Superman
Superman is continuing to crush it at the box office, surpassing expectations and causing WB to rave about this bold new Gunn-led era of the DCU. Critics liked the film, and fans seem to love it. Tens of thousands of reviews have poured in, and I thought it was time for a bit of a breakdown of how Superman has stacked up against other DC films, both in the DCEU, pre-DCEU and way, way in the past, before cinematic universes were really a thing.
Where does Superman fall on a list like this? For superhero films, I’m going to choose to use the audience score metric on Rotten Tomatoes, as I think that’s the big indicator of a well-liked film. So, here’s the top 10:
1) The Dark Knight – 94% audience score, 94% critic score
2) Batman Begins –94% audience score, 85% critic score
3) Superman (2025) – 93% audience score, 83% critic score
4) Zack Snyder’s Justice League – 92% audience score, 71% critic score
5) The Dark Knight Rises – 90% audience score, 87% critic score
6) Joker – 89% audience score, 68% critic score
7) The Batman – 87% audience score, 85% critic score
8) Superman: The Movie – 86% audience, score 88% critic score
9) Batman – 84% audience score, 77% critic score
10) Wonder Woman – 83% audience score, 93% critic score
Bonus: Shazam!/The Suicide Squad – 82% audience score
Superman
I believe I’m not missing any, but I will adjust if so. As you can see, it’s pretty stunning. Superman has suddenly become the third highest-scored movie in DC history, according to audiences, behind only Chris Nolan’s famed Dark Knight and Batman Begins. Three points above The Dark Knight Rises. And hey, credit to Snyder superfans for getting his Justice League cut to 92% (but I mean, that’s generous).
Superman’s modern day counterpart, The Batman, has also made it to the list. The highest DCEU films besides Snyder JLA are Wonder Woman and Shazam!, the latter of which is tied with James Gunn’s own Suicide Squad sequel, which did terribly at the box office but audiences enjoyed it.
No, Superman is not the ultra-tops in terms of critic score and will probably not be for box office (if I had to guess), but it’s still an unequivocal success and there is really not much else WB could have hoped for, especially coming off a pretty bad string of projects in the DCEU, where that whole experiment was close to a failure. But the DCU is starting strong and led by its biggest hero. Now, we’ll see how Supergirl fares next.
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Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2025/07/16/the-10-best-dc-movies-by-rotten-tomatoes-audience-score–wheres-superman/