The best Batman movies: all the same, haters say. And we're here to correct them. Not every tale of the Caped Crusader is made equal, and just as Robert Pattinson gets ready for a sequel to The Batman, our memories of adaptations past and present have come to the surface. There are some good ones. There are some bad, bad ones. And there are some that, thankfully, are much better than you remembered.
Here's all 18 Batman movies, ranked.
18. Batman & Robin (1997)
George Clooney – Batman – has been known to refund people who saw it. In a list of the “50 Worst Movies Ever” Empire magazine once ranked this at number one. Arnold Schwarzenegger – Mr Freeze – squeezed 27 ice-related puns into his six days on set. One of them was: "What killed the dinosaurs? The ice age" which isn't even meteorologically possible.
17. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
Convinced Superman is a threat to humanity, it’s down to Ben Affleck’s Batman to stand up to The Man of Steel, using some high-tech armour and a set of Bat-goggles. The obvious advantage of his opponent being that he is, in fact, a man of steel. Painful.
16. Batman Forever (1995)
Val Kilmer – for he is Batman – squares off against the dual threat of Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones) and The Riddler (Jim Carrey in a lime-green question-mark covered catsuit), an ex-Wayne Enterprises employee who’s invented a brain-sucking weapon. Irony.
15. Batman (1943)
Batman's adventures on the big screen began in serials, shorter films which mimicked the comics he'd sprung from in running episodically week after week and ending in a cliffhanger. This 15-parter was the first, and cast him and Robin (Lewis Wilson and Douglas Croft) as government agents trying to sort out a ring of saboteurs in Gotham City following Pearl Harbour.
There's a lot of anti-Japanese racism in Batman – even a high-five to the US government for moving thousands of innocent Japanese citizens to concentration camps – and, less egregiously, most of the things that make Batman Batman don't appear. The Batmobile, for instance, is just a regular car chauffeured by Alfred. And yet it's still a better watch than Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
14. Batman and Robin (1949)
The sequel, spread across another 15 parts, set in motion another trope of the Batman cinematic experience: it was the first time a new Batman was introduced to the public on screen, with later Western legend Robert Lowery replacing Wilson under the cape and cowl.
Unfortunately, Batman and Robin had as little money to play with as the original Batman serial did, so that cape and cowl was extremely ill-fitting. Lowery's legs were apparently so hairy that he was forced into flesh-pink tights too. However its plot about the nefarious deeds of The Wizard is, mercifully, less racist.
13. Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)
The “Snyder Cut” of the 2017 disaster that was the Justice League movie is a whole heap better than the horrible original, taken on by Joss Whedon after Snyder stepped aside, following the death of his daughter.
Its biggest accolade may be the place in film history its afforded by the fact it was the fans who got this “original cut” released, something few believed would ever happen.
That said, for anyone looking for ammunition on why ensemble superhero films – Gal Gadot is Wonder Woman, Henry Cavill is Superman, Ben Affleck is Batman, someone else is The Flash – are stupid, this would make an excellent Exhibit A.
The anti-Avengers: Endgame, one imagines execs at Marvel still high-fiving each other in the corridor at its very mention.
12. Batman: The Killing Joke (2016)
Faithful retelling of the Alan Moore/Brian Bolland comic from 1988 that was “adult” to the point of being genuinely horrible – the plot concerns The Joker trying to send Commissioner Gordon mentally insane by doing unspeakable things to his daughter. As dark as the Dark Knight gets, Bolland’s noir art in the comic is, at least, gorgeous – and this animation makes a decent first of recreating it frame by painstaking frame.
11. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (2012)
Just as Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy wrapped up, a heavyweight adaptation of Frank Miller's 1986 comic miniseries arrived. You like dark Batman? Have the Joker massacring hundreds and a nuclear winter. A cameo from Conan O'Brien as talk show host David Endochrine in part two is a nice little extra too.
10. Batman Returns (1992)
“Why isn’t this movie called Catwoman?” wondered one critic at the time, summing up just how completely Michelle Pfeiffer and Michelle Pfeiffer’s costumer designer owned Tim Burton’s second Batman outing. One of the Caped Crusader movies that’s actually got better with age – Danny DeVito’s Oswold Cobblepot/The Penguin is a delight.
9. Batman: Year One (2011)
Infidelity, mental illness, child prostitution, nose-splintering violence, the endless rain… Welcome to Gotham City, have a nice day.
This four-issue comic run from 1987, written by Frank Miller and drawn by David Mazzucchelli remains a high-water mark of all comics, not just Batman. The animated version (on DVD!) stays utterly true to the source text, which cleverly weaves together the story of Bruce Wayne finding his feet in Gotham, with a pre-Commissioner Jim Gordon doing the same. Two origin stories for the price of one. Plus, it’s short – squeaking in at just over an hour. Bryan Cranston voices Gordon, presumably doubling an already busy ComicCon schedule.
8. The Batman (2022)
In the credit column Matt Reeves’ latest Batman is superbly cast – plaudits to Zoë Kravitz, Paul Dano, Jeffery Wright and crucially Robert Pattinson. It also successfully inhabits a police procedural world that feels both new and true to the franchise. The look and the score are also excellent.
In the debit column it’s too long, and there is zero light and shade – one finds oneself literally squinting at crucial scenes to work out what on Earth's going on.
Its biggest problem, however, is one that may never be overcome: it is not by Christopher Nolan.
7. Batman (1989)
Given how many superhero films get churned out now, it’s mind-boggling that 30 years elapsed between the Adam West movie and Tim Burton’s Eighties reboot. Perhaps the “horror” of the former was just too fresh.
Jack Nicholson asked-for-and-got a still-preposterous $90m to play The Joker, plus a guarantee of top billing on the ads. Prince did the soundtrack.
Burton was riding high off the success of Beetlejuice (1988) and did a fine job of remaking the hero into something complex, darker and, as we now know, enduring.
The art department was charged with a brief “to make Gotham City the ugliest and bleakest metropolis imaginable”.
By today’s doom-and-gloom standards it looks like Sex and The City.
6. Batman (1966)
For people (okay, men) of a certain age, Adam West and Burt Ward remain the definitive Dynamic Duo. All journalists are contractually obliged to refer to this incarnation as “camp” but Holy Hole in a Doughnut, Batman!* – does anyone think the makers didn't know that?
This film-of-the-TV-series really went for it, and the highlights are many.
One critic has suggested that the use of Polaris Missiles and war surplus submarines represented a countercultural stance against the backdrop of the Cold War. Could be. But the bit where Batman hangs off the Batcopter punching an obviously plastic shark while deploying “the Shark-Repellent Bat-Spray” strikes us as the more culturally significant moment. (Hit pause and you'll see said Spray was part of a useful set – Barracuda Repellent; Whale Repellent and Manta-Ray Repellent were also on-hand.)
*Robin actually says this.
5. Batman: Mask of The Phantasm (1993)
Superior animated tale and the only Batman “cartoon”, to date, to be released in cinemas. The origin story – a young Bruce Wayne visits his parents’ grave, and vows to take-up crimefighting – has been told to death but MoTP does it with enough verve, grit and style that it stands up well today. This Art Deco Gotham is filled with sharp angles, brooding shadows and crackling menace. Mark Hamill voices The Joker, presumably doubling his already busy ComicCon etc etc.
Lost out to The Lion King in the Annie Awards’ Best Animated Feature category.
4. The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
The Bane-Batman mumble-off is memorably riffed on in Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon’s The Trip. Tom Hardy accepted the villain’s role without reading the script. Being 5’ 9” he then had to wear three-inch lifts in his shoes, so as not to be dwarfed by Christian Bale, Morgan Freeman or Sir Michael Caine. Endlessly re-watchable.
3. Batman Begins (2005)
The first of the three Nolans took a $150m budget and turned it into a box office monster, effectively kickstarting the superhero movie world we live in now – not always for the better. Special effects were side-lined in favour of actual proper stunts, while the script pioneered a “return to the comic book source” idea that’s since become the norm, borrowing from Frank Miller, The Long Halloween and Batman: Year One.
2. The Lego Batman Movie (2017)
Batman: "I don't talk about feelings, Alfred. I don't have any, I've never seen one. I'm a night-stalking, crime-fighting vigilante, and a heavy metal rapping machine. I don't feel anything emotionally, except for rage. 24/7, 365, at a million percent. And if you think that there's something behind that, then you're crazy. Good night, Alfred."
Alfred Pennyworth: "Sir, it's morning."
1. The Dark Knight (2008)
The Christopher Nolan movies remain the benchmark in how to do blockbuster superhero films, but make them arthouse. The whole trilogy is great – great design, great stories, great villains, great score – but if we’re going to go for one of the three, it's this. Heath Ledger’s Joker remains indelible. Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman and Michael Caine are all terrific in support. It cost $185m. It took over $1bn. In 2020, it was selected for preservation by the US Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. Perhaps all three.
