The 10 best DC animated films

Well before the Flashpoint crossover event from Geoff Jones and Andy Kubert would become a major part of , Jim Krieg penned this adaptation of the story that kicked off the interconnected films of the DC Animated Movie Universe. When Barry Allen travels back in time to rewrite the past and save his mother’s life, he accidentally fragments history and leads to major changes in the DC Comics canon.The film builds on the source material with a show-don’t-tell approach to explaining some of the details that were unclear in the original comic or fleshed out in spin-offs, like why the Amazons and Atlanteans went to war in this alternate timeline, or the Flashpoint’s very different relationship between Batman and the Joker. It has a spectacular voice cast, with Michael B. Jordan playing Cyborg, Nathan Fillion as Hal Jordan, and Ron Perlman playing Deathstroke. It also delivers a particularly excellent version of the Reverse-Flash Eobard Thawne delivering a scathing monologue about The Flash’s hubris as he and the Scarlet Speedster fight amidst an all-out war between the world’s most powerful heroes and villains.

is heavily inspired by Batman: Year One, the 1987 comic run from Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli that shows Bruce Wayne returning to a particularly dark and corrupt Gotham City, where he begins his costumed crime-fighting career and establishes a rapport with a not-yet-commissioner James Gordon. Fans of Christopher Nolan’s film will definitely appreciate Sam Liu and Lauren Montgomery’s faithful adaptation of Batman: Year One, which makes Gordon even more of a protagonist than the title character.Three years before he’d play Gordon on , Ben McKenzie voiced Bruce in Year One, doing a solid job reciting some of Miller’s iconic lines, like the monologue where he vows to “become a bat.” But it’s Bryan Cranston who really steals the show with the same mix of terrifying menace and paternalism he brought to Walter White, lending a powerful credibility to a scene where Gordon beats the crap out of a corrupt superior officer to make sure he knows not to mess with him or his family.

Another highly faithful adaptation of a seminal comic book series, Liu’s All-Star Superman is everything Batman: Year One isn’t, a bombastic, brightly hued adventure that’s not afraid to embrace the silliest aspects of superhero comics. It’s also an ending rather than a beginning, opening with Superman being overloaded with solar radiation that increases his powers but will eventually kill him. The film follows his efforts to put his affairs in order and how he irrevocably changes both his greatest allies and enemies.The film strips away some of the fat from the comic by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, but leaves plenty of silly action including Superman teaming up with a superpowered Lois Lane to beat up dinosaur people invading Metropolis from the center of the Earth, and a climactic fight against an evil sun. Like the comic book it’s based on, the film is a repudiation of anyone who thinks Superman is too boring or too strong, showing a version of the character at the absolute height of his abilities facing awesome challenges only he is capable of dealing with—through not just his superpowers, but his incredible empathy.

The adaptation of Darwyn Cooke’s limited series covers the transition between DC’s Golden and Silver Ages and explores how the heroes of the Justice League come together to deal with a Lovecraftian threat. The big bad is less important than the snappy dialogue and charm of the old-timey setting.J’onn J’onzz, a.k.a. the Martian Manhunter, is arguably the real star here, accidentally transported to Earth by a scientist and left stranded on the planet. He learns to live among humans by watching TV and the sequence where he shapeshifts into Bugs Bunny before adopting the looks and persona of a ’50s noir detective is hilarious. Even better is how that decision puts him in the sights of Batman, who quickly uncovers J’onn’s alien nature and vulnerability to fire, threatening him by saying “I have a $70,000 sliver of a radioactive meteor to stop the one from Metropolis. All I need for you is a penny for a book of matches.”A cast including Lucy Lawless, Neil Patrick Harris, and David Boreanaz helps bring spark to the other heroes who get a little less screen time. Like the JFK speech it’s named for, the film is wildly hopeful and powerful.

Matt Ryan and Jeremy Davies reprise their roles from NBC’s short-lived series for Justice League Dark, which finds Batman turning to the grifter wizard John Constantine when he’s stumped by a series of particularly gruesome crimes committed by people who think their victims are demons. The film provides a sort of sequel to the show while also building a bridge to on the following year.The actor shows why he deserved to play Constantine again, selling every line with swagger. The character is too powerful and useful to ignore, but he absolutely infuriates everyone he meets among the quirky cast of fellow magic users including Zatanna, Swamp Thing, the rhyming demon Etrigan, and the goofy ghost Deadman. The film is packed with snappy humor and visually dynamic and clever wizard fights, while also delivering a solid twist. The continuity that began with The Flashpoint Paradox (a.k.a. The DC Animated Movie Universe) concludes with an audacious if less enjoyable sequel to Justice League Dark, and it’s telling that of all the characters in the DC library, it was Constantine that the series’ creators decided really deserved one final moment in the spotlight.

The unimpressive Ryan Reynolds Green Lantern film stalled plans for a Hal Jordan-led franchise in 2011, but that same year also delivered a fantastic animated film that pushed the focus away from the pilot-turned-space cop to tell stories of lesser known members of the Green Lantern Corps. With the framing device of a bunch of Lanterns swapping stories as charge their rings in preparation for the arrival of a terrible threat, the film is an excellent anthology, collecting four distinct stories that dig deep into Green Lantern mythology.The segments include a humorous tale of a warrior’s foolish attempt to challenge the most powerful Green Lantern, Mogo, and a samurai movie in miniature showing off the power and burden of being a Green Lantern. Once more voiced by Nathan Fillion, Hal provides the connective tissue as a gentle mentor to a new recruit. While the actual threat and the solution to it feels anticlimactic, the core of the movie provides a glimpse at the potential of the shelved Green Lantern Corps film. , and hopefully they’ll take note of what this film does right.

If Justice League Dark wasn’t the name given to the team of superheroes specializing in the occult and the supernatural, it would have been a perfect title for this film, which imagines darker versions of the backstories of DC’s three most iconic heroes. Wonder Woman basically gets Big Barda’s origin as a former warrior of Apokolips; Batman, voiced by Michael C. Hall, is not Bruce Wayne but the Man-Bat, Dr. Kirk Langstrom, who transformed himself into a vampire as part of an experiment meant to keep him from dying of cancer.But it’s the alternate Superman that’s the most compelling, with his rocket found not by kindly Kansan farmers but by Mexican migrants. The hardships he experiences first hand leads him to have a very different relationship with the U.S. government and authority in general. Like several of these films, Gods And Monsters’ strength comes not from the main plot but from the excellent characterization. This is one of the most truly original of the DC animated films and truly shows their power to push the canon in new directions.

One of the greatest strengths of was the timelessness of its setting, which felt simultaneously like the 1920s and the future. Taking its name and inspiration from the one-off comic Batman: Gotham By Gaslight, this film plays similarly fast and loose with historical signifiers, its Gotham simultaneously reflecting Jack The Ripper’s London and Chicago during the time of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition and H.H. Holmes’ killing spree. Accents are all over the place, the police have a zeppelin, and Batman is a costumed version of Sherlock Holmes teaming up with the radical feminist Selina Kyle to protect the most vulnerable.The interplay between Batman and Selina is fantastic, particularly since this is one of the few recent portrayals of the character that doesn’t ignore the importance of Bruce Wayne. The cast of characters and references goes deep, with Hugo Strange running a particularly horrifying version of Arkham Asylum and the three Robins taking on the role of street urchins in the vein of the Baker Street Irregulars.

Originally intended as a continuation of on Cartoon Network’s series, Justice League: Crisis On Two Earths wound up becoming an entirely separate story about the Justice League confronting evil versions of themselves. It’s a great way to settle “Who would win in a fight?” questions as the good guys travel to an alternate universe to try to save it from the oppression of their villainous counterparts.The real star of the film is Batman’s doppelganger Owlman, a nihilist genius who after discovering that there are infinite realities decides the only meaningful thing he can do is destroy them all. He’s the sort of villain who’s victorious even in defeat and really enjoys delivering philosophical monologues in the midst of fight scenes.