Ranking Every Batman Movie : From Worst to Best

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Batman has a tattered cinematic history. He’s technically been around since the 1940s, but it took a while before Hollywood’s cigar chumping executives started taking him seriously. They perceived him to be a gimmick meant to move licensed products and not a viable dramatic protagonist. Of course, it changed with time. But Batman’s history is littered with garbage films, which I had to sit through during this year-long retrospective of the character.

The character went a long way since the days of Adam West and this definitive ranking aims to illustrate that. I’ve listed and ranked all Batman movies according to three simple criteria:

Entertainment value: The most basic measuring stick for cinematic enjoyment: did I have a good time watching the movie or not? If you don’t have fun watching a movie, it has serious mechanical problems.

Faithfulness and development: Does it give a shit about the comics and does it take liberties extrapolating and creating its own version of the caped crusader? Comics are important, but they all grow apart into their own creative direction. It’s important that movies do the same.

Reflection of their time: Are the movies loaded with thematic reflection of their era? It is not crucial for Batman movies to do so, but it’s always welcome for a movie to be more than the sum of its parts.

One last thing before I start: I left out the weird 1940s theatrial serial because it’s not really a movie and no way I was going to sit through all that and I left out every movie where he was not the exclusive center of attention. If you’re interested, I also reviewed Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Justice League, Suicide Squad, The Killing Joke and Joker. I did not review Lego Batman because I am not a child. So, that’s nine movies overall. Top 10s are overrated.

9th - Batman & Robin : 3.5/10

This movie is ass. I desperately wanted to find something worthwhile in it and be that contrarian who thinks Batman & Robin is not that bad, but it is not trying very hard to even be a movie. A direct sequel to Batman Forever, this movie features a lot of colorful characters throwing kung fu kicks at one another and not much character interaction. The goal here was visibly to appeal to the 0-12 year old demographic and the wallet of their bored parents.

So, Batman & Robin scores extremely low on entertainment value. It has no rhythm to speak of and a paper thin narrative construction. It also score extremely low on faithfulness and development because it reinvents Batgirl in a way that it infinitely less cool than the comic books and doesn’t really go anywhere with it. It’s not really a reflection of its times either, because we’re further in fantasy land than we’ve ever been. You could definitely avoid this one.

8th - Batman (1965) : 5.6/10

This is basically a long episode of the 1960s television show starring Adam West, Burt Ward, Cesar Romero, Burgess Meredith and all the other adorable caricatures of the characters we all know and love. It makes very little sense and it’s a lot more fun in retrospect that it should’ve been. There’s a scene in there where Batman is trying to discard a cartoonishly big bomb that is straight from Charles Chaplin’s playbook. I laughed out loud many, many time.

Obviously, Batman scores high in terms of entertainment value and almost zero on faithfulness and development. This iteration of Batman doesn’t have anything to do with the history of the character, but there’s a reason for that. This is why it scores kind of high as a reflection of its time. It is a reflection of the silver age of comic books where superheroes became super vanilla because the government thought they were responsible for juvenile delinquency.

7th - Batman Forever (1995) : 5.9/10

This is the Joel Schumacher Batman I have contrarian opinions about. It is not great, but it is not that bad either. It is obviously aiming for a larger, family-oriented demographic, but it understands the nature of Batman. The essence of the character is understood through his influence in other people’s lives and it is apparent in Batman Forever through Dick Grayson and Edward Nygma, even if Robin has become an oily 25 years old dude for some reason.

Batman Forever ranks low to moderate in terms of entertainment value. The psychedelic rendition of the flying Grayson murder also is worth seeing. It’s also getting points for faithfulness and development because it’s one of the only movies that tried to tackle Riddler and it did a reasonable job at it. Only place where it scores close to zero is as a reflection of its times. Batman Forever is not trying to tell you anything. It is trying to sell you Hallowen costumes.

6th - Batman Returns : 6.8/10

Now we’re getting to the interesting part. I wouldn’t call Batman Returns conventionally good, but it is the first movie on this list with interesting ideas of its own. Tim Burton’s sequel to his own classic Batman boldly made Penguin the antagonist of his movie and turned him into a not quite soulless populist who wants to be elected mayor of Gotham City in order to exert revenge on the world for the rejection of his parents. It works better than it should.

Batman Returns ranks moderately high in terms of entertainment value. I wouldn’t say it’s exciting, but it tries something new and exciting. It ranks rather high in faithfulness and development too. Tim Burton might be overrated and disrespectful of Batman’s legacy in general, but his narrative kind of works here. It is also a rather strong reflection of its time, because it is a movie that reflected a strong anti-government feeling in American that is still there.

5th - Batman (1989) : 7.1/10

This movie is good, but it is nowhere near as good as people remember it to be. Tim Burton was more interested in building a weird Goth fantasy than making a movie about Batman, but it is kind of a decent Goth fantasy if you’re discarding the fact that Batman is a 5’8 middle-aged Michael Keaton. I love what he did with the character of Vicki Vale too, who breaks from the boring male fantasy of what a badass woman should be like.

Batman ranks moderate to high in terms of entertainment value. It is rather conventional, but it gets the job done for an action movie and isn’t scared to get dark. It gets also a low to moderate faithfulness and development, mostly because its idea influenced the future aesthetic of the franchise. It is also a lw to moderate reflection of its time, where the perception of criminality was a lot more folkloric and colorful than it is today.

4th - The Dark Knight Rises (2012) : 7.8/10

The Dark Knight Rises is a very good movie, it’s just very confused about what it is trying to say. Christopher Nolan is not entirely at fault here. Batman is somewhat of a paradox: he wants to uphold the law and uphold inequalities where crime blossoms at the same time. It’s too bad, because Bane is a fun character that reflects the absolute worst in Batman and the inner struggle is great. But that’s the thing: Batman’s inner struggle always comes before Gotham.

Of course, The Dark Knight Rises ranks very high in terms of entertainment value. It’s a Wagnerian blast and it’s easy to get lost in it. In terms of faithfulness and development, it ranks moderate to high. Nolan takes wild liberties with the canon and it is sometimes frustrating because it doesn’t always feel right. Bane’s love story is a little ludicrous. It’s very much a reflection of its time too since it’s a movie about terrorism vs authoritarian state.

3rd - Batman : Mask of the Phantasm (1993) : 7.8/10

This one was a pleasant surprise. A Batman movie about the problematic nature of vigilante justice? Sign me up! Mask of the Phantasm is a very humble film with a confusing timeline, but it is propelled by such spirited writing and passionate dedication that its enthusiasm is infectious. It is short, not exactly to-the-point and features a Gotham City that is geographically and philosophically byzantine. It rank it over The Dark Knight Rises by a hair.

Mask of the Phantasm has moderate to high entertainment value. It’s a little difficult to follow at times, but it unfolds in all sorts of unexpected ways. It ranks VERY high in terms of faithfulness and development because of its weird, inspired art deco Gotham City and perhaps even higher as a reflection of its times because of its use of Joker. In 1993, concerned parents saw criminality as a faceless, ubiquitous menace and the very embodiment of that fear.

2nd - Batman Begins : 8.3/10

The greatest accomplishment of Christopher Nolan is that he brought Batman down to the world of the living. His Bruce Wayne was no longer a dated savior fantasy, but a troubled human being who beat up lowlives to feel better about his dead parents. This weird paradox really comes to life in this movie where Batman is learning how to become Batman. It is awkward, uncomfortable and great for all the right and all the wrong reasons.

Batman Begins ranks high in terms of entertainment value, but especially if you’re already a fan of the series because it challenges your perception of the character in interesting ways. It ranks VERY HIGH in terms of faithfulness and development because it forever altered the perception of Batman and it ranks also high as reflection of its times because everything needs to have a human side in the twenty-first century. People crave nuance now.

1st - The Dark Knight (2008) : 8.9/10

Surprise! Surprise! Kidding, everyone expected the only Batman movie to be a cinematic triumph to be on top of this list. Not only because it features the most conflicted and likable Joker to date (pre-Joaquin Phoenix days), but also because it openly challenged the logic of Batman movies. Heath Ledger’s evil incarnate Joker is a reaction to Batman’s repressive justice and forces him to sacrifice himself in order to get rid of his ideas.

The Dark Knight ranks EXTREMELY HIGH in terms of entertainment value, faithfulness and development and reflection of its times. It’s a paradigm shift for the character and also in the perception the public had of him. Batman officially became cool for grownups to like in The Dark Knight, because his struggle reflected our own struggle between wanting peacefulness and blindly obeying authorities. It’s a great moment in cinema period.