by William Moon

NOTE: This article originally ran on scifigangstas.com in April 2022

Well, here we are again. The Batman, an extremely long but apparently well-reviewed new take on the Caped Crusader from director Matt Reeves and star Robert Pattinson, is set to hit theaters this Friday. With yet another riff on the World’s Greatest Detective (and one that seems to focus more on actual detecting) about to drop, let’s do the thing where we look back at all the previous cinematic exploits of Mr. Vengeance himself.

While this won’t be as lengthy as my last listicle for this site, it presented some of the same challenges. The main one was deciding which Bat-movies should count and which shouldn’t. Clearly all of the live-action films starring the character are in, and I’m going to also include the animated films featuring him that were released in North American theaters. 2017’s misguided Justice League, which is very Bat-centric, also appears. But what about something like the Snyder cut? Or the similarly overlong but more coherent director’s cut of Batman v Superman? Or movies about Bat-villains, like Catwoman and Joker? Or movies where Batsy barely appears, like Suicide Squad or Teen Titans Go to the Movies? Or… (deep breath)

There is no hard and fast way to decide, but essentially it comes down to a gut feeling about a movie’s relative Battiness, so the Snyder cut is in (separately from its alternate version), the villain movies are out, Suicide Squad is mercifully out, as are the much more rewarding Teen Titans Go to the Movies and Lego Movie (Lego Batman is in, though). Anywhoozles, let’s Bat-get on with Bat-it.

14. Batman Forever (1995, dir: Joel Schumacher)

The first Batman movie I can distinctly remember being excited to see, Batman Forever was a still a giant hit even as it suffered through a somewhat strained production. Originally intended to be the final film in a Tim Burton Bat-trilogy, Batman Returns‘ somewhat disappointing commercial performance eventually led to both Burton and Michael Keaton’s departures from the series. Joel Schumacher, who had by this point directed several successful films (St. Elmo’s Fire, The Lost Boys, Flatliners), stepped in and originally intended to make a film that at least mostly stayed in a similar lane to its two predecessors. But as production continued, the film was steered more into camp territory, with the studio apparently going all in on the neon-soaked, toy-shilling vibe of the finished product. Throw in that Val Kilmer and Tommy Lee Jones apparently hated every single second they worked on this project, and you have a movie that looks outlandish, but ultimately feels very forgettable. Jim Carrey dominates as the Riddler, as he gives the only really committed performance, but Kilmer visibly loses interest halfway through, while Jones, a great actor, hams it up as Two-Face in a performance that screams “the studio wishes this was just the Joker again”. Nicole Kidman is as radiant here as she’s ever been, but her prodigious talents are wasted in a role that could’ve been played by anyone, while Chris O’Donnell blandly annoys his way through proceedings as a Robin who looks like he’s 31 years old. I will offer up some defense of the more ridiculous, but more committed Batman & Robin later, but this movie ends up being the worst of both worlds and finds itself way down here at the bottom. (Killer soundtrack, though.)

13. Justice League (2017, dir: Zack Snyder/Joss Whedon)

One of the wettest of cinematic farts, Justice League is another example of the worst of both worlds. Zack Snyder’s edgelord-y takes on Batman and Superman slammed headlong into Warner Bros. and Joss Whedon’s desire to make the film fun and quippy, and the results are shockingly bland. From the weird CGI to the short runtime (in an era where the new standalone Bat-film is almost three hours, this team-up flick clocks in at exactly 120 minutes), the whole thing feels like if Warner had rushed out a JL film in the late ’90s. There are good elements here and there, but far too few to overcome the movie’s tortured off-screen saga and the many, many distractingly bad elements contained within. Cyborg and Flash are largely superfluous, Wonder Woman is mostly reduced to Gal Gadot’s butt, Aquaman is basically a random bro-quote generator, and Superman has a weird lip. Ben Affleck’s Batman probably comes out of this mess about as well as anyone, but that’s hardly enough to warrant any real praise. As low a bar as Snyder had set with his previous films, this movie limboed under it with plenty of room to spare.

12. Batman: The Killing Joke (2016, dir: Sam Liu)

Our first animated entry was much ballyhooed ahead of a brief theatrical run back in 2016. An adaptation of Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s seminal Batman: The Killing Joke one-shot from 1988, it also featured the returns of Batman: The Animated Series voice actors Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill to the roles of Bats and Joker respectively. Too bad, then, that the film is pretty bad, much worse than several other non-theatrically-released DC Animation Bat-projects. It keeps most everything from the source comic, including the controversial fridging of Barbara Gordon as well as the better parts, while also adding in a thoroughly awful sexual encounter between Barbara and Batman. For his part, Alan Moore has somewhat self-servingly (which is the only way he does things) distanced himself from the decision to paralyze Barbara in the story, trying to pin the blame more on DC’s editorial staff at the time, but the film seems to consider very little the far-reaching implications of that decision and instead amplify them. (An incident at the film’s Comic-Con premiere did little to help matters.) But, stepping away from the Batgirl angle, there’s also a tortuous musical number that shows up in the film’s final act, and the whole thing just feels misjudged every step of the way. Like the comic, there’s good stuff here (Joker’s gun firing the BANG flag at the end, the final shared laughter), but it’s increasingly swallowed up by the bad.

11. Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021, dir: Zack Snyder)

This monstrosity was covered more thoroughly here, but here’s the gist. It’s clearly an improvement over the theatrical version, inasmuch as it at least knows what it wants to be. The problem is what it wants to be is a messy, four-hour-plus mountain of a movie which simply could never satisfyingly exist in any kind of theatrical-length form. And that’s accepting that even the full version is satisfying, which is accepting quite a lot. Batfleck continues to show up mostly well in these Snyderverse misadventures, but the main improvement involves the other characters, who all get more meaningful things to do, particularly Cyborg. And while much of the plot feels more impactful and resonant, one demerit that this edition shares with its red-headed stepchild is the decision to use Steppenwolf as the main villain in the first-ever Justice League film, which was never a good idea and is hard to believe was even entertained by the studio. No offense to Ciaran Hinds, who does his best, but Steppenwolf is just Diet Darkseid and doesn’t have any real defining characteristics or motivations of his own. Can’t pin that decision on the increasingly radioactive Joss Whedon. That one was pure Snyder.

10. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016, dir: Zack Snyder)

You can copy much of the previous entry and paste it here, but I’ll instead point out the parts of this movie that I think make it better than any version of its successor. Batfleck again rules the day, and there’s never a point where I don’t really feel Ben Affleck’s performance, even when he’s having to sell BS like the Martha scene. And the film does seem to at least understand basic myth-making, which is also true of Man of Steel, which while flawed is still better than any of its follow-ups. The director’s cut is, again, a better, more coherent film, but, again, you can only go so far with that as an excuse before eventually you have to tell Zack Snyder to do any kind of story editing at all, apparently not a concept he’s familiar with. But the introduction of Wonder Woman hits, and the pre-Martha section of the title confrontation is quite good, actually. Are they good enough to overcome the film’s convoluted plotting, the poor decision to rush Doomsday into the universe, or whatever the hell Jesse Eisenberg was doing? Not really, no. But they still count for something.

9. Batman & Robin (1997, dir: Joel Schumacher)

Look, this is not a good movie in any meaningful way. But that also does not matter at all. Whatever indecision about tone and style that may have plagued its predecessor is not an issue here. Joel Schumacher knew from day one entirely what kind of movie he was making, and he made it. The results were not exactly something the actors involved could be proud of, but you can’t say it isn’t entertaining. Give me two hours of groaner ice puns over four hours of slow-motion brooding all day any day. Obviously, Arnold Schwarzenegger is the real star of the show here, but let’s not forget Uma Thurman’s borderline softcore performance as Poison Ivy or the much-derided Bat-nipples/dongs or the random appearances from all of Elle Macpherson, Vivica A. Fox, Jesse Ventura, and Coolio. While, again, I don’t want to overstate this movie’s quality, it’s hard not to at least respect the campiness of the Bat-hockey scene or the Bat-credit card.

8. The Dark Knight Rises (2012, dir: Christopher Nolan)

The difference between The Dark Knight Rises and its two predecessors (particularly The Dark Knight) is more or less the difference between Christopher Nolan’s output in general pre- and post-Inception. While The Dark Knight probably pushes as much story into its runtime as the movie could possibly bear, most everything the director has released since has overwhelmed itself with narrative and exposition. Inception is a clear example, but so is his trilogy-capping subsequent film. Rises has moments that really land, but the plot machine is a particularly lumbering one and the final act reveal of Marion Cotillard’s mystery character as Talia al Ghul was about as predictable as predictable gets. Tom Hardy’s goofy Bane voice stands out, for better or worse, but most of the other elements here – Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s proto-Robin – are just fine at best. The film sometimes gets ripped a little too much for its alleged plotholes (he’s Batman, so that in itself answers most of the persistent questions) and its humorlessness (Bane is quite funny honestly, Bat-Bale gets a few decent sly jokes in, and Cillian Murphy gets one of the best laughs in his Judge Scarecrow scenes), but the movie feels way too much like a chore at times, cementing a slight creative downturn for its director. (The svelte and excellent Dunkirk only avoiding his tendency to try and do too much with his scripts.)

7. Batman Returns (1992, dir: Tim Burton)

One of the things that DC/Warner Bros. have used to defend their cinematic record against the overwhelming success of Marvel is that they allow their directors to make their own kind of movies instead of just cranking out assembly line products. While that certainly isn’t the case across the board (especially when you look at the meddling that’s gone on with some of the recent DCEU offerings), there is some truth to it. One shining example is this movie, a Tim Burton stylistic orgy with some uncomfortable costumes slapped on top of it. While this was made near the height of Burton’s very particular brand of auteur success, it’s not entirely a good thing, as the movie comes off like a bloated mess in too many places for it to rank any higher on this list. (There are some pure cringe ’90s moments, too.) But at the same time, visuals like this, this, and this are Burton at his best and are far more interesting than most any shot in a superhero movie released in the current climate. And then there’s Michelle Pfeiffer, who dominates this movie from front to back, peaking with one of the all-time great superhero movie moments.

6. Batman (1966, dir: Leslie H. Martinson)

Much of the same campy fun that propels Batman & Robin somewhat up the list also buoys this film, a super-sized edition of the then-ongoing camp classic TV show. While the commercial success of both the film and the show had an immeasurable impact on the comic book industry, that bit of off-screen history alone isn’t what makes this goofy take on the Caped Crusader and his trusty sidekick work. What makes it work is a kind of comic brilliance best summed up by the iconic “Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb” scene. The central joke here is classic Looney Tunes stuff, but it’s the commitment that makes it work. Excellent physical comedy from Adam West combines with inspired staging as Batman runs into a whole host of inconveniently placed innocent bystanders while carrying a cartoonish-looking bomb with the world’s slowest fuse. The small marching band basically teleporting around the sequence just to repeatedly be exactly where Batman doesn’t want them to be is a particularly inspired touch. While other goofball antics on display here might be a campy bridge too far, there’s a reason this goofy relic of a bygone era still carries with it so much pop culture cachet.

5. Batman (1989, dir: Tim Burton)

One of the more commercially influential films ever released, Tim Burton’s Batman changed the way business was done in Hollywood full stop, while also being a massive touchstone in the comic book film industry. While the boom we’ve seen in the 21st century can more directly be traced back to 2000’s X-Men, we don’t get anywhere near that point without this movie (and 1978’s Superman and probably also the ’60s Batman franchise) being released first. As opposed to its overstuffed sequel, this film, if anything, is perhaps a little too light on plot, content as it is for Jack Nicholson’s Joker to riff for much of the film’s middle section. But several other elements have aged really well – Danny Elfman’s character-defining score, Michael Keaton’s uproar-causing casting as the title hero, the sweet-ass Batmobile, and more generally (and crucially) Anton Furst’s Oscar-winning production design. The Gotham in the film loos like something straight out of a comic book, or at least Tim Burton’s imagination, and not like a normal American city, which is the direction most of the Nolan and beyond films have taken. Give me these elaborate, obvious sets any day. Gotham isn’t real. It’s a nightmare, something that has to be haunted by a man in a bat costume to survive.

4. The Lego Batman Movie (2017, dir: Chris McKay)

While perhaps not as emotionally affecting as its parent film (2014’s The Lego Movie), Lego Batman is a strong spinoff, carrying Will Arnett’s egotistical Dark Knight over from the previous film and placing him in the middle of a story that makes a much more compelling case for notorious loner (especially on screen) Batman to learn to work with others than the similarly-themed Justice League would make later the same year. It does this amid a fun flick that entertains all audiences while doing an impressive job of embracing the sillier aspects of Batman lore. (The increasingly obscure Batman villain roll call is worth the price of admission by itself.) Fan shout-outs like retaining Billy Dee Williams as Two-Face and Doug Benson’s Bane voice only help matters, but much of the success of the film ultimately rests on Arnett’s work in the lead role, keeping the A-holeness of the character while still managing to convey real growth during the film’s later stages. Rosario Dawson, as always, was also an inspired choice for Barbara Gordon. And only a Lego movie could cap off its dramatic climax (the rejoining of Gotham City) in such a humorous way. Director and animation veteran Chris McKay was soon after attached to a live-action Nightwing film, but that’s still in the wind currently. And corporate dealings have essentially taken away any chance of a direct sequel or spinoff, so we’ll just have to make do with this. Good thing it’s highly rewatchable.

3. Batman Begins (2005, dir: Christopher Nolan)

I remember in the run-up to this film’s release being stupidly baffled by the idea of a reboot. “So, what, the other movies just won’t count?” I guess, recalling that, that it wasn’t so dumb for movie studios to be so wary of the idea of such a hard reboot of a popular franchise prior to that. In retrospect, obviously, it was a very dumb question to ask, and studios very quickly shed any qualms they had about rebooting potentially profitable series. Would that have happened anyway even if this movie wasn’t as effective as it was? I guess we’ll never know, but Batman Begins is low-key underrated within the Bat-canon. Overshadowed by its more grandiose sequels, Begins is pitched right in between the brand of heightened realism found in its trilogy-mates and the more overt artificiality of the prior Bat-films. Christian Bale and a highly overqualified cast ground the characters in a way we hadn’t seen before (and which you can have some debate about whether it was a good thing long-term), but Gotham here feels more like a designed place, with its Blade Runner-inspired neon, fog, and Asian influences. And while the film pulls Liam Neeson’s main baddie Ra’s al Ghul away from his immortal roots, his and Scarecrow’s general raison d’être is very much in line with their comic counterparts. You can quibble with how much more “realistic” the later movies decided to be, but this one feels like it hit a bit of a sweet spot that no other Bat-film has quite managed.

2. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993, dir: Eric Radomski/Bruce Timm)

A nearly perfect Bat-film, Mask of the Phantasm, like the 1966 Batman movie, is essentially a super-sized edition of the hit TV series that spawned it. Batman: The Animated Series, and the still ongoing shared universe that it launched, is a major pillar of both the larger Bat-franchise and the modern era of animation in general. This film, which loosely turns minor Bat-villain the Reaper into the title villain, deftly touches on important elements of Bruce Wayne’s personal life and the sacrifices being Batman requires, while also weaving an intriguing story about the Gotham mafia, crooked businessmen, and the genesis of Mark Hamill’s Joker, all while building to a three-way confrontation in the final act, complete with Bats and Joker duking it out in a miniature version of Gotham, one of the best visuals in any Batman media. And it does all this without ever once feeling overwrought, which is a trap Bat-projects increasingly fall into. I don’t mind exploring the darker aspects of what it means to be Batman, what it means to be a hero, etc, but when that’s all you do, it starts to lose its interest. One of the keys of both this film and its parent series is how they were able to play Batman more down the middle as an occasionally tragic figure, but still one who’s a hero, who protects and inspires others. Sometimes the better, nobler aspects of Batman get lost in a race to be as gritty as possible, but those aspects are well highlighted here.

1. The Dark Knight (2008, dir: Christopher Nolan)

I’ve probably made this point on here before, just as I’ve made it to anyone else who’ll listen and many others who decidedly aren’t listening, but I’ll make it again just for old times’ sake – The Dark Knight is all about Harvey Dent. Christian Bale’s Batman and definitely Heath Ledger’s Joker are the stars of the show and all, but the whole narrative arc of the film bends around the Greek tragedy that befalls Aaron Eckhart’s intrepid Gotham district attorney. (Note that the film ends with his plotline being resolved, not the Joker’s.) And while the film takes some elements from Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s classic The Long Halloween maxi-series (as does the upcoming The Batman), the key element it pulls from that source is the development and ultimate destruction of the bond between Batman, Jim Gordon, and Dent. This triumvirate comes together to pool their resources and shared goals, and when Dent, the person best positioned to push Gotham into a brighter future, falls, it deeply affects Batman and Gordon going forward, haunting them like a curse, a storyline that lends a real air of humanity to the sometimes outlandish goings-on in a place like Gotham. Pair that with some excellent action set piece staging (one area of huge improvement over Batman Begins) and Heath Ledger’s bar-setting performance as a grungy Joker, and you have a movie that’s largely withstood its initial ascent, the inevitable backlash, the less effective sequel, and even the shifting vibe of the wider superhero film industry. While most comic films since use world-threatening stakes to create their drama, this one settles for the soul of a city, or ultimately even just one man, to get its point across. That’s the biggest lesson from this movie that most of its various successors didn’t learn.

So, there you have it. Where will The Batman ultimately fall in this list? We’ll have more coverage on the adventures of Battinson soon on the site. And let me know your thoughts by commenting here or on our social media pages.