Ranking All 5 Henry Cavill’s Superman DCEU Appearances Best To Worst

With Henry Cavill officially finished portraying Superman for Warner Bros. Discovery and DC Studios, and with a new rebooted Superman in development with James Gunn writing the screenplay, it’s time to look back fondly at Cavill’s run as the Man of Tomorrow and rank all five of his Superman DCEU appearances, from best to worst.

Gunn could possibly wind up directing the Superman reboot as well. But Gunn’s busy duties as co-CEO of DC Studios with Peter Safran, plus other projects he has in development like Peacemaker season 2, might hinder his ability to helm a Superman picture and require a different filmmaker — perhaps Zack Snyder?

If you scoff at this, think again, because if anyone has a chance to mend fences with Snyder after that filmmaker’s shoddy treatment at the hands of studio executives under past regimes, it might be Gunn.

Gunn and Snyder are friendly and have mutual admiration for one another’s films. The two worked together on the fantastic 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake, and it could go a long way toward bridging the gap with fans who hope to see Snyder return to the DCEU. Gunn and Snyder have a lot in common in their filmmaking and sense of humor, which is why they blended so perfectly for Dawn of the Dead. It’s not hard to imagine Snyder coming back to DC cinema for one final hurrah with Superman.

More likely, however, is that Gunn or another filmmaker takes the reins on the project, so I’m just throwing out an idea here for folks to think about while we await the actual final decisions and more information on the future of Superman on the big screen.

For the record, my actual first guess if it’s not Gunn is none other than Ben Affleck. Affleck was previously offered a chance to helm Man of Steel back when Christopher Nolan was overseeing development of that project, and the recent meeting between Gunn, Safran, and Affleck about the latter possibly directing a DC movie may be a hint.

But that’s all about the future, and this article has its sights set in the past, so let’s get to it. I am specifically ranking Cavill’s Superman appearances here, not the entire films themselves. So don’t look at this as my ranking of the DCEU films themselves, but rather a ranking of the portrayals of Superman in the films.

So here they are, ranked best to worst (or least-good, but depending on context at least a couple could be considered “bad”), Henry Cavill’s record-setting theatrical appearances as Superman in WBD’s DCEU…

1. Man of Steel — The first and best of them all, when we first met Cavill’s Clark/Kal-El/Superman and watched him grow into his eventual role as the world’s first confirmed alien super-human superhero. We believed a man could fly again.
2. Zack Snyder’s Justice League — Still the overall greatest pure DC superhero movie of all time and Zack Snyder’s masterpiece of DC cinema, we get the fulfillment of the promise of hope that Superman was meant to inevitably inspire and live up to.
3. Batman v Superman — A controversial but thoughtful portrayal of a conflicted superhero and how the world would react to someone of his powers and origins. It’s okay for heroes to struggle, to fall, and finally sacrifice themselves for the greater good.
4. Black Adam — A good film hamstrung by promotional errors and running contrary to inevitable future plans, this cameo is nice for the promise it sets up and to see one more costumed DC hero drop by for the fun-fest taking place. Alas, it was not to be.
5. Justice League (theatrical cut) — Okay as a live-action cartoon, which you may sometimes have a hankering for, but deeply inferior to the brilliance of ZSJL and no longer an acceptable alternative, especially in light of reported abuses on set. And that mustache removal… yikes.

And there you have it, dear readers, my ranking of all of Henry Cavill’s appearances as Superman in the DCEU!

Unranked here is a Superman scene filmed for The Flash, but which has been deleted from the final cut of the film because it and a cameo by Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman set up future film events no longer part of the plan for DC films in the future.

As noted earlier, this is ranking the portrayals of Superman and Clark, not the films themselves. If I ranked these films in order of best to worst, ZSJL is first, followed by BvS and then MOS, next comes Black Adam, and in last place the theatrical cut of JL. I’m also betting the cameo in The Flash would’ve also come in ahead of the theatrical JL version.

That’s it for now, dear readers. Stay tuned and check back soon for more information and updates about the future of the DCEU, and for my rankings of the every Superman movie from George Reeves, Christopher Reeve, Brandon Routh, and Henry Cavill.