Superman Movies, Ranked
The exhilarating highs and demoralizing lows of the Man of Steel's cinematic career.
The thing about ranking Superman movies is that it's actually easier than it seems. For starters, to establish a metric by which to measure the quality of these movies is to acknowledge that Richard Donner's Superman: The Movie remains the best of the bunch, even if it's now carbon dated at a distressing forty-seven years old. Every other subsequent film, including the sequels that feature the most consequential onscreen Superman, Christopher Reeve, functions in its shadow. Once that becomes clear, the tricky part begins: how best to rank the also-rans against each other? By what other metrics do we assess their successes and failures?
So, some house rules. First, only live-action feature-length movies starring (or co-starring) Superman apply. I've omitted all animated features from contention, not because they're entirely devoid of merit (this is where I politely direct your attention to Bruce Timm's deranged Superman: Doomsday, which I may need to dig into separately someday), but because wading through WB Animation's glut of dud DC movies means I'd be spending the next month trying to parse the thin margins of quality between its flatly performed, robotically animated factory dross, and I say "no thanks" to that. Life's too short.
Next, to keep this ranking at a nice even Ten, I'm keeping this strictly to theatrical releases. Therefore, there won't be any director's cuts — no Richard Donner's Superman II or Zack Snyder's Justice League, even though, yes, both improve upon their respective theatrical releases considerably.
Finally, while an actor's performance as Superman/Clark Kent is key to any Superman ranking, they are not the final arbiter of quality in this regard. Mr. Reeve's Superman is so good, it makes watching lower-rung offerings like Superman III and IV more enjoyable, but there's the rest of the movie around him to consider. What does the movie get right about Superman? What does it get wrong? Is the film nice to Margot Kidder? These are things we must discuss to understand the landscape of the Superman franchise.
Thanks to James Gunn's Superman (which I reviewed here), this ranking has just gotten even easier, at least for me. Your mileage may (and probably will) vary, so make sure to post Your Top 10 in the comments; I'll be curious to see how you stack the steel.
10. Justice League
Joss Whedon's stab at Marvel-ing up Zack Snyder's Justice League in the eleventh hour (after Snyder left due to a terrible family tragedy) is, unsurprisingly, messy and tonally schizophrenic. On top of being color-graded into a hideous digital smear, most of the reshot cast looks notably checked out (like Ben Affleck, who visibly appears to be reevaluating his life choices), except for Henry Cavill, who, despite having his Mission: Impossible mustache digitally removed to reveal an uncanny valley lip job, is finally freed from the oppressive burdens of his previous appearances to give Superman some Reeve-tinted earnestness. There's a lot wrong with Whedon's Justice League, but any movie that ends with Superman racing The Flash just for the heck of it can't be all bad.
9. Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice
I've since thawed to Zack Snyder's onyx-brittle sequel to Man of Steel; there is, after all, a Batman here that I'm almost convinced is the most viscerally thrilling we've seen on screen. But its depiction of Superman, which doubles down on the moral murk of its preceding installment, delivers the rock-bottom moment in Snyder's deconstructionist trilogy. "Nobody stays good in this world," Superman (Henry Cavill) tells Lois Lane (Amy Adams) as he floats off to his death. Bleak in almost every regard (though Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor injects some demented theater into the mix), it's fitting that the scene I like most suggests grim things about the Man of Tomorrow: the bit where Affleck's Bruce Wayne rescues a little girl, asks where her mother is, and gazes at the smoldering Metropolis ruin where the tot is pointing. Snyder then pans to the sky beyond, where Superman and Zod are seen crashing down to earth. Motivations for retribution are rarely this cogent, which is wild, considering the target of Batman's ire is Superman. Shame about the rest of the movie. (The Ultimate Cut isn't much better, but it vastly improves the mess that is the theatrical release.)
8. Superman III
The nadir of the original franchise, which says very nice things about the original franchise. There is much to appreciate: Richard Lester's cartoon blocking has, in my opinion, aged well (note the extreme Wacky Races energy of the title crawl); I love Annette O'Toole as Lana Lang; and while I adore Richard Pryor, I can't help but wonder what funky screen alchemy we might have experienced had he been paired with a returning Gene Hackman instead of Robert Vaughn (of all people). And while there's something awfully poignant about Clark Kent strangling an out-of-control Superman, given the complex feelings Reeve would later have about reprising the role to diminishing returns, what ultimately holds Superman III back is its greatest crime: having zero reverence for its source material, right down to writing Margot Kidder's Lois Lane out of the picture like no one would miss her. Criminal.
7. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
Look, I know it's junk. Produced by a studio well on its way to bankruptcy as a Hail Mary to keep the lights on, this sub-budgeted attempt to recapture the Romper Room fun of Superman II — by introducing a monosyllabic roid-rage Ken doll called the Nuclear Man as Reeve's punching mate — was a colossal flop in 1987. Now? I can't deny its cheapie charms. The climactic Moon dust-up is pure cereal-and-pajamas silliness. Also, Superman's incredibly lazy reconstruction of the broken Great Wall of China by merely gawking at it — added with the visible wires, the curtains that drape around the Moon set, and the missing third reel that ought to connect the first hour of the movie to its climax but does not — gives it the aspect of DC by way of Ed Wood. And then there's the Clark Kent/Superman double-date scene with Kidder and Mariel Hemingway, a moment so goofy it loops back around to being kind of wonderful.
6. Superman and the Mole Men
If you know me at all, you know that George Reeves is and remains my personal favorite Superman. As it happens, he's also my favorite Clark Kent. Reeves's Superman was prickly, prone to righteous outbursts, and let his temper guide him on his crusade against injustice — traits I saw reflected in David Corenswet's recent outing. If you're willing to set aside the quaintness of its period and the dopiness of its pulp sci-fi premise (both of which I see as part of its strengths), I suggest that you check it out; it's live over at the Internet Archive right now. Watch the scene in which Reeves stands off against an unruly mob to protect a vulnerable creature they scarcely understand. Here's a hero who does right by others regardless of the details; a recurring and potent theme throughout the franchise. Cinematically, chronologically, that started here.
5. Superman II
No disrespect to Richard Lester, who I'm sure wasn't exactly Mr. Popularity on-set after he replaced Dick Donner mid-production, but Superman II is a fumble compared to its predecessor. I forgave quite a bit of this when I was a kid (how could I not: Metropolis showdown with a vamping Terence Stamp, the enduring magnetism of Reeve, Sarah Douglas in a future-shock punk jumpsuit), but watching it now, its cracks are cavernous. In fact, Lester's first outing is so removed from the mythic sweep of the first Superman that it only becomes fascinating as it begins to implode. Uninspiring visual flatness, Kidder oscillating between hair lengths, Hackman body doubles, that wild cellophane Super-logo, Superman's memory-wiping kiss, and a deadening amount of comic mugging from just about everybody (especially the extras) — at its worst? This kind of stinks. At its best, however, it manages to get off the ground. One moment soars: "General, would you care to step outside?" That one line makes up for all the Kryptonians versus podunk cops sequences this movie can throw at us. It's the only time my heart has soared as Superman faced off against Zod, let me put it that way.
4. Man of Steel
I reject Snyder's (and David Goyer's and Christopher Nolan's) core premise that a more complex, cynical, and violent world would meet a figure like Superman with suspicion and dread. I believe people, no matter how jaded, still prefer people who elevate us by example over the horde of self-serving pinheads in positions of power we're normally told to admire. Still, I can respect the ambition behind portraying this most hopeful of heroes as an alienated and morally confused young man still discovering who he is. There's value in the approach, just as there's poignancy in Kevin Costner's turn as a world-weary Pa Kent; misguided death scene notwithstanding, he's the emotional spine of the film. The earthbound stuff might be a slog, but the Krypton material is downright operatic, from Russell Crowe channelling Grant Morrison one moment and riding a giant dragonfly the next (and bellowing its name like he were exiled from an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel) to Michael Shannon's suitably unhinged General Zod; Krypton provides Man of Steel its memorable, exciting visuals, and gives its character actors some real meat to chew on. (See Shannon's "Now I have no people" soliloquy towards the end.) Excessive to the point of incoherence, its blunt-force nihilism clashes with Superman as we've always known him, but its grace notes break through: the first flight, the Smallville memories, that oil rig rescue. These moments soar thanks to Hans Zimmer's thunderous, undervalued theme, a rousing highlight in a film notorious for being glum.
3. Superman Returns
Obvious ickiness of its pedigree aside, this does just enough right with the material that I can accept what it fumbles. Still, once that airplane lands in the ballpark and the gee-whiz cadence settles into something more modern and grim, the film takes a pretty dire turn. The Super Son aspect fouls the essence of these characters: absentee dad (Brandon Routh), deceptive mother (Kate Bosworth), and a hapless but otherwise good man caught in the center (James Marsden) played for the sap as he risks life and limb to protect his unwittingly inherited family. It's an old-fashioned movie setup, though the Singer's clockwork direction saps its potency: a screwball comedy sans pep, a romantic epic without sweep or passion. Here's a superhero picture that attempts to fuse the timeless aesthetic of the Fleischer reels with Tom Mankiewicz's funky patter, the result more languid and ruminative than fun; like Frank Langella's blandly competent Perry White puts it to Jimmy Olsen (Sam Worthington) at one point, looking iconic is paramount over all else. I still prefer this to Man of Steel, though it's almost impossible to enjoy without making an inventory of caveats.
2. Superman
I'm not surprised that James Gunn's Superman is being dismissed or outright rejected by some critics; it's a naïve movie, imperfect in its construction, and has funny ideas about the way the world works that some will find juvenile or even regressive. Had Gunn made this with anything other than an open hand, I'd be right there with them. Yet, the naïveté he bakes into this film is no bug, but the code fundamental to cracking who Superman is: right over might, blind trust, heart over sense, farmboy sensibilities writ as big as they get. More than being deliberately provincial, these concepts are the animating tension behind David Corenswet's performance, which taps into the short-sighted impulsivity of Superman's Golden Age roots and Morrison's brash, working-class firebrand from DC's New 52. Here's a hero who will save everyone down to the last squirrel because he can, consequences be darned. Sure, we can do the tricky geopolitical calculus of Boravia and Jarhanpur in our heads; it's not like Gunn doesn't invite it. Or we can collectively relearn what it means to look up and feel something other than dread. Both approaches are crucial to understanding Superman '25, but only one of them is undeniably fun.
1. Superman: The Movie
Imperfection is the throughline, maybe the defining trait, of every Superman movie ever made. Frustrating as it is to accept, there's some truth behind the common gripe that the character is too Pollyanna to hang a resonant story on: creating the perfect Superman film, especially as the world grows smaller, more paranoid, and uncertain, has proven stubbornly elusive. (That's the kind of thinking that made Man of Steel, and I'm sure we've collectively grown past that.) Gunn's Superman will age well for its earnestness, I think, and we may yet see a sequel that improves on its better instincts. But for now, it's still Richard Donner who came closest to capturing Superman in full: big and powerful, yet buoyed by an unwavering belief in goodness and childlike wonder. Once we wade through its bloated origin story, the 1978 film proves thrillingly adept at presenting its timeless iteration of the character, not just as a broad cartoon ideal (though there is some of that) but as a decent, down-to-earth fellow confident in his power and disdainful of those who weaponize their unique gifts and privilege for selfish ends. Donner's Superman is the foundation on which every subsequent version has been built. That's why Gunn quotes John Williams's theme in 2025: as this character keeps flying forward, what propels him — beyond yellow sunlight, that is — are the prior generations of artists who've refined Superman's moral gravity, iconic shape, and human spirit.