And really, The Lost Kingdom needs him to balance the headliner's performance, because he's dialed it up a fair bit. It's not quite annoying, but it certainly grates more than last time out at times.

So what's new? James Wan swerves expertly into horror waters with the introduction of the Black Trident and Manta's subsequent possession (as well as an older evil revealed in act 3 properly). There's also a bigger world (though considerably less of the wonder attached to Atlantis itself in the original), but you end up wishing some of the environments could have lingered a little longer. In the end, Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom won't linger long in memory, but it's far from the disaster some more cynical commenters might have you believe.

9 The Flash (2023)

ezra miller in the chronobowl in the flash
The Flash
PG-13

Release Date
June 16, 2023
Runtime
144 minutes
Director
Andres Muschietti

For all the complaints about The Flash's CGI problems, and the nostalgia-bait of the DC superhero cameos in its multiverse, Andy Muschietti's spaghetti soup of a Flashpoint adaptation still ticks a lot of boxes. Brave in vision and compelling in story, The Flash was always a difficult prospect thanks to behind-the-scenes turmoil, delays, and the unfortunate truth of James Gunn's impending DCU reboot. On the other side of the coin, it was also something of a free-hit for Warner Bros (though an expensive one), which could do more creative things than strict adherence to a unified timeline might offer. And you to have to ire how much it tried.

In the shadow of Ezra Miller's off-camera controversies, The Flash's cast is buoyed massively by Michael Keaton's appearance, which amounts to way more than empty nostalgia. Beyond him, Sasha Calle's Supergirl is a bold new direction, even if she's a little underused. Miller's twin roles as Barry Allen are on point in a vacuum, but their absence from the marketing says a lot about the murky morality behind the movie coming out. But even with the barrier of the DCU reboot robbing it of relevance, The Flash is fun, spectacular enough to make the CGI bearable if you squint, and manages to justify its existence. It's a low bar, in that respect, but viewed on its own merits, it's solid.

8 Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021)

Zack Snyder's Justice League Darkseid anti-life equation

Release Date
March 18, 2021
Runtime
242 minutes
Director
Zack Synder

The Snyder Cut of Justice League was finally released on HBO Max, and while it may not officially be part of the DCEU, its tangential status means it really deserves a place on this list. The Snyder Cut is infinitely better than the theatrical release of Justice League, but still somewhat stands as testimony to the fact that sometimes studio editing is a good thing; the first third in particular is meandering, and you definitely get the sense a good hour or so could be cut from this four-hour-long epic without any real loss.

Ray Fisher's Cyborg stands as the star of the Snyder Cut, with a tremendously effective character arc that makes him the most important member of the nascent Justice League. The final battle between the Justice League and the forces of Steppenwolf is well-executed, a conflict truly suited to Snyder's mythic style; although Superman's revival still proves decisive, it doesn't feel quite so absurd as in the theatrical cut. This is easily one of Zack Snyder's best superhero movies, and Warner Bros. made a big mistake not editing this for the big screen in the first place.

7 Birds of Prey (2020)

Harley Quinn And Birds Of Prey

Release Date
February 7, 2020
Runtime
109 minutes
Director
Cathy Yan

Cathy Yan's Birds of Prey is really a Harley Quinn movie with various badass female characters as backup. And it's exactly what you'd expect from a Harley Quinn film; a madcap rollercoaster ride through Gotham City, as Harley struggles to escape the Joker's shadow while saving a teenage pickpocket who's unwittingly become Gotham's Most Wanted.

Birds of Prey isn't exactly deep - aside from Harley herself, the Birds of Prey often feel reduced to popular tropes, and the film doesn't exactly help matters by having Harley lampshade that fact. The narrative style is fun and eclectic, representing Harley herself as the unreliable narrator, and it just about works - with a few stumbles. Oddly enough, Birds of Prey doesn't really feel as though it earns its R-rating, with the few graphic scenes feeling unnecessary; it might have performed better in the box office if Warner Bros. had gone with a lower rating.