Which DC movies can you skip?

Only one continuity has a running order

The DCEU, which ran from Man of Steel in 2013 to Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, is the only DC line where films assume earlier films. Everything else on the list stands by itself.

The DCU that James Gunn is now building is the second such line, and it starts clean. Nothing made before it is required for it.

What you can skip inside the DCEU

The universe was being wound down while several of these were still being released, which is why so few of them set anything up.

• Suicide Squad (2016): The Suicide Squad from 2021 works without it, and it is the one Peacemaker follows from.
• Wonder Woman 1984: disconnected from what sits either side of it.
• Birds of Prey, Black Adam, Blue Beetle, Shazam! Fury of the Gods and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom: late films with nothing left to build towards.
• Zack Snyder’s Justice League: a four-hour alternative cut of a film already on the list. A choice between two versions, not an extra entry.

What stands alone entirely

None of these needs anything watched first, which also means none of them can be skipped in the usual sense. They are separate offers.

• The Dark Knight trilogy: three films, one story, connected to no other DC film.
• Joker and its sequel: deliberately outside every continuity.
• The Batman and The Penguin: a Gotham of their own, started in 2022.
• The Reeve Superman films and the Burton and Schumacher Batman run: their own eras, and the ancestors of everything after them.

If you are here because of the new DC Universe

Then nearly all of it is skippable. The DCU begins with Creature Commandos and Superman, and it carries nothing across from the DCEU.

Peacemaker is the single hinge, and it is worth knowing which way it swings: the first season belongs to the old continuity and the second to the new one. It is the only thing that crosses the join.