There have been dozens of movies based on DC Comics, which means that superheroes have thrown endless numbers of punches, villain after villain has explained their master plan, and the day has been saved countless times. Not every scene in every DC movie is "super," but the ones that are justify the whole messy cinematic franchise. We're talking about the moments that make you believe a man can fly.
Here are the 32 greatest DC Comics movie moments. Now, keep in mind that not every DC flick has a scene on this list. In fact, most of them don't make the cut at all. It only makes sense that good movies would be the ones that, for the most part, feature good scenes. Don't worry, though, we've captured the best DC movies here. In fact, there are some great films that have a lot of representation on this list, appearing multiple times because they are basically a collection of great scenes. (Yes, we're talking about The Dark Knight.)
32. Flash Enters the Speed Force (Justice League)
At the 2022 Academy Awards, the Oscars attempted to get average moviegoers excited by adding a fan-vote for the "Most Cheer-worthy Moment In Cinema History" to the broadcast. Although no actual Oscar trophy was awarded, and although viewers overwhelmingly made fun of the Academy's misguided attempt at fan engagement, the sequence in Justice League when the Flash (Ezra Miller) runs fast enough to enter the mythical Speed Force and help the Justice League defeat Steppenwolf won the vote. We honor the fans (and the meme) by naming this one of the greatest moments in DC movie history.
31. Aquaman Dives Into The Trench (Aquaman)
Aquaman is a visually overwhelming spectacle, but it's when Arthur (Jason Momoa) and Mera (Amber Heard) dive into the midst of the deep-sea Atlantean Trench Kingdom that director James Wan gets to showcase his horror chops. Wan, who helmed some of the best action movies like Furious 7, also co-created Saw and made The Conjuring, and he uses his action and horror expertise to make Aquaman's battle with the sightless, devolved fish-monster people of The Trench a memorable—and just scary enough—sequence in a film full of them.
30. Batman's Credit Card (Batman & Robin)
The secret to loving instead of maligning the much-maligned Batman & Robin is understanding that director Joel Schumacher was proudly making schlock. Between all the ice puns Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger) throws out and Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman) vamping like crazy, this is a movie that's in touch with the silly side of superhero comics. Batman (George Clooney) pulling out a Bat-branded credit card to win an auction would be out of place in the grounded reality of some other cinematic Gothams, but it's a knowingly dumb delight here.
29. Batman and Superman's Fight (Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice)
The contrived circumstances that lead to Batman (Ben Affleck) and Superman (Henry Cavill) fighting in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice aren't DC's finest work, and the realization that both of their moms are named Martha being the thing to end the fight is fairly mocked. Luckily, the fight itself—you know, the thing people who paid to see a movie called "Batman v Superman" wanted to see—delivers. Batman looks imposing in a heavy, tangible way that often escapes CGI-based superhero spectacles, and the film does a good job of always making him seem like the ultimate underdog compared to Superman's Kryptonian might.
28. Joker Dances Down the Steps (Joker)
Todd Phillips' Joker was as acclaimed as it was controversial. Still, the visual of the title character (Joaquin Phoenix), dressed in a bright suit and breaking dangerously free as he dances down the steps he once merely plodded down, is an endearing one. The stairs, which in reality connect Shakespeare and Anderson avenues at West 167th Street in the Bronx, have become an iconic filming location, similar to the steps featured in cinematic classics like Rocky or The Exorcist.
27. Knightmare (Zack Snyder's Justice League)
A tantalizing "what if?" for Zack Snyder fans, the director's 4-hour-long cut of Justice League—the completed, true vision for the film that Joss Whedon took over when Snyder departed the production due to a family tragedy—ends with a flash forward to a film we will probably never see. Batman (Affleck) dreams of a dystopian future where Superman (Cavill) has fallen to the Anti-Life Equation and turned evil, forcing the Dark Knight to lead an insurgency against him with some unlikely allies—including Deathstroke (Joe Manganiello) and even The Joker (Jared Leto). Given that Zack Snyder's Justice League is a glorified director's cut and that Warner Bros. has ditched the DCEU continuity for a fresh start, there's essentially no chance that this storyline will ever be continued on the big screen. Still, pretty cool.
26. Harley Quinn's Introduction
The 2016 Suicide Squad is not a great movie. (Though it did win an Oscar — never forget!) However, for all its faults, it did cast Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, the Joker's ex-turned-antiheroine. Robbie, with her sass and wisecracks, nails the chaotic character from the jump, and even opposite the series of choices that are Jared Leto's Joker in her introductory scene, she's undeniable. It's no wonder that the DCEU, which always had a loose grasp of continuity at best, would stick with Robbie and bring her back to reprise the character two more times.
25. Everybody Gets a Movie (Teen Titans Go! To the Movies)
The wonderfully anarchic Teen Titans spin-off cartoon didn't hold anything back when it went big for a feature-length movie, a wry, highly meta romp about how many dang superhero movies there are. Robin (Scott Menville) is upset that basically every DC superhero is getting a blockbuster except for him, and Teen Titans Go! to the Movies pokes fun at him—and the entire genre—at a swanky premiere where Robin is dismayed to find that they're making movies about Batman's butler, car, and even utility belt. Exaggerated, sure, but in real life, they've made superhero movies about characters you wouldn't have thought would headline! You have to admire the gusto of a movie that calls out its parent franchise for scraping the bottom of the barrel.
24. A Fight Under the Mistletoe (Batman Returns)
For his second time helming a Batman movie, director Tim Burton got very Tim Burton-y, and Batman Returns is dark and whimsical in his signature way, boasting Danny DeVito as a grotesque penguin-man and Michelle Pfeiffer as a stitched-up leather Catwoman. Perhaps the most memorable scene comes when Batman and Catwoman have a confrontation under the mistletoe. (Oh, right; this is a Christmas movie, too.) Charged in a way that few modern superhero movies allow themselves to be and expertly riding the fine line between self-seriousness and camp, it's one of the more memorable hero-villainess interactions the genre has to offer.
23. Batman's First Flight (The Batman)
You watch enough superhero movies (and lord knows we have), and you start to take the superheroes for granted. A costumed crime-fighter leaps off a building (something that is pretty dang dangerous even without villains chasing you!) and there's no worry or suspense. He's a superhero. He'll be fine. Robert Pattinson's Batman reminds us just how visceral and impressive the "normal" parts of superheroes are in his first flight, when he flees pursuing police by jumping off the station roof in a fairly untested wingsuit. It's thrilling and high stakes, and even when Batman gets away, his inexperience means he ends up colliding with an overpass and getting pretty hurt. Compare that to most other superhero movies, where the hero takes a big leap and you just go "okay, so?"
22. The Carnival Fight (Birds of Prey)
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) is one of the more overlooked DC films, which is a shame because Margot Robbie's second outing as Harley is a fun, fairly low-stakes romp. Set in a part of Gotham that feels more like the Bronx compared to the typical Manhattan-esque version of the city we tend to see, Harley and her fellow misfit heroines battle against Black Mask (Ewan McGregor giving one of the best supervillain performances) — a struggle that culminates in an elaborate brawl in an old carnival fun house. It's thrilling and daffy, not unlike Harley herself.
21. Kneel Before Zod (Superman II)
"Kneel before Zod" is an all-time villain quote, and Terence Stamp delivers it with subtle perfection as his Kryptonian general displays his dominance over the president of the United States in the 1980 Superman sequel. It's restrained, almost—there's no need for Zod to raise his voice, which contrasts nicely with the self-important bravado of what he's saying and the brute force of Zod and his companions' superpowers. Also good? When Zod corrects the president (E.G. Marshall) after he exclaims, "Oh god." It's Zod, actually.
20.The Destruction of Krypton (Man of Steel)
Far from being a phoned-in and obligatory, Zack Snyder's Man of Steel makes the beginning of Superman's origin story into one of the most exciting parts of the movie, following Russell Crowe's Jor-El as he rushes through a falling, visually innovative Krypton in an effort to save his son. Crowe brings gravitas as Superman's formidable scientist father, and Krypton comes off as such an interesting, developed place that it actually feels like a shame when it goes kablooey.
19. Aquaman Becomes the One True King (Aquaman)
In 2018, Disney released a sequel to Mary Poppins, but Julie Andrews, who famously played the magical nanny, declined to appear in the film. She did, however, voice a giant tentacled sea monster that did battle with Arthur Curry in Aquaman that same year. The monster, Karathen, was the final test for Momoa's would-be king, and after proving himself against her, he emerges holding the Trident of Atlan and wearing his famous gold costume from the comics. It's one of the great superhero entrances, and that it comes after such an unlikely monster battle is a testament to how fun comic book movies can be.
18. "Is It Meaningless to Apologize?" (V for Vendetta)
There are plenty of cool, stylized action sequences or stirring monologues in this adaptation of an Alan Moore comic released by DC's Vertigo imprint. Perhaps the best scene, though, is a quiet one, as the masked terrorist V (Hugo Weaving) sets about killing the people responsible for his torture and the founding of the fascist government that rules Britain. While some of his other victims meet violent ends, he gives Dr. Delia Surridge (Sinéad Cusack), a scientist responsible for his treatment, a painless lethal injection. Before she goes, the clearly pennant doctor asks if it's "meaningless to apologize?" and V responds, "Never." It's a small, beautiful moment that shows just how complex V is.
17. Superman Saves the Plane (Superman Returns)
By superhero standards, stopping a plane from crashing seems relatively small-scale, yet that's exactly why Superman Returns' standout scene is so effective. When a space shuttle launch goes awry, Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) is trapped on an airliner that's plummeting to Earth from the edge of space, forcing Superman (Brandon Routh) to try to slow the speeding hunk of metal. There's no supervillain, nor are there thrown punches, just a determined man with superpowers trying to solve a problem and save the day.
16. Bane's Plane Heist (The Dark Knight Rises)
Tom Hardy's Bane makes a memorable first impression in The Dark Knight Rises' opening scene, an action tour-de-force of the sort that only Christopher Nolan can really pull off. To abduct nuclear physicists and fake his death, Bane and his followers hijack a plane mid-air, hitching it to a larger plane that tows it so the wings fall off. Having gotten what he came for—and uttering several very quotable lines in his distinctive voice—Bane lets the broken fuselage drop to the Earth as the audience's jaw drops with it.
15. Batman Flips the Joker's Truck (The Dark Knight)
In an age of CGI, practical effects are a superpower, and Christopher Nolan made that very clear in The Dark Knight when the Joker (Ledger) is barreling down on Batman (Bale) behind the wheel of a semi-truck. Batman, riding his Batpod motorcycle, sets up a cable line in such a way that it causes the Joker's rig to instantly flip end over end in a jaw-dropping set piece, one made all the more incredible by the fact that Nolan and his team actually flipped an 18-wheeler in the middle of Chicago.
14. "I'm Batman" (Batman)
It can be hard, since the multiplex tends to be saturated with superhero franchises, to imagine a time when costumed crime fighters were a rarity at the box office. When Tim Burton made Batman in 1989, Superman was the only other comparable superhero blockbuster, and it had come out a decade ago. So, there was a lot to prove if you wanted to get audiences excited about a man dressing up as a bat to scare crooks, and to take it seriously. Luckily, when Michael Keaton's Batman hits the Gotham streets for the first time and introduces himself with a now-iconic "I'm Batman," audiences believed him.
13. Watchmen's Opening Credits (Watchmen)
Zack Snyder's adaptation of Alan Moore's seminal superhero deconstruction Watchmen is flawed, lavishly faithful to the graphic novel to a fault at some points and arbitrarily off base at others. Yet everybody agrees that the opening credits — a montage set to Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are a-Changin'" that summarizes decades of alt-history between the end of World War II up until the grim '80s setting of the main plot — are unimpeachable. Watchmen is a dense, complex tome, and Snyder's film offers up a memorable, stylized Cliff Notes that brings even unfamiliar viewers up to speed and places them firmly within this world.
12. The (First) Suicide Squad Dies (The Suicide Squad)
The core premise of the Suicide Squad comics is that the supervillains the government enlists for dangerous missions are all expendable. David Ayer's initial stab at the team in the 2016 film had some casualties, but James Gunn's semi-standalone sequel in 2021 gloriously, gorily lived up to the idea. The entire opening of the movie introduces and hypes up a group of obscure baddies like Javelin (Flula Borg), Blackguard (Pete Davidson), and Savant (Michael Rooker), as they are sent on a mission… and has everybody but Harley Quinn (Robbie) and Joel Kinnaman's squad leader die pretty much instantly. They were a disposable decoy, and now the real team can get started. It's one of the most darkly hilarious ways that the comics have been brought to life—or rather, death.
11. Trevor's Sacrifice (Wonder Woman)
As the first superheroine to headline a film, Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman understandably gets most of the attention. Her co-star Chris Pine is not to be overlooked as Steve Trevor, the American who opens Diana up to the world beyond Themyscira and with whom she has real chemistry with (something that's not always a given in superhero movies!). Wonder Woman's climax isn't the film's best moment, as it devolves into a CGI slug-fest that the rest of the movie mostly avoided. Still, there's nothing artificial about Pine's facial acting in the moments when he realizes he needs to sacrifice himself to blow up the bomber full of poison and save the day. Fear, acceptance, and love pass over his face before the moment, and it's to everybody involved's credit that Wonder Woman's mournful scream feels earned.
10. Superman's First Flight (Man of Steel)
Plenty of superheroes can fly, but none feel as defined by taking to the sky as Superman, the most iconic hero there is. Man of Steel understood the gravity of depicting Henry Cavill's Superman first defying gravity, and composer Hans Zimmer—who had his own challenge of distinguishing his score from John Williams' iconic brass from the '70s Superman—rose to the challenge. The moment builds and builds as Superman gathers himself in the icy wasteland until it explodes in the exhilarating, freeing moment when he takes to the sky.
9. "I've Got You" (Superman)
The 1978 Superman's marketing campaign promised that "You will believe a man can fly," so the pressure was on when it came to depicting Christopher Reeve's first public act of skybound superheroics. And while modern viewers might have some quibbles with the now-dated special effects, it's hard not to get swept away as Superman soars up into the air to save Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) from a helicopter crash in the middle of Metropolis. Later films would have flashier, more elaborate flights, but that's irrelevant. What matters is that we did indeed believe.
8. The Joker's Interrogation (The Dark Knight)
Not all the best superhero vs. supervillain battles are physical. Although Batman (Bale) certainly gets some punches in when he's trying to extract information from the Joker (Ledger) in a Gotham police interrogation room ("Never start with the head, the victim gets all fuzzy"), what one of The Dark Knight's standout scenes does is illustrate just how evenly these agents of chaos and order are matched. Batman ostensibly has all the power over the in-custody Joker, but as the tension mounts, it becomes clear that the Joker isn't bluffing when he says Batman has nothing to threaten him with.
7. The Batmobile Reveal (The Batman)
With every new film iteration of Batman, there's a lot of fuss about what the Caped Crusader's car will look like, and the Robert Pattinson-led version was no different. His Batmobile looked more like a souped-up muscle car compared to the tank-like vehicle of the Nolan films, and its grand entrance as Batman pursues the Penguin (Colin Farrell) is the coolest Batman's ride has ever been. It looks and sounds like a monster as the engine (literally) fires up in the darkness to the Penguin's surprise. Especially in a movie theater with high-quality speakers blasting, the Batmobile's engines rattle your bones in the best way. The subsequent chase is a highlight of the film, too.
6. Billy Meets His Birth Mom (Shazam!)
Billy Baton (Asher Angel) has spent most of his young life trying to find the mother he lost at the Zoo when he was just four. That mission doesn't change even after he gains superpowers and the ability to turn into a grown-up hero (Zachary Levi). The most impactful moment of Shazam!, which is quietly one of the DCEU's best films, isn't a superpowered moment but a human, surprisingly raw one. Billy finally finds his mom, only to discover that she left him there on purpose, feeling overwhelmed as a teenage mother. The big, cathartic "everything is alright again" moment he's been hoping for doesn't happen. It's a heartbreaking, weighty moment in an otherwise fun family adventure movie, and it prompts Billy to embrace his found family—and his newfound duty as a hero.
5. Bruce Wayne's "Drunken" Speech (The Dark Knight)
Is Batman the mask or is Bruce Wayne? The real answer, The Dark Knight suggests, is that they both are, to some extent. In an underrated standout scene, Bruce Wayne (Bale) must get all the guests out of Wayne Manor to protect them from Ra's al Ghul (Liam Neeson). To do so, he embraces the public image of Bruce Wayne—the hedonistic lout who doesn't care about anybody with himself. He rants and tells them off, and his guests buy it. One even stops to offer a cutting remark, quipping that the apple fell far from the tree. Of course, that's not the case at all. The "real" Bruce Wayne has dedicated everything to his parents and to making Gotham a better place. In this scene, The Dark Knight reveals just how complex the whole concept of a secret identity really is, giving Bale plenty of pathos to play with as he publicly torches his legacy to people who will never know the truth.
4. Crossing No Man's Land (Wonder Woman)
Awe is a huge part of what makes superheroes, well, super. Wonder Woman's best moment is indeed awe-inspiring, as after being kept on a secluded mythical island or covertly shuffled around WWI Europe by Steve Trevor (Pine), Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman says "Enough of this" and confidently exits a trench and strides into No Man's Land. It's an inspiring scene, and one that makes you feel "It's about darn time"—a feeling that is strengthened by the meta-narrative that it took so long for there to be a movie about a female superhero.
3. "I Didn't Count on Being Happy" (Batman: Mask of the Phantasm)
Batman's origin story is so well-known that it's become a cliche (how many times do we need to see pearls dramatically fall to the pavement?), and that familiarity sometimes obscures how fundamentally sad Batman is as a figure. He's a traumatized child who dedicates his life to avenging his parents' deaths and making Gotham safe. The theatrically released Batman: The Animated Series movie Mask of the Phantasm explores this in wrenching fashion in a sequence where Bruce Wayne (Kevin Conroy) finds himself challenged by a foe he couldn't ever have expected. He's…happy. In love with Andrea Beaumont (Dana Delany), Bruce wants to hang up the cape, but he feels that doing so would be betraying his parents. In the movie's standout scene, he begs for their forgiveness at their grave in the pouring rain. Here, you understand the true cost of Batman's caped crusade.
2. "Can't Get Rid of a Bomb" (Batman)
The Adam West Batman TV show and 1996 movie (the ones with the "Biff!" "Pow!" cards) are unfairly maligned for being corny. That's a totally wrong read of them, because West's Batman was a comedy that was very much aware it was silly! Superheroes are actually pretty silly (or at least they can be), and the '66 Batman is a celebration of the fun side of heroism. West pulls off some amazing physical comedy as he frantically runs around with an oversized cartoony bomb looking for a place to throw it, only to find every possible place to ditch it occupied with innocents like nuns or baby ducks. It's the platonic ideal of superheroism: He's trying to save the day. "Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb," he quips. Amen, Batman. Amen.
1. The Pencil Trick (The Dark Knight)
You could make the case that a superhero isn't really a superhero unless they have a supervillain, and of all the baddies across the best superhero movies, none are better than the Joker. And, the Joker doesn't make a better impression than when he reveals himself to the normal criminals of Gotham in The Dark Knight. Ledger, somehow conveying both playful casualness and cold calculating malice, strides into the mob lair and performs a magic trick: where once there was a pencil, now it's gone, thanks to a goon who is an unwitting assistant. The Joker defines The Dark Knight, which is itself arguably the defining superhero movie of a generation and certainly the defining DC movie of the entire cinematic catalog. This scene is the one that perfectly captures his icon status, and it's incredible.
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