DC Comics has produced the most ideologically varied superhero film slate of any studio in Hollywood. Unlike the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which operates under a reasonably unified creative architecture, DC films have been shaped by radically different creative visions: Christopher Nolan's grounded realism, Zack Snyder's operatic mythmaking, Todd Phillips' psychological naturalism, Patty Jenkins' aspirational heroism, James Gunn's earnest whimsy, and the list goes on. The result is a filmography that spans from the unapologetic traditionalism of Man of Steel to the intersectional maximalism of Birds of Prey, a wider ideological range than any comparable franchise.
This is what makes ranking DC films by ideological content so useful. The distance between Man of Steel and Birds of Prey is not a matter of degrees. It is a fundamentally different conception of what a superhero story is for and who it is speaking to. Parents looking for a film they can watch with their kids without a political lecture deserve to know which end of the spectrum they are getting. Viewers who actively seek progressive messaging deserve the same clarity. VirtueVigil exists to provide exactly that: a consistent, transparent measurement of the values content in every major release, so you can decide for yourself.
VirtueVigil has now reviewed every significant DC theatrical release using our dual-scoring system, the VirtueVigil Woke Scoring framework (VVWS). The system measures the density and intensity of traditional values content (sacrifice, duty, family, faith, patriotism, earned heroism) and progressive ideological content (identity politics, systemic grievance, deconstruction of traditional institutions, subversion of established roles) independently on separate 0-50 scales. The margin between the two scores determines the verdict. These are not quality scores. A film can score high on traditional values and be poorly made. A film can score high on woke content and be technically brilliant. The score reflects what a film believes, not whether it is good.
Below, every DC film reviewed by VirtueVigil, ranked from most traditional to most woke. Each entry links to the full VirtueVigil review with complete category breakdowns. This is the 2026 edition, updated with all recent releases including James Gunn's Superman. Eighteen films. A quarter century of superhero cinema. One ideological spectrum.
STRONGLY TRADITIONAL
#1. Man of Steel (2013)
Man of Steel is the most traditionally scored DC film in the VirtueVigil database and it is not particularly close. Zack Snyder made a Superman movie rooted in the language of the Old Testament: a child sent by his father to save a dying world, raised by salt-of-the-earth Kansas farmers who teach him that his power exists to protect others, not to dominate them. Jonathan Kent's death is the film's moral keystone: he tells Clark not to reveal himself, not out of fear, but because he believes the world is not ready and Clark's purpose is too important to risk. That is a fundamentally conservative idea, that duty to a higher calling outweighs even the impulse to save the ones you love. The 4.4 woke score is remarkably low for a modern blockbuster. The film has no time for identity politics or systemic grievance. Its preoccupations are sacrifice, purpose, and the weight of choosing to do good in a world that may reject you for it.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Man of Steel
#2. The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Christopher Nolan closed his Batman trilogy with the most unapologetically conservative chapter in the series. The Dark Knight Rises pits Bruce Wayne against a revolutionary who uses the language of class grievance and economic justice to impose totalitarian control over Gotham. Bane's rhetoric borrows directly from Occupy Wall Street and has been widely analyzed as a conservative critique of populist revolution. But the film's traditionalism runs deeper than its antagonist. Bruce Wayne's arc is about rising from despair through discipline and willpower. The climb from the pit is literal and metaphorical: no one has ever escaped without the rope, and Bruce must confront the fear of death itself to make the leap. He does not win through superior technology or external help. He wins because he refuses to stay down. At +21 points traditional and only 4.2 woke, this is Nolan at his most ideologically clear.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of The Dark Knight Rises
#3. Batman Begins (2005)
Batman Begins is the origin story that the genre deserved and that no one had been able to deliver. Christopher Nolan treated Bruce Wayne's transformation into Batman with the seriousness of a bildungsroman: he must travel to the far corners of the world, master himself physically and mentally, confront the nature of justice, and choose mercy over vengeance. The relationship between Bruce and his father, filtered through memory and grief, is the emotional spine of the film. Thomas Wayne is not just a wealthy philanthropist. He is a moral exemplar whose death creates a debt that Bruce spends the rest of the film trying to repay. The League of Shadows is presented as a corrupted version of the traditionalism the film endorses: they believe in justice but have abandoned mercy, order but through destruction. Bruce chooses the harder path: justice tempered by the absolute refusal to kill. At 26.04 traditional, this is the second-highest trad score among all DC films.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Batman Begins
TRADITIONAL
#4. Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021)
The Snyder Cut is a vindication not just of its director but of a particular way of making superhero films: mythic, operatic, and morally serious. At four hours, Snyder was given the room to let his characters breathe. The result is an ensemble piece where every hero has an arc rooted in loss, duty, and the decision to fight despite impossible odds. Cyborg's story is the heart of the film: a young man torn apart and rebuilt, grieving his mother, betrayed by his father's ambition, who chooses to become something more than his trauma. The film's religious imagery is explicit and unapologetic. Superman's resurrection is framed as a second coming, and the final battle is an apocalyptic struggle between a unified team and a world-ending threat. The 5.8 woke score reflects some diversity in the League's composition, but the film's governing sensibility is so thoroughly traditional that the margin remains overwhelming at +18.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Zack Snyder's Justice League
#5. The Dark Knight (2008)
The Dark Knight is widely regarded as the greatest superhero film ever made, and its ideological architecture deserves more attention than it typically receives. The Joker is not a political ideologue. He is an agent of chaos who believes that the social contract is a fragile lie and that anyone can be broken given the right pressure. Batman, Gordon, and Harvey Dent represent three different answers to that challenge: lawless sacrifice, institutional integrity, and the fragile hope that a good man can operate within a corrupt system. The film's most conservative insight is that maintaining civilization requires actions that civilization cannot publicly acknowledge. Batman takes the fall for Dent's crimes to preserve the hope that Dent represented, a decision that is simultaneously noble and devastating. At 3.5 woke, this is one of the lowest woke scores across any franchise VirtueVigil has measured.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of The Dark Knight
#6. The Batman (2022)
Matt Reeves' The Batman is a noir detective story that earns its grim tone through moral seriousness rather than adolescent nihilism. Robert Pattinson's Bruce Wayne is early in his mission, still operating from vengeance rather than justice, and the film's arc is about his realization that being a symbol of fear is not enough. He must become a symbol of hope. That transition, from brutal vigilante to protector of the innocent, is the most traditionally structured character arc in any recent Batman adaptation. The film's setting in a Gotham drowning in institutional corruption gives it a surface-level cynicism, but its deeper conviction is that individual moral action can redeem a broken system. The 8.0 woke score comes primarily from the casting of Jeffrey Wright as Gordon and Zoe Kravitz as Selina Kyle, plus the film's depiction of institutional failure, which it treats as a problem to be fixed rather than an excuse for revolution.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of The Batman
#7. Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023)
The Shazam sequel is the stealth traditionalist of modern DC, and it is easy to miss why because the film presents as a light family comedy. But the moral architecture is unmistakable. Billy Batson's central struggle is about earning his place in a family he was given rather than one he chose, and the film resolves that tension by affirming that loyalty and commitment, not blood, make a family real. The foster family at the center of these films is the most explicitly pro-family subtext in the modern superhero genre. The kids fight together not because they have powers but because they are a unit. The 5.9 woke score, remarkably low for a 2023 release, reflects a few diversity beats in the ensemble casting. The film never lectures, never scolds, and never subordinates character to messaging. It is a superhero movie about siblings who love each other, and that turns out to be more ideologically coherent than half the message movies in the genre.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Shazam! Fury of the Gods
TRADITIONAL LEAN
#8. Wonder Woman (2017)
Wonder Woman is the DC film that probably surprises the most people with its TRADITIONAL LEAN verdict. Directed by Patty Jenkins, starring Gal Gadot as the most famous female superhero in comics, and widely celebrated as a feminist milestone, the film appears on paper like it should lean progressive. But the score tells a different story. Wonder Woman's ideology is not intersectional grievance. It is classical heroism with a female protagonist. Diana leaves her sheltered island because she believes it is her duty to protect the innocent. She is motivated by love, courage, and a conviction that humanity is worth saving despite its flaws. Steve Trevor's sacrifice at the end is a traditional male heroic death that the film treats with total sincerity. The 5.15 woke score is among the lowest for any female-led superhero film, because Jenkins made a hero's journey that happens to star a woman rather than a political statement dressed as a hero's journey.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Wonder Woman
#9. Black Adam (2022)
Dwayne Johnson spent over a decade trying to get Black Adam made, and the result is a fascinating hybrid: an antihero film with a traditionalist core. Teth-Adam is a slave who was given the power of gods and used it to destroy his oppressors. The film does not condemn his vengeance. It contextualizes it. His arc is not about learning that violence is wrong. It is about learning that unlimited violence without discrimination makes you indistinguishable from the tyrants you overthrow. The Justice Society functions as the moral counterweight, particularly Pierce Brosnan's Doctor Fate, who brings a gravity and fatalism that elevates the entire picture. The 7.68 woke score comes from the film's anti-colonial framework and diverse ensemble, but the governing ethic is still the protection of homeland and people through righteous force. Johnson plays Adam with genuine menace, and the film lets him be dangerous in a way that few superhero movies allow their leads to be.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Black Adam
#10. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
Batman v Superman is Zack Snyder's most polarizing film and his most thematically ambitious. It asks what would actually happen if a being of godlike power appeared on Earth: not parades and press conferences but fear, political manipulation, and the weaponization of public opinion. The film's most conservative insight is that the world would not know what to do with a genuinely good man of immense power. It would try to control him, legislate him, and when those failed, kill him. Superman's death at the end is positioned as a Christ sacrifice: he dies to save a world that spent the entire film hating him. The 10.14 woke score comes from the film's depiction of media manipulation, congressional hearings, and Lex Luthor's tech-bro villainy, which registers as a critique of unchecked corporate power. The traditional content still edges it out at 14.28, making this a TRADITIONAL LEAN by a narrow margin.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
MIXED
#11. The Flash (2023)
The Flash is a film that cannot decide what it wants to be, and its near-even ideological split reflects that confusion. At its core is a surprisingly traditional story: Barry Allen's inability to accept his mother's death drives him to break the universe, and the lesson he ultimately learns is that some losses must be accepted rather than undone. That is a conservative insight, the recognition that grief is part of the human condition and that trying to rewrite the past produces catastrophe. But the film's execution is cluttered with multiverse fan service, cameo indulgence, and a double-barrel portrayal of Barry as both hero and annoying man-child that makes the traditional throughline harder to feel. The 9.8 woke score comes from Supergirl's gender-swapped introduction and a few contemporary beats, balanced almost exactly against the 11.48 traditional content. The narrowest traditional margin on this list.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of The Flash
#12. Superman (2025)
James Gunn's Superman is the most ideologically balanced film in the DC canon, and that is both its greatest achievement and its sharpest limitation. Gunn clearly loves the character: the film's Superman is kind, hopeful, and motivated by the simple desire to help people. Those traditional beats are real and earn the 21.0 trad score, the fourth-highest on this list. But Gunn is also James Gunn, and his sensibility pulls everything toward a contemporary, self-aware register that repeatedly undercuts the earnestness. The 19.0 woke score is driven by workplace diversity at the Daily Planet, a roster of supporting characters that checks every demographic box, and a villain whose motivations are wrapped in systemic critique. The result is a Superman film that tries to be everything to everyone and ends up at a near-tie: +2 traditional, the same razor margin as The Flash but arrived at from a much higher baseline on both sides.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Superman
#13. Joker (2019)
Joker is the Rorschach test of modern cinema. Depending on who you ask, it is either a conservative morality tale about what happens when society abandons the mentally ill and the vulnerable, or a progressive indictment of austerity and institutional neglect. The scoring reflects this ambiguity. Arthur Fleck's descent into violence is depicted as the product of systemic failure: cuts to social services, a broken mental health system, a society that sees him as invisible. Those are the bones of a left-coded critique. But the film's emotional register is deeply traditional: the longing for paternal connection, the tragedy of a man who could have been saved by family and community, and the horror of what fills the vacuum when those institutions collapse. At 13.6 trad and 13.05 woke, Joker is almost perfectly balanced, tilting traditional by a single point. A fascinating ideological stalemate inside one of the decade's most debated films.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Joker
#14. Joker: Folie à Deux (2024)
Todd Phillips' sequel is the strangest object in the DC catalog: a musical courtroom drama that spends two hours deconstructing the very character the first film built, then ends by telling the audience that Arthur Fleck was never the Joker at all. It is easy to read Folie à Deux as a deliberate repudiation of the first film's fanbase, which might explain why the woke score jumped from 13.05 to 24.5. The film foregrounds Harley Quinn as a manipulator rather than a victim, treats Arthur's violent persona as a delusion to be dismantled rather than celebrated, and concludes with his pathetic death at the hands of the "real" Joker. The traditional score is still substantial at 22.13 because the film's moral framework remains rooted in consequence and accountability: Arthur's crimes destroy him, and the fantasy of escape through anarchy is exposed as empty. But the woke content is denser and more deliberate this time, flipping the margin to -2 woke.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Joker: Folie a Deux
#15. Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)
The sequel to Wonder Woman is a cautionary tale about what happens when a director who made a classically heroic film decides to aim for something more culturally relevant. The traditional content is still present: Diana's arc is about truth, sacrifice, and the renunciation of selfish desire for the greater good. Steve Trevor's return and second departure are handled with genuine emotional weight. But the film loads on progressive content that the first movie simply did not have: an explicit critique of male greed and 1980s excess, a villain whose arc is a parable about toxic masculinity and wish fulfillment, and Barbara Minerva's transformation into Cheetah coded as a story about female insecurity in a patriarchal world. At 18.18 woke and 16.3 trad, the margin flips two points toward woke, a dramatic reversal from the first film's +8 traditional. Patty Jenkins did not become a different filmmaker between 2017 and 2020. She just stopped trusting the heroism.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Wonder Woman 1984
WOKE LEAN
#16. Blue Beetle (2023)
Blue Beetle is the first DC film to land firmly in woke territory, and the reason is not complicated: its progressive content is foregrounded and explicit while its traditional content is backgrounded and generic. The film is built around Jaime Reyes, a Latino teenager in a working-class family, and the story is saturated with identity-markers: immigration themes, anti-corporate messaging, the militarization of technology, and an extended family whose primary narrative function is to represent community resilience against systemic oppression. Susan Sarandon plays the villain as a cold corporate militarist who weaponizes alien technology, and the subtext about American imperialism is not particularly sub. The film does have traditional elements: the Reyes family is tight-knit and multi-generational, and Jaime's motivation is fundamentally about protecting the people he loves. But at 8.75 traditional, those beats are too thin to offset the 15.08 woke score. The result is a -6 woke margin and a WOKE LEAN verdict.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Blue Beetle
WOKE
#17. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023)
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is an environmentalist lecture wearing a superhero costume, and it does not try particularly hard to hide it. The film's central conflict is about climate change refracted through the lens of an ancient undersea civilization running on fossil-fuel analogues that are destroying the planet. The villain wants to accelerate the burn. Aquaman wants to unite the kingdoms in sustainable harmony. The messaging is not subtle: this is a film that believes its blockbuster platform exists to deliver a political lesson, and it delivers it at volume. The traditional content, surprisingly robust at 18.9, comes from the fraternal relationship between Arthur and Orm, which is structured as a redemption arc about brotherhood and loyalty. Those beats are real and well-executed. But they are buried under 31.2 points of woke content, the highest raw woke score of any DC film in the database. A -12 margin in a film that could have been a straightforward underwater adventure if anyone in the writers' room had trusted the audience to enjoy one.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
#18. Birds of Prey (2020)
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) is the most ideologically committed film in the DC catalog, and it ends this list at #18 with the largest woke margin of any DC film VirtueVigil has scored. The film is a break-up revenge fantasy that frames Harley Quinn's emancipation from the Joker as a feminist liberation narrative, complete with a girl-gang ensemble, a misogynist villain whose primary character trait is being a misogynist villain, and an aesthetic that borrows heavily from the visual language of contemporary progressive pop feminism. The traditional content is near-nonexistent at 5.05, the lowest trad score of any DC film. There is no family, no faith, no patriotism, no earned heroism in the classical sense. The film's ethic is entirely about personal liberation from male control, and it executes that vision with aggressive consistency. At -18 woke, Birds of Prey is the anti-Man of Steel: a film that shares a universe but not a worldview.
Read the full VirtueVigil review of Birds of Prey
The Arc of a Franchise
The DC filmography, ranked from most traditional to most woke, tells a story about twenty-first-century Hollywood. It is not a story about DC Comics. It is a story about the industry that adapted them. The earlier films, from Nolan and early Snyder, were made in an environment where superhero movies were expected to affirm heroism. The later films, from the post-2016 era, were made in an environment where superhero movies were expected to interrogate it. The ideological shift is not subtle. It is the structural fact of modern franchise filmmaking, and DC's unique creative freedom, its willingness to let directors pursue radically different visions, makes that shift visible in a way that the more controlled MCU does not.
You do not have to agree with every score on this list to find it useful. The point of VirtueVigil is not to tell you what to think. It is to measure something that is usually left to vibes and give you the data to decide for yourself. The scores are transparent, the methodology is consistent, and every single film on this page links to a full review with a category-by-category breakdown. If you think a score is wrong, read the review and judge whether the evidence supports the number.
What is undeniable, looking at this list from top to bottom, is that the DC filmography is one of the most ideologically diverse bodies of work in mainstream American cinema. Man of Steel and Birds of Prey exist inside the same corporate franchise. Batman Begins and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom share a brand identity. The Dark Knight and Wonder Woman 1984 were made for the same audience. The range is real, and it is getting wider. For parents, for film fans, and for anyone trying to navigate the culture, that range demands the kind of measurement VirtueVigil exists to provide.