Standalone Adaptations · Elseworlds
Catwoman
A designer gains feline powers in an adaptation connected to no other DC film.
Availability changes by country and by week, so this searches JustWatch rather than guessing.
Can you skip Catwoman?
Yes, on a first watch. It is self-contained, and nothing in the main DC story depends on it. Come back to it later if you want more. In chronological order, reaching it takes about 8h 42m of essential viewing across 4 titles. Show only the DC essentials.
Skippable, and it is barely an adaptation. The protagonist is not Selina Kyle, there is no Gotham and no Batman, and the plot concerns a cosmetics company marketing a face cream that disfigures anybody who stops using it. The connection to the character is a name and a costume.
The costume is the thing most people remember: a cut leather bodice, torn trousers and a mask, which bears no resemblance to any version in print and was widely mocked on release. The powers are delivered by a resurrecting Egyptian cat, explained in a scene with a woman who keeps dozens of them.
Halle Berry had won an Academy Award two years earlier and attended the Razzies in person to accept the award for this, holding her Oscar, which is a better piece of showmanship than anything in the film. She is not the problem. The direction is restless to the point of incoherence, with the basketball scene and the catwalk chase cut so fast they read as abstraction.
It is connected to nothing and referenced by nothing. Watch it only if you are curious about how bad a major studio superhero film could be before the genre consolidated.
DC guides
Where it sits in the DC order
- Release order
- #11 of 52
- Chronological order
- #11 of 52
- Released
- 23 July 2004
- In-universe era
- Standalone Adaptations
What to watch next
In release order
In chronological order