Since 1951, fans of DC Comics have been treated to 32 movies based on the characters of the first superhero company in the world. To be frank, 98% of these movies are about Batman or Superman, but a few other characters pop up too from time to time, which is nice. Or maybe not so nice, depending on the movie.
We know that not every superhero movie can be as great as Wonder Woman or Joker, but some of the DC films are, if we're being honest, not good at all. But with so many DC movies, how can you be sure you don't end up watching one of the stinkers when you wanted to enjoy a classic? Lucky for us all, the users of IMDb have taken the time to rate each of the DC movies for us. Here are the 10 worst DC movies, according to IMDb...
10 Steel: 2.8
Music producer Quincy Jones loved the DC Comics character of Steel and wanted to bring the new hero to the masses in his own movie. With writer/director Kenneth Johnson and basketball superstar Shaquille O'Neal, it seemed like even if the movie wasn't good, it would at least be successful.
Instead, Steel received horrible reviews and made just $1.7 million at the box office off of a budget of $25 million. To compare, DC's other 1997 release, Batman & Robin, made $238.2 million. The armor looked cheap, the movie was bland, and Shaq's acting was worse than his free throw percentage.
9 Catwoman: 3.4
Originally planned as a spin-off from 1992's Batman Returns, Catwoman was going to star Michelle Pfeiffer and be directed by Tim Burton. Plans for the movie fell apart, and Ashley Judd was brought in to star in a new version that would be separate from the Batman movies. Judd left the project and the studio considered giving the role to Nicole Kidman. All of that changed when Warner Brothers canceled plans for a Batman/Superman movie and pushed up the release of Catwoman.
Halle Berry came in to star as the titular character, with Sharon Stone playing the villain. The movie ignored the Catwoman stories from the comics and gave her an origin that included being resurrected by Egyptian cats and having superpowers. Audiences didn't like it. They didn't like it at all.
8 Superman IV: The Quest for Peace: 3.7
Christopher Reeve swore that he was done playing Superman after the third film, but he was coaxed back to the role for Superman IV: The Quest for Peace after certain promises were made to him. Those promises included allowing him to work on the script with writers Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal, and that the budget for the movie would be substantial.
While the studio kept the first promise, they reneged on the second, slashing the film's budget to just $17 million. By comparison, the budget for Superman: The Movie, released a decade earlier, was $55 million. It's hard to say if a bigger budget would have helped the movie, though. The storyline, which has Superman ridding the world of nuclear weapons while Lex Luthor and his horribly annoying nephew Lenny build a supervillain to fight the Man of Steel, was far from good.
7 Batman & Robin: 3.7
The fourth and final movie of the Burton/Schumacher Batman series, Batman & Robin went so far into camp that it makes the 1960s Adam West and Burt Ward-starring TV series look like a Frank Miller comic. The movie, which saw George Clooney take on the role of the Caped Crusader and introduced Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl, was filled with lame puns, neon lights and dayglo paint.
According to director Joel Schumacher, Warner Brothers saw the movie more as a commercial for toys than an actual story, and that can be seen in almost every scene. Characters are constantly changing costumes or showing up in new vehicles, with each new suit or car getting a long and stylized introduction.
6 Supergirl: 4.4
After Superman III was met with poor reviews and a lackluster box office, producer Alexander Salkind and his son, Ilya, decided to switch gears, leave the Man of Steel behind, and bring the Girl of Steel to theaters. Supergirl stars Helen Slater as the hero and Faye Dunaway as the villainous Selena. Marc McClure, who played Jimmy Olsen in the Superman movies, reprised the role here to give the movie some semblance of connection to the Christopher Reeve movies.
While Helen Slater was a great casting choice for Supergirl, no amount of acting could fix what was clearly a half-baked script. The movie was met with harsh reviews, and audiences didn't fly to theaters to see it.
5 The Return of Swamp Thing: 4.6
Released just a month before Tim Burton's Batman, The Return of Swamp Thing never really stood a chance at the box office. A sequel to the Wes Craven film that was released seven years earlier, this movie basically redoes the same story, but with far less enthusiasm and a lot more cheese.
Starring Heather Locklear as Abby Arcane and Dick Durock as the green man himself, The Return of Swamp Thing was a commercial failure, but it did spawn a live-action TV series that ran for three seasons, consisting of 72 episodes.
4 Jonah Hex: 4.7
When you look at the cast for Jonah Hex, it seems like the movie should be pretty amazing. You have Josh Brolin as the titular character, Megan Fox as his love interest, and John Malkovich and Michael Fassbender as the villains. Coming out in 2010, the movie hit just as the world was realizing just how great superhero movies could be, but the Western setting made it stand out a bit.
Sadly, none of that helped. While the actors gave it their all, director Jimmy Hayward had no live-action storytelling experience, and it showed. Brolin and Fassbender would go on to appear in the X-Men franchise as Cable and Magneto respectively. Brolin will likely be back for the next Deadpool movie, but Fassbender's mutant days are likely behind him.
3 Superman III: 5.0
Adding comedians to serious movie franchises can be very successful. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is a classic that acts as a wonderful encore for many of the Universal Monsters. 21 Jump Street was a drama series that became a fantastic comedy when it was brought to theaters. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, is still one of the most loved Star Trek movies, and it is the only one that is intentionally funny.
For Superman III, having the world's most famous superhero team up with the world's most famous comedian of the time, Richard Pryor, must have seemed like a surefire way to bring in big box office business. Instead what you end up with is a tonally confused movie filled with lame gags.
2 Swamp Thing (1982): 5.4
The first DC movie that wasn't based on Superman or Batman, Swamp Thing also stands out as one of the few horror-based superhero movies. Directed by Wes Craven and starring Ray Wise as Alec Holland, Adrienne Barbeau as Alice Cable, and Dick Durock as Swamp Thing, this movie was met with mixed reviews upon release, and today's viewers likely feel the same way.
For Craven, Swamp Thing was his attempt to show studios that he could make bigger budget movies with actual stars and stunts, but it would take another two years and A Nightmare on Elm Street for Hollywood to realize just how talented the filmmaker was.
1 Batman Forever: 5.4
After the massive success of Tim Burton's Batman and Batman Returns, Warner Brothers decided to move away from the dark and edgy style of the Dark Knight that Burton had brought to the masses and make the third film, Batman Forever, something more family-friendly. According to Burton, it was actually McDonald's that demanded the third film be lighter in tone, which is what led to the famous director being taken off the project and replaced with Joel Schumacher.
Starring Val Kilmer as Batman, Chris O'Donnell as Robin, Tommy Lee Jones as Two-Face, and Jim Carrey as Riddler, Batman Forever, which really is a title that should have been used for the fourth movie, was like well enough by audiences, but everyone had a feeling that it was the start of something bad.