Saintel Daily Ranks All the Batman Movies From Worst to Best – Part 1

If you’re a fan of Batman, then I’m sure you have your favorite actor who played the character, or perhaps your favorite movie.  Batman has been around for quite some time, so it’s hard to say which Batman is the best and why.  In this post, we will attempt to answer that question for you.  Of course, this is just our opinion, and if you feel that we’ve missed the mark on any of these, we want to hear from you.

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

Batman himself doesn’t normally kill people, but in this movie, he definitely goes at it like its nothing.  This movie is not Batman at his finest, and we can’t blame Ben Affleck for that.  This movie kind of makes you feel bad for liking Batman at all because he isn’t painted in great light.  This movie is a bit of an all-out assault on the senses as well.

12. Batman & Robin (1997)

If you haven’t seen this movie, it really is as terrible as you could imagine.  This movie is full of terrible action sequences, campy performances and honestly, it’s just not funny.  When the movie opened in the summer of 1997, the L.A. Weekly had some not so nice things to say about it, including “there’s so much happening in the movie that it feels like nothing is happening at all”.  But perhaps it’s better to have nothing happening at all in this movie.

11. Justice League (2017)

While not a traditional Batman movie, it did introduce us to Ben Affleck as the most recent incarnation of the Dark Knight.  That said, Batman is front and center in the movie, but his uninspired portrayal of the character is at least mitigated by Bruce Wayne’s super friends – including Gal Gador as Wonder Woman.  Affleck’s Batman isn’t a figure of profound darkness, the way that we know him to be.  He lacks the charisma that is needed to make you believe anybody would follow him anywhere.

10 Batman: The Killing Joke (2016)

The Batman comic book lost quite a bit when it transitioned to the theaters.  It has all the hallmarks of the popular Batman: The Animated Series, but in an attempt to make the film dark and R rated, took the character a bit too far. To put this into perspective, this is basically Batman’s version of Logan – except animated and without as much emotion.  This movie has a bit of a nastier vibe than what you might expect from an animated Batman movie.

9.  Batman Forever (1995)

Imagine a world in which Val Kilmer, Tommy Lee Jones, Jim Carrey, and Nicole Kidman were all in a movie together. It happened, 22 years ago! That, however, is all the movie has going for it.  Taking over for Michael Keaton, Kilmer plays Bruce Wayne as a faintly put-upon hero, battling not just supervillains Two-Face (Jones) and the Riddler (Carrey), but also the lusty advances of a psychologist (Kidman) who wants to get under his Batsuit. This version is devoid of the wit that distinguishes a few lighter Batman movies that are higher on our list.

8. Batman (1966)

This movie was made in an attempt to transition between the TV show’s first and second season.  Which makes this movie a really long episode.  One that brings all of the villains together.  The Joker, Riddler, Penguin, and Catwoman — played by Lee Meriwether, rather than Julie Newmar, who had a scheduling conflict — band together to create “The United Underworld,” and, of course, the Dynamic Duo tries to stop them.  This film doesn’t necessarily do much for the show in terms of its expansion, but it does keep the same tone of the show itself and it’s kind of fun.