Every Batman Movie Ranked

The first superhero I was ever exposed to was Batman.

I was four-years old when my mother brought home a Batman cartoon for me to watch. I've been a fan ever since, though I didn't start watching the movies until I was about 14. Pretty sure I've seen all of them at least once, and now it's time to rank them. These rankings are my personal opinion and definitely up for debate.

Please note I will only be ranking the theatrical movies. I'm not going to be touching on the direct to video movies. If i did, this would be a long, long list because there are many of those.

11. Batman and Robin

I'm not the only one who thinks that this movie is the worst Batman movie of all time. This movie is actually widely known as one of the worst movies of all time and it killed Batman movies for about 10 years. I watched it once. Will never watch again. Enough said.

10. Batman Forever

This movie is not exactly terrible. Unlike the first movie on this list, this one I can rewatch. The reason why it's so low on the list though is because even though the story of this movie is great, the acting is kind of bad, and there's too many cringey jokes. Particularly from Tommy Lee Jones' Two-Face/Harvey Dent.

9. Batman Returns

This movie kind of highlights my issue with all the movies in the Burton/Schumacher films as a whole. The fact that these movies are all supposed to be sequels to the original Batman film and yet, none of them feel like sequels. Each movie feels like it takes place in its own universe.

This one in particular gives me an alternate universe feeling. It's like Vicki Vale and Harvey Dent from the first movie never existed. Batman has a more chill and less tormented personality. And the one major character in this movie who does not die, Catwoman, never returns.

Despite these nitpicks, it is an alright movie.

8. Batman: The Movie

This film, which is based off of the 1966 television series, is probably one of the best films to come out of the 60's. As a fan of the 1966 Batman series, I have to say this movie translated well from TV to the big screen. Not to mention the memes that this movie created live on to this day. It's overall a fun, campy, ride that is not meant to be taken too seriously.

7. The Dark Knight Rises

This movie could've been better, but unlike most superhero threequels, this one was actually good. You could say this one broke the curse of the third movie in a superhero series being bad. Of course, Christopher Nolan is a talented director who did some pretty amazing things with the Batman franchise as a whole so it's not much of a surprise.

6. The Dark Knight

An overrated movie in my opinion but still a good watch. It is marginally better than the Dark Knight Rises. Maybe it is just that I don't like dark and intense films as much and this film can get intense at parts. But am I the only one who laughs at Bale's Batman voice for this movie? Who the heck gave the okay for Bale to do such a hammy and comedic voice. That... is not how Batman should sound. Good for some laughs, though.

5. Batman Begins

Easily the best of Nolan's Batman trilogy in my opinion. When it comes to superhero origin stories, this movie did it the best. Best of all, this movie is before Christian Bale's Batman voice got hammy. In this one, the voice is just an eerie rasp, which I think is more fitting for the character than whatever the heck they were going for in the sequels.

4. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

This movie makes me sad that Ben Affleck never got his Batman solo movie, because I would have loved it. While I have mixed feelings about this film as a whole, I loved the Batman scenes in this movie. It's because of this movie that Ben Affleck became my favorite Batman actor, and I would really like to see him return for more Batman stuff in the future.

3. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm

This is an animated movie directed at a younger audience, and yet it felt way more serious than half of the Batman live-action movies I've seen. Like Batman Begins, it also tells bits of Batman's origin story in flashbacks, mixed with an intriguing present day mystery involving the mysterious Phantasm. It's a movie that kept me guessing and the final reveal of who the true villain was blew me away. I never would have saw that coming in a million years.

2. The Lego Batman Movie

To me, this film is pretty much a modern version of 1966's Batman: The Movie. That is, it has a similar style of being a fun movie that is not meant to be taken seriously. Yet, it surpassed the 1966 movie on so many levels. The jokes are funnier, the characters are more relatable, and it has so much heart. I can watch this movie again and again. Too bad the sequel for it was scrapped. I would've loved to see it.

1. Batman (1989)

I'll admit that this film is so high on my list more out of nostalgia than anything else. It was the first Batman movie I ever watched, and it's still watchable. The story holds up so well. The characters are portrayed brilliantly. I can't mention this movie without mentioning the Batmobile. The Batmobile in this movie was way better than the versions in future movies. I had a toy of this Batmobile when I was a kid. I lost it, but it was so much fun when I had it.

But anyway, so far, none of the Batman movies as managed to overshadow the original in my eyes. Perhaps the new one coming out in 2022 with Robert Pattinson will change my mind, but I doubt it.