Worst To First: Ranking the Batman Movies

Next Friday, Superman and Batman will appear on the big screen for the first time.  Leading up to the release of Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, we’ll be looking back at the cinematic history of the Man of Steel and the Dark Knight.  Last week, we ranked the Superman movies.  So now it’s Batman’s turn.

On the whole, Batman has fared better than Superman at the movies.  But overall, most of his movies still aren’t very good.  Before we get started, a couple of ground rules.  I’m only looking at live action Bat-films.  So no Mask of the Phantasm or Lego Batman.  Also, we’re starting with the ’89 Batman.  The Adam West movie was an offshoot of the TV show anyway.

arnie batman and robin

8. Batman & Robin (1997)

Summary: Batman & Robin is infamous for nearly killing not just the Batman franchise but the superhero genre in general.  Following the commercial success of Batman Forever, Warner Brothers was in a hurry to get more of the same.  And that’s exactly what they got.  With only two years in which to make a sequel instead of the usual three, Joel Schumacher rushed out a movie that did all the same things as the previous movie, but did them bigger.  Eager to sell as many Batman toys as possible, Batman & Robin was crammed full of even more sidekicks and villains.  Unfortunately, nothing about the movie in which Batman, Robin and Batgirl team up to protect Gotham City from Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy and Bane works.

What’s Good: This is a big budget Hollywood summer release.  No expense was spared in making Batman & Robin.  You can see the money there on the screen.  There was some good design work on display in the movie.  Yes, I’m struggling to find a silver lining.

While George Clooney has spent years apologizing for Batman & Robin, he’s probably the last person who should.  Clooney actually gives a good performance in the lead role.  He knows this is a silly Batman movie and he gives his Bruce Wayne an appropriately light tone.  In a better movie, Clooney’s Batman could have been great.

What’s Bad: Just about everything else.  Arnold Schwarzenegger spends all of his screen time making painful ice puns.  Uma Thurman looks terrible buried under ridiculous wigs and make-up and doing a kind of Mae West thing.  If you weren’t annoyed by Chis O’Donnell’s abrasive Robin in Batman Forever, odds are you will be in this movie.  Alicia Silverstone is lost playing a Batgirl who for some reason is supposed to be Alfred’s niece but lacks any kind of English accent.  Bane is wasted as a mute henchman.  Oh and did I mention the Bat credit-card?

Verdict: Few movies waste as many resources as completely as Batman & Robin.  A lot of talented people worked on the movie.  Over $100 million dollars was spent to make and who knows how much more to promote it.  And in the end, it committed the cardinal sin of being boring.  Batman & Robin proves that the camp of the sixties TV show was harder than it looks.  Get the tone wrong, and this is the result.

7. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

Summary: Man of Steel was such a smashing success that Warner Brothers couldn’t wait to make a follow-up… starring Batman.  Zack Snyder announced the project by reading a quote from Frank Miller’s seminal work, The Dark Knight Returns, a dark and gritty Batman story in which the Man of Steel is portrayed as a government stooge.  If you’re a Superman fan, that was your second warning about Batman v Superman – the first being Snyder’s handling of the character in Man of Steel.  This guy hates Superman!  How is he the guy laying the foundation for the DC Cinematic Universe?

What’s Good: Most everyone agrees that Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman is the stand-out.  She benefits from barely being in the movie.  A lot of fans were upset by the casting of Ben Affleck as Batman, but Batfleck was okay if you like an older, grumpier Batman who kills people.  Snyder may not be able to tell a coherent story, but no one films dark and rainy nights in slow motion like he does.

What’s Bad: It’s too long.  The narrative is a mess.  For the first half of the movie, characters stand around trying to sound philosophical when they talk about the conflict between “gods and men”, but the movie really doesn’t have anything to say.  It all boils down to a brutal slugfest that no one wins.  Superhero fights can be exciting.  Check out Captain America: Civil War which came out around the same time.  That movie was also too long and messy, but when the heroes threw down it was a lot of fun.  Batman v Superman takes all the joy out of the simplest of pleasures.  Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor is either one of the best or one of the worst parts of the movie depending on your tolerance for scenery chewing.  Henry Cavill still hasn’t been given anything to do in his second outing as Superman and Amy Adams and Holly Hunter are completely wasted.  Subplots spring up out of nowhere because the set-ups ended up on the cutting room floor and future DC movies are teased via stealth trailers and dream sequences.

Verdict: Critics rightly pummeled Batman v Superman because it was a terrible movie.  I am giving it a slight edge over Batman & Robin which can be credited almost entirely to Wonder Woman.

kilmer kidman batman forever

6. Batman Forever (1995)

Summary: After Batman Returns proved to be too dark and Burtonesque to sell toys and Happy Meals, Warner Brothers decided it was time to shake things up.  Director Tim Burton was out.  Joel Schumacher was hired to replace Burton and given a mandate to make a lighter and more kid-friendly Batman.  When Michael Keaton decided he didn’t like the new direction, Val Kilmer was brought on board to play the not-so-Dark Knight.  Rene Russo had been cast to play Batman’s love interest.  But she was deemed too old for Kilmer, so she was replaced by Nicole Kidman.  Chris O’Donnell played a college-aged Robin but as was typically the case, the main focus of Batman Forever was on the bad guys.  Tommy Lee Jones stepped in for Billy Dee Williams who was originally set up to play Two Face and Jim Carrey beat out Robin Williams for the coveted role of The Riddler.

What’s Good: Warner Brothers got the lighter Batman they wanted.  Schumacher replaced Burton’s dark Gotham with bright neon lights.  Carrey plays tribute to the TV Riddler, Frank Gorshin.  Kidman’s Dr. Chase Meridian seems less like a doctor than a cat in heat, but she makes for a sexy leading lady.

A lot of the problems with Batman & Robin are also present here.  But they are less pronounced.  Can being “less bad” be considered a plus?

What’s Bad: There’s a lot of things wrong with Batman Forever.  Chris O’Donnell is too old to be Robin, for one thing.  Bruce Wayne basically adopts an orphaned college kid.  But he’s written like a bratty, rebellious teen.  Batman badguy plots never make much sense, but the Riddler’s plan to steal brain waves to make himself smarter is particularly loony.  But by far the worst thing about Batman Forever is watching Oscar winner Tommy Lee Jones embarrass himself by trying to be wackier than Carrey.  Jones spends most of the movie cackling incessantly.   Two Face is supposed to be a scary bad guy.  But here, he’s just cartoonish.  While Carrey can pull that off, Jones can’t and he looks foolish trying.

Verdict: At the time, Batman Forever was greeted as a breath of fresh air after the overly dark and violent Batman Returns.  But it hasn’t aged well.  It’s silly without actually being funny.  Loud and brash without actually being fun.  It’s better than Batman & Robin, but not by much.

Batman-Returns

5. Batman Returns (1992)

Summary: Following the success of the first Batman movie, Warner Brothers gave director Tim Burton carte blanche to do as he pleased with the sequel.  Not surprisingly, Burton wanted to make a movie about dark, weird outsiders.  The Penguin is reimagined as a sewer-dwelling mutant raised by actual penguins.  Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman suffers from a split personality.  And Christopher Walken plays a Dickensian villain named after the actor who played Nosferatu.  Oh, and there are circus freaks.

What’s Good: If you like Tim Burton, his fingerprints are all over this movie.  It’s less Batman than it is a live action Nightmare Before Christmas.  Pfeiffer’s Catwoman is sexy, funny, sympathetic and compellingly weird.  She and Keaton have a terrific chemistry during their unmasked scenes.  Walken is terrifically unhinged.

What’s Bad: Danny DeVito’s Penguin is just weird and gross.  His motivation seems to change from one scene to the next which is probably the result of too many rewrites.  Families at the time objected to the movie’s dark tone and the amount of violence – especially violence towards women.  More than one female character gets pushed from a high place.  Worse still, Warner Brothers’ promotional partners were less than thrilled to be associated with a violent and strange Batman movie.

Verdict: Batman Returns is a pretty good Tim Burton movie.  But as a Batman movie, it’s a mess.  There are moments in the movie that I really like a lot.  But the bad parts are just horrible and the tone is uneven.  You can understand why Warner Brothers decided to take the series in a different direction after this one.

basinger - batman

4. Batman (1989)

Summary: Tim Burton’s Batman kicked off the franchise after years of toiling in development limbo.  Conventional wisdom was that superhero movies had to follow the template of Richard Donner’s Superman.  But Burton resisted the idea of doing an origin story.  At least not for Batman.  He was more interested in the Joker.  When fans heard that Michael Keaton had been cast as Batman, they worried that the movie would follow the campy tone of the old TV show.  But Batman showed that audiences could take super heroes semi-seriously.  Jack Nicholson stole the show as the Joker and Kim Basinger stepped in at the last minute to play the damsel in distress.

What’s Good: Burton and production designer Anton Furst give Batman a cool, gothic look.  No matter what you might think of the thin story line, Batman is a visual treat.  But unlike Batman Returns, Burton didn’t yet have the clout to overindulge in weirdness for weirdness’ sake.  So the tone is more hyper-realistic than full-out dream-state.  Nicholson may be playing an exaggerated version of his screen persona, but damn if he isn’t entertaining.

What’s Bad: Batman gets lost in his own movie.  It’s no coincidence that Keaton got second billing to Nicholson.  This movie could have been more accurately named The Joker.  Like all of the Batman movies from this era, the story doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.  Basinger’s character is given little to do beside hang on Keaton’s arm and scream.  And Keaton’s costume limits his movement and visibility so severely that he can barely throw a punch in his fight scenes.

Verdict: Batman ’89 is a mixed bag.  But on the whole, the good outweighed the bad.  Batman was a super hero movie that crossed over into the mainstream and showed that the genre was more than just the *biffs* *bams* and *pows* everyone associated with the campy TV show.

Batman Begins

3. Batman Begins (2005)

Summary: Following Batman & Robin, the series went dormant for nearly a decade.  Can you even imagine such a thing happening today?  Warner Brothers spent years wrestling with the idea of how best to revive the series.  For a while, they considered a Batman Vs. Superman movie not unlike the one that opens later this month.  But instead, Christopher Nolan convinced them to let him go back and tell the Batman origin story that Tim Burton refused to do in the original movie.

What’s Good: The punny humor and high camp of the Schumacher era are long gone.  Nolan strips away a lot of the fantastical elements of the character in favor of a more realistic and serious approach.  In my opinion, this doesn’t always work.  But after Batman & Robin, the attempt to make a serious Batman movie was appreciated.  It also helps that Nolan stocks his cast with talented actors like Christian Bale as Batman/Bruce Wayne, Michael Caine as Alfred, Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon, Liam Neeson as Batman’s mentor and Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox.  Even in the smaller roles, you get Cillian Murphy, Tom Wilkinson and Rutger Hauer.

What’s Bad: The degree to which Nolan accomplishes his goal of creating a realistic Batman is debatable.  The movie still ends with a nonsensical plan from the Scarecrow.  By stripping Batman down, Nolan sacrifices some of the comic book elements that make Batman fun.  If you’re a Batman fan, the scene in which Batman refuses to save a bad guy rings a false note.  Sorry, that’s not how Batman works.  Also the weak link in the cast is Katie Holmes who will be replaced in the sequel.

Verdict: Batman Begins is overrated.  In fact, I’d say Batman’s entire trilogy is overrated, but it’s still the best cinematic Batman story we have.  As the opening chapter, Begins feels a bit small and dull compared to the movies that would follow.  I could even see ranking this one below the first Tim Burton movie for entertainment value.  But I’m giving it a slight edge for setting up better Batman movies to follow.

The Dark Knight Rises

2. The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Summary: The Dark Knight Rises gives Nolan’s Batman trilogy a definitive ending.  Years have passed since Batman fought the Joker and peace has fallen over Gotham.  But Bane arrives to throw the city into turmoil and Batman must return from semi-retirement to stop him.  Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman walks a dangerous line between romancing Batman and setting him up for a fall.

What’s Good: Tom Hardy’s Bane is a good physical threat to Batman – something which he hasn’t really had in the Nolan movies.  Hathaway’s Catwoman was far more alluring than anyone expected from the young actress.  The rest of the cast is reliably strong and the movie benefits from being the final chapter in a popular series.  But…

What’s Bad: The threat of Bane is somewhat neutered by a revelation in the movie’s third act.  Once the big badguy plan is enacted, it’s pretty far out there.  For a series that was supposed to be about a realistic Batman, almost nothing that happens in the final act is remotely believable.  Also, it feels like we’re missing a lot of Batman stories between this movie and the one that preceded it.  At the beginning of the movie, Bale’s Bruce Wayne is a recluse who walks with a brace.  He looks like he’s been to hell and back.  But we’re told he’s been retired for years.  This feels like it should be the sixth Batman movie, not the third.

Verdict: Nolan’s final chapter is messier than expected and more than a little silly.  Some people had problems suspending their disbelief for things like Batman overcoming a broken back through… how did he do that anyway?  As a comic book fan who read a lot of the stories from the 1990’s that The Dark Knight Rises was based on, I welcomed the return of some of the super hero elements that had been left out of Batman Begins.  But it’s still a let-down after the superior Dark Knight.  I’m giving it the edge over Batman Begins because I find it more entertaining.

Joker Dark Knight

1. The Dark Knight (2008)

Summary: Middle chapters in trilogies are often the best and that’s certainly the case here.  Batman’s war on crime has given rise to an equal force for chaos in the form of Heath Ledger’s Joker.  But the main story is about the rise and fall of Aaron Eckhart’s Harvey Dent.  Dent is a heroic district attorney who promises to save Gotham without resorting to vigilantism.  But it turns out you can’t save Gotham from within the system and Harvey Dent pays the price for his hubris.

What’s Good: Eckhart, Ledger and Maggie Gyllenhaal make terrific additions to the already solid cast from the first movie.  When Ledger was announced as the Joker, fans grumbled.  But his take on the character has become iconic.  With relatively little screen time, Ledger steals the movie.  His performance won him an Oscar – something which is unheard of for a super hero movie.  But the thing about The Dark Knight is that it works equally well as a crime drama.  The super hero elements are just window dressing.

What’s Bad: It sure would have been nice if Gyllenhaal could have played Rachel Dawes in both movies.  But Gyllenhaal is the better of the two Rachels.  Some have taken The Dark Knight as an endorsement of the War in Iraq following 9/11.  A political interpretation of the movie can be a put off-putting.

Verdict: Mostly, The Dark Knight works.  While the Marvel movies may be more fun, The Dark Knight is easily the most grounded super hero movie to date.  If you like your comic book heroes serious, this is the movie for you.

Now it’s your turn.  Put your favorite Batman movie at the top and work your way down.

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