Da na na na na na na na Batman! He’s the best. One of pop culture’s greatest characters. An instantly recognizable titan of a character and one that has remained relevant for now almost sixty years on the silver screen. He can claim ownership to some of the greatest films ever made, and some of the most despicable as well. This list looks at those, and everything in between.

13. Justice League (2017)

A bastardization of The Avengers that looks to capitalize on Marvel’s success without doing all the hard work that made that team up film so successful in the first place. Justice League has no identity. It is a sloppy imitation of the tone of Marvel’s semi-comedic ventures with no good jokes. It is an imitation of their spongy CGI action without any good fight scenes. It is a shameful replication of their assembling of an all-star team of superheroes, but with almost all of the members having to be introduced in a sub-3-hour time period.

Justice League is a colossal failure on damn near every front. And as a Batman movie? Forget it. The character Bruce Wayne is buried underneath cheap laughs while Batman is proxy for faceless iconic superheroes to fight together. Without question the Caped Crusader’s worst effort.

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

Batman v. Superman may be nearly as intolerable as Justice League, but it undeniably has a more singular voice. Granted, that voice happens to contain Snyder’s hideous imagery and some of the most mind-numbingly dumb decisions ever put into an adaptation.

Batman v. Superman is a predictable slog that sloppily tries to grapple with bigger questions about the jurisdiction of a superhero like Superman and ends up with nothing intelligent left to say about either of its two juggernaut leads. The warehouse fight is one of Batman’s better beatdowns, but Snyder barely even dives into what makes Batman tick. Affleck’s Batman is not a character that has layers underneath his iconic stoicism. He is a bland and oddly irascible character that is not even successful in getting the audience on his side. It barely edges out Justice League and is still leagues below the other films.

11. Batman and Robin (1995)

Batman and Robin is almost hard to despise because of just how hilariously bad it is. Every single scene is packed full of laugh-out-loud moments, just for the wrong reasons. It fundamentally misunderstands what makes the campy side of Batman endearing. It reduces Batman and all his allies to punchlines. The overstuffed cast of villains are somehow worse, having even shallower motives and more over-the-top one-liners. This cast of superstar talent all gives in career-worst performances. Silverstone may have less than ten lines where she speaks like an actual human being. Uma Thurman could not have missed the mark more in trying to capture the seductive Poison Ivy. And Clooney playing his usual suave self does not meld well with the goofy as hell tone.

There is something lovable about how much Batman and Robin faceplants, but to say it is one of Batman’s better endeavors is disingenuous. It can still be painstakingly boring with its contrived character setups and does not provide any narrative meat to chew on.

10. Batman Forever (1995)

What can be said about Batman and Robin largely stands for Batman Forever. It has no narrative sophistication while not being purposefully funny enough to be a successful comedy. It still can be torturous whenever some characters, such as Nicole’s Kidman’s, gets on screen. And it still has a sadly one-note turn for the main character. But it also is far better in the balance of seriousness and silliness. The chemistry of Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones is dynamite their backstage quarrels. And it is a superhero movie that can be goofy without rendering all the stakes and emotions totally irrelevant.

A lot of the gothic visual influence from Burton’s films still remain, and Batman remains slightly interesting even if it is due to just how plain he is set against two lovable and oh so 90s psychopaths. Still, it shouldn’t be getting too much credit. This can still be a slog with intermittent bursts of joy that do virtually nothing to expand and complicate Batman as a character. Definitely has merit, but overall, still needs to be harshly critiqued for how dull the story can be in spite of its colorful world.

9. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)

Mask of the Phantasm has become quite the cult favorite since first releasing in 1993, and there is plenty to admire. The action scenes are top notch, and The Phantasm is built up to be a mysterious and formidable foe for Batman himself, but Mask of the Phantasm shares a lot of qualities with Batman’s lesser adventures. The script here is severely hindered by the fact that this is an animated movie marketed towards kids. Even more than Lego Batman, Mask of the Phantasm’s exchanges feel childish. The playful exchanges between Andrea and Bruce are especially painful. Their conversations are labored beyond belief and try so hard to make you believe they are in love that you reject the relationship entirely.

Mask of the Phantasm has gotten props for how it explores Bruce after his parents’ death, but it ultimately spends way too much time with an emotionless love interest that ends up being an annoying distraction from the engaging action scenes. Mix that in with Joker being his predictable self, diminishing the impact of the Phantasm, and you have a rather middle-of-the-road Batman movie that does not do a lot to impress.

8. The LEGO Batman Movie (2017)

Batman’s other animated showing is a pretty successful Batman movie. It is a humorous sendup of how introverted and lame Batman can be at times and is a surprisingly touching look at Batman’s father-son relationship with the boy wonder. Robin is such an integral part of the Batman character, but he gets virtually no justice on the silver screen, so it is especially rewarding to have him portrayed in a significant way here.

The Lego Batman, unlike Mask of the Phantasm, feels like it knows adults will be just as eager as kids to watch it. Consequently, its jokes are wonderfully done with so many winks to past iterations of the caped crusader longtime fans can pick up on. But is there anything extraordinary about the Lego Batman movie? It is yet another story of Batman vs. Joker, with a weak love interest and a plot that gets a lot less endearing past the halfway point. Lego Batman can still feel very cutesy which makes it overly sanguine at times and limits it from exploring the darker and poignant themes we see in the elite Batman adventures.

The Caped Crusader. The World’s Greatest Detective. The Dark Knight. The Batman. The world has been neck deep in love for Batman, making him arguably the most popular hero in comicdom. Although, that wasn’t always the case. There was an ebb and flow for a long time.

There was a peak in the 60s with his super popular TV show that was broader than comic fans. But then that drifted away as he went back to the niche market at the time. Then he came back to the popular consciousness with the late 80s 1-2 punch of Frank Millers work on The Dark Knight Returns/Year One and the 1989 release of Tim Burton’s truly iconic Batman.

Since then? Nonstop Batman, reaching an absolute fever pitch with Christopher Nolan’s work in the mid to late 2000s with The Dark Knight Trilogy. Prior to Wonder Womans massive success, WB was really leaning on Batman’s massive popularity to bolster the then struggling DCEU being set up.

With announced Nightwing, Gotham City Sirens, and Batgirl entries in addition to Matt Reeves’ The Batman, we’re not gonna have a shortage of the Bat on the big screen for a long time. So while we wait for the November release of Justice League, the next time we’ll see the Bat, let’s take a look back on his cinematic excursions thus far and give them the definitive ranking. Well, definitive until the requisite comment on this article that says I’m a doofus or some such nonsense. Let’s go!

11. Batman Forever (1995)

This is truly the only movie Batman has been in that can be considered boring. It’s stuck in this weird little limbo, trying to be a Burton Batman movie and Joel Schumachers version. It never really reaches an apex for either version, becoming this boring little stew that is just limp and obnoxious.

Boring being Val Kilmer’s sleepwalking in a nippled bat suit and Chris O’Donnell playing the oldest ward history has ever seen, with a little dash of a gorgeous but nothing else Nicole Kidman as the love interest. Obnoxious being pretty much everything else.

Jim Carrey’s first cinematic scream for help, a warning plea to the world that he is a damaged soul that just constantly needs attention and will derail a movie if he has to and a sign to the world that he wasn’t gonna be bulletproof forever. Tommy Lee Jones, a man who very rarely sanctions buffoonery, is acting as if his contract stipulated a paycheck that gets bigger and bigger equally to his performances’ decibel level.

The plot itself is just a weird mish mash of nothing happening, with The Riddler coming to be because Bruce Wayne doesn’t give him enough respect and Two-Face just happening to be around. So Batman is thrown into this situation, that isn’t actually an issue until the third act, for no reason other than wounded pride. Which could be interesting if the movie did anything with it, but it doesn’t. The action isn’t even on a level that can be enjoyed.

All of this is bad enough, but the truly monumental sin is that the movie cures Batman. Yeah, that’s right. Batman is cured, finally getting over the death of his parents. So he is ready to quit, until he’s brought back after a raid on the mansion. But then he stays Batman, but is also over it. Just a stunning, fundamental misunderstanding of the character.

10. Batman and Robin (1997)

Long considered the worst movie in the Bat bunch, there is some fun to be had here. It’s not a boring movie at the very least. There’s some interesting elements that could have been special, but aren’t executed very well. Like the storyline with Alfred’s mortality. It could have been something really cool to do. Just that execution is lacking.

But the attempt is there and helps elevate it above Batman Forever. The biggest issue is that Schumacher isn’t the guy for these kinds of movies, incapable of utilizing the big screen for comic book cinema. He’s also not the guy who should be in charge of Batman, as he obviously isn’t much too keen on the character. There’s no passion to the movie, just the madcap insanity of man in too deep in a world he doesn’t know.

Some fans of the movie like to argue that it is a big screen redo of the 60s tv model, going for camp as a direct rebuttal to the success of Burtons darker work. Which would be fine, except the movie doesn’t reach that shows delirious heights. It doesn’t feel earned, like the movie is off the rails whereas the show did exactly what it was trying to do.

The acting isn’t much better than it was in the last entry, Clooney not doing anything to justify his replacement of Kilmer. O’Donnell is still around for some damn reason. The new love interest is Elle McPherson, although you wouldn’t be wrong for not remembering that since she’s not a great actress and doesn’t make much of an impression in her 3 minutes of screen time.

What is more successful and helps tone the obnoxiousness levels down a good deal is Arnold Scwarzenneger and Uma Thurman. They know exactly what movie they’re in and are having a blast. This is not a good movie. Gotta get that out of the way. But it’s a fun movie, especially in group, and it was luckily so bad that we were able to get the Nolan movies out of it.

9. Batman (1989)

The movie that helped to start it all. A big ole piece of marketing perfection, selling a movie based on it’s logo that dominated the country in 1989. The bat logo was on everything and it was everywhere. The movie itself, at the time, didn’t disappoint. It was one of the biggest movies ever at the time, a true phenomenon. It put a little life into the comic book movie market, which was still in it’s infancy at the time, after the colossal collapse of Superman IV: The Quest For Peace.

Slowly but surely, it paved the way for Blade and X-Men, which then helped birth the world we are in now. But with a little hindsight, it is not a very good movie. It’s not bad, far from awful. But it really does not hold up well at all. The biggest issue that causes these problems are a very bad script, one that has no cohesion at all.

There’s no drama, no propulsion from one scene to the next. It’s a collection of moments that culminate in a moment that feels really unearned and reliant on a twist that completely hinders Bruce Wayne’s tragedy, turning it into a world narrowing crutch for the narrative.

Another big problem is partly on Burton and partly on the time/budget. The action scenes are bland. They can’t do much because the suit is not built very well and the budget doesn’t allow for much more than anything other than badly choreographed fist fights in the suit. A problem that is also kind of a positive?

Jack Nicholson, not even close to playing The Joker but is an absolute delight to watch anyway. He’s here to chew up all the scenery in a role that would more accurately be considered Jack in face paint. It’s a performance that becomes the only thing the movie is interested in, letting nothing else breathe.

It’s a crutch for the weak script, especially when you realize there’s nothing to the Jokers story. He just does stuff, and not in the chaotic way Heath Ledgers would attack things. No, it’s just underwritten chaos for no other reason than the script says so. Which is a shame that he takes so much away from the movie, as Michael Keaton is an interesting Batman/Bruce Wayne.

He wouldn’t really get a chance to shine until Batman Returns. He’s interesting because it’s a different way for Bruce to be portrayed, as a barely controlled maniac instead of the highly intelligent detective/ninja he’s usually portrayed as. Kim Basinger is fine? She doesn’t have much to do, other than be a kind of audience surrogate.

The biggest strength of this movie has to be the production design by Anton Furst, a truly beautiful work of art that catches the eye. Credit also has to go to Burton for managing to make something worth watching with all the issues he had to deal with. Not a great movie, no. But one that is definitely watchable and very important to cinema.

8. The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

One of the most anticipated sequels of all time, following up the landmark The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan delivers his first true disappointment of his career. Not to say that this is a bad movie. It really isn’t. There’s a lot to like in here. But it doesn’t even come close to living up the Batman Begins, let alone The Dark Knight. Maybe the hype had something to do with it? Possible, but doubtful, since there are way too many storytelling flaws to really make a legitimate case for its superiority.

For a movie as long as it is, there feels like way too much story is missing here. For the most interesting aspect of the narrative isn’t there, that being the time that Gotham is under Banes thumb. It could have been really fascinating to see the city fall like that, in a way much more severe than the case of chaos that The Joker delivers in The Dark Knight.

Then there’s the issue of Bruce Wayne himself and the narrative arc that he is given. Bruce going into hiding/retiring after the events of the last movie isn’t a problem on its face. The real issue comes with the reasoning and execution of the idea. It’s implied that Bruce retired because of the death of Rachel Dawes, not that the government instituted a law that severely dampens crime or that he is a fugitive. It’s a weird arc for him to take, especially with much juicier ways to take that arc. And while Bane himself is a great character with some great moments that delivers quite well on the thematic front, there’s some issues within this narrative too.

Mainly one of too much convenience that borders on insulting, especially within a series that has typically gone to great lengths to show how everything works. Add in the ending twist that just lands with a thud, Talia Al Ghuls introduction is silly and her farewell is even worse. Maybe the biggest problem is Joseph Gordon Levitt, having to portray a character that doesn’t work at all.

The movie tries to set it up that he could be the next Gotham vigilante, but it rushes through it to the point that the ending feels more conceptual than logistical. Yet, despite these flaws, the movie works pretty well as an action vehicle. The big scope of the thing works in it’s favor, as does the typically stellar visuals.

Anne Hathaway just kills it as Catwoman. And the third act, while involving some narrative flubs, contains some of the most fist pumping moments of pure cinematic ecstasy in Nolan’s career. Flawed on some surprising levels, considering the pedigree, but it works.

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

The biggest hot take in this article? Possibly. Even hotter? Ben Affleck is probably the best live action version of Batman we have seen thus far. While this movie may have taken its fair share of beatings (some of it earned), the movie is far from a dumpster fire it is made out to be and contains some of the best Batman material we’ve seen. The movie is quite large and is spread between the two titular heroes, focusing on Batman seems correct.

What this movie does is something quite ingenious, a relative to something being done in the comics currently. For decades, Batman has been defined by the darkness imbued into him by Frank Miller. What this movie presupposes is, what if that’s a bad thing? A man so driven by rage and obsession would only get worse as he gets older, right? Especially in a world we he feels like he’s constantly losing his war against crime, seeing supervillains rise up with ease to keep the fight going and seeing his allies either die or become villains themselves.

It’s a real interesting thematic choice to follow, essentially making Batman the bad guy of the narrative. To make a movie that is structured around a fight between these two titans, it stands to reason that there needs to be some excuse for them to fight. A misunderstanding that is brushed aside quickly would be the easy choice to make.

But to follow this thread, allowing Superman to obviously stay in the right during the bout, is a stroke of genius. And by having the DCEU exist as one where most of the heroes have existed before the events of Man of Steel, it allows Batman to have an arc going forward built into a preexisting history that doesn’t need to be dealt with.

Much like the movies and the world of the movies, Batman is starting dark but moving towards the light. Ben portrays it perfectly too, the rage just simmering at all times. But you get a sense of his intellect and detective skills, while also getting the sense that he does kind of enjoy being Batman/Bruce Wayne. Or at least, he did in his past and the enjoyment is few and far between these days. Not to mention the best on screen portrayal of Batmans skills as a fighter in the amazing Warehouse brawl, this is a pretty complete package for Batman.

Bonus points for Batman barely taking part in the final fight with Doomsday, just having to dodge some lasers a few times as he’s essentially worthless in this fight, a brief flit of humor that works thematically. Justice League should keep this thread going, as the idea of building a team in and of itself is growth for Batman towards shedding his loner skin yet again.

Then there’s The Batman that is being helmed by Matt Reeves, a visionary blockbuster director that is smart enough to see where the Bat has to go. Ignore the cries of misery from some. The future is quite bright for Batman.