Batman first hit the silver screen in 1943, and in the decades since, he's been one of
Hollywood's most accomplished heroes.
In a dozen feature films, we've seen a truly incredible roster of Caped Crusaders and Dark
Knights taking the character in plenty of different directions.
As prominent as he’s been in film, though, not all Batmen are created equal.
Here's our ranking of every movie Batman, from worst to best.
Batman, 1943
The thing you really have to understand about the original Batman serial is that it’s
bad, even by the standards of the time.
With 15 parts, it’s three and a half hours of the worst version of Batman to ever hit
the silver screen.
Batman and Robin, played by Lewis Wilson and Douglas Croft, are recast here as government
agents tasked with stopping the villainous Dr. Daka from building a death ray and creating
an army of zombies.
“I have converted him into a zombie.
He can only act as I direct."
That might sound exciting, but it’s atrocious and repetitive, with awful special effects,
hilariously awkward costumes, unconvincing fights, and let's not forget, America was
at war with Japan at the time so they played up the Japanese bad guy as you'd expect.
This Batman is definitely best left forgotten.
Batman and Robin, 1949
The only good thing you can say about the second Batman serial is that it's not as offensive
as its predecessor.
It’s still bad, though.
The bumbling, barely present Batman is trapped in an awful plot that stretches out even longer
than the first serial, with Robert Lowery's Batman stumbling from one goofy cliffhanger
to the next in an attempt to unmask a mad scientist called the Wizard.
After four hours, surprise!
He turns out to be exactly the guy you thought he was the whole time.
The worst part, though, is the costume: a straight up sweatsuit capped off with an ill-fitting
cowl that makes him look more like floppy-eared bunny rabbit man.
Batman Forever, 1995
In a movie that's soaked in lime green neon and hot pink leopard print, Val Kilmer's portrayal
of the Caped Crusader is… well, the kindest way to put it would be "reserved."
Kilmer, only two years removed from a charismatic, scene-stealing turn as Doc Holliday in Tombstone,
drifts through Batman Forever with the screen presence of a cardboard cutout.
To be fair, there was a good reason for Kilmer to make that choice.
Director Joel Schumacher was clearly drawing his inspiration from the 1966 television show,
and with Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones chewing their way through every available bit of scenery,
replicating Adam West's stentorian straight man probably seemed like the best way to go.
Fully interactive holograms only a high frequency carrier wave beamed directly into the brain
could create such images."
There are parts where it works, but when it comes to actually being Batman, his Adam West
impression just doesn't land.
It’s especially rough in his tepid romance with Nicole Kidman as Dr. Chase Meridian,
the worst-named love interest in the franchise.
"...And what a grand pursuit you must be."
Batman and Robin, 1997
To say Batman and Robin has a bad reputation is putting it lightly.
It's commonly regarded as one of the worst superhero movies of all time, with a bloated
cast of villains and sidekicks sprawling out into a plot that starts off silly and ends
up full-on ludicrous.
It's so bad that both Joel Schumacher and George Clooney have apologized for it, and
it was credited with nearly killing the franchise until it returned with a darker direction
under Christopher Nolan.
"Alright everyone…
CHILL!
Chill.
Chill."
But as controversial as it might sound, Clooney himself is not actually that bad.
His effortless charm doesn't really work for Batman, but it actually does work pretty well
for Bruce Wayne.
If you can get past the toy-friendly suits and their marble statue anatomy, Clooney's
best work comes when he's out of the costume, sweeping around Wayne Manor and dealing with
Alfred's not-quite-fatal illness.
Plus, let's be real here: even if Clooney was as bad as the movie's reputation would
lead you to believe, he'd still score bonus points for the way he refers to Dick Grayson
when he gets mad.
"She's infected us with some kind of pheromone extract.
Oh is that what it is Bruce?
Some kind of magic spell?
She wants to kill you, Dick."
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League, 2016 - 2017
Much of director Zack Snyder's inspiration for Batman v. Superman came from Frank Miller's
landmark comic story The Dark Knight Returns.
Unfortunately, while the movie definitely lifted entire scenes wholesale from the comics
in an effort to please hardcore fans, they're all separated from their original context.
Ben Affleck's Batman is a ludicrously violent murderer who is easily manipulated into a
fistfight with another superhero which ends when the person he's fighting reminds him
that other people also have moms.
"WHY DID YOU SAY THAT NAME! It's his mother's name!"
Despite the movie's silly plot coincidences, Affleck's Batman has some noteworthy fight
sequences, even if by this point the character apparently gave up trying to uphold his no-kill
rule.
The LEGO Batman Movie, 2017
The LEGO version of Batman is the rarest kind of satire: a parody of something that actually
does a great job at being the thing that it's parodying.
Will Arnett voices Batman as a full on comedy character.
He’s got an obsession with darkness, and Arnett ramps up his naturally gravelly voice
into a spoof of Christian Bale's.
At the same time, though, he's very rarely presented as anything other than extremely
good at what he does, an ultra-competent superhero who really does act heroically…
most of the time.
Either way, it works while other portrayals might do their best to move away from the
inherent silliness of a guy dressed as a bat who primarily fights murder-clowns, embracing
it gives the Lego version a flavor that helps him rival even the best of his big-screen
contemporaries.
As funny as he might be, he's still Batman, in one of his purest forms.
The Dark Knight Trilogy, 2005 - 2012
There’s a moment in Batman Begins where a crooked cop gets snared by the ankle and
hauled up five stories in the middle of a thunderstorm so that a vigilante who looks
like Satan himself can scream in his face.
"I don't know, I swear to God ...SWEAR TO ME!"
So yeah: when you’re describing Christian Bale’s performance, the word you want is
"intense."
Bale's Batman brings that level of intensity to everything he does, showing an emotional
range that stretches from the righteous fury of Batman to the aimless pain of the orphaned
Bruce Wayne who was denied his vengeance, and even the quippy sarcasm of his exchanges
with Alfred.
It's a powerful portrayal that's only ever matched when he goes up against Heath Ledger's
Joker, one of the best performances in the genre.
Batman/Batman Returns, 1989 - 1992
Here's the thing about Tim Burton's Batman movies: they're great Tim Burton movies.
They have an incredible visual style, especially when it comes to Gotham City.
It’s a hellish industrial urban sprawl slammed against retro Art Deco, where everyone still
dresses like it's 1940 and where purple knockout gas is a deadly threat against a monochromatic
cityscape.
They're full of great bits of satire, beautiful cinematography, and the casting is amazingly
offbeat, pitting our hero against Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jack Palance, and Christopher
Walken.
The problem is that DC and Warner Brothers were still trying to figure out what Batman
and Bruce Wayne should be like in the modern era.
The result was some awkward exchanges between Bruce Wayne and Vicki Vale, as we see Batman's
human side struggle.
No one really captures that disconnect more than Michael Keaton did when he put on the
cape and cowl.
He’s actually kind of perfect for the kind of remote, mysterious weirdo who sleeps upside
down because he wants to be more like a bat.
“You wanna get nuts?
Come on!
Let’s get nuts!”
But there’s a difference between the stylized goofiness that Burton explored in movies like
Pee Wee's Big Adventure and Beetlejuice, and the '80s action movie aesthetic that saw Keaton's
Batman blowing up buildings full of criminals.
Batman’s actions are mostly portrayed as a personal quest for vengeance that only incidentally
winds up saving a city, and that’s a shame.
Bruce Wayne's borderline psycho exchanges aside, Michael Keaton ultimately nails the
dark, almost spectral version of Batman that terrifies most of Gotham's criminals.
"I want you to tell all your friends about me.
What are you?
I’m Batman."
Batman: The Movie, 1966
The best thing about Adam West's performance in Batman '66 is that it can mean completely
different things depending when you watch it.
As a child, it's easy to buy West’s Batman as completely genuine, and as an adult, once
you're in on the joke, the fact that he was able to play the perfect straight man for
a wild cast of villains is every bit as astonishing as those surface-level comic book thrills.
The movie, released on the big screen in 1966 between the first two seasons of the show,
has everything, in a very literal sense.
The arch-villains this time around are four of his greatest foes brought together as the
United Underworld, revealed with a sequence in which Batman and Robin identify their enemies
through profound leaps of logic.
“You mean where there's a fish there could be a Penguin.
But wait!
It happened at sea… see?
C for Catwoman!”
At the same time, it’s easy to forget that West is actually really good as Batman, particularly
when he goes undercover as Bruce Wayne to save his love interest, Miss Kitka.
The lengths he’s willing to go, and the heartbreak in his eyes when he discovers that
she was Catwoman all along?
Even if you're watching it with a healthy level of irony, it's a powerful moment.
No actor has ever been as strongly identified with the role of Batman as Adam West, and
this movie shows exactly why.
His performance walks a delicate balance between full-hearted adventure and witty satire, and
the end result is perfect.
He is and always will be the Batman who won't even risk hurting a bunch of baby ducks.
“Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb!”
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, 1993
Okay, we'll admit that this one is a bit of a cheat.
Kevin Conroy has, after all, been the most prominent Batman actor for more than 25 years,
making his debut on Batman: The Animated Series and staying in the role all the way through
the Arkham video games.
But there's a good reason for that: Conroy is an amazing Batman, and everything that
makes him great is on display in Mask of the Phantasm.
The film is the first time that the Animated Series really dug into Batman’s origin story,
and Conroy's performance sold it beautifully.
The scene when he's pleading with his parents' graves, telling them he doesn’t want to
fight crime because he's finally found happiness is devastatingly emotional.
"I know I made a promise, but I didn't see this coming.
I didn’t count on being happy"
Even better is when that happiness is taken away and Bruce gives himself over to his mission
entirely.
For a generation of Batman fans, Conroy's is the voice they hear in their heads when
they read comics, and that alone should show just how great he was in the role.
It takes an incredible amount of talent to redefine the character
but that’s exactly what Kevin Conroy did, in a way that no other Batman
could.