Ranking every live-action Batman movie from worst to best

Photo: Batman Returns Courtesy DC Universe PR

5. Batman Returns (1992)

Kicking off the top five Batman movies is Tim Burton’s 1992 follow-up that almost never happened. Warner Bros. tapped Sam Hamm as the film’s writer and wanted Tim Burton to direct. For that to happen, Burton needed creative control — fortunately he got it.

Burton didn’t like Hamm’s approach and brought on Daniel Waters and eventually Wesley Strick to clean up some dialogue issues. The result saw Batman Returns sneaking onto an Academy Award ballot.

With a budget of just $80 million, Warner Bros. more than doubled their production budget with the film grossing $162 million. The film saw Michael Keaton return as Batman with Christopher Walken, Danny DeVito and Michelle Pfeiffer joining the cast as Max Shreck, Penguin and Catwoman, respectively.

The film was a villain centric goth fantasy that differed, yet familiarized with the comic it was based on as evident by the majestic resurrection of Selina Kyle after she was pushed out the window by Max Shreck.

Selina was an unassertive woman who overcame an oppressive male-chauvinist boss (Shreck) to become the feminist anti-villain Catwoman. This was the unquestioned origin story of Catwoman but, DeVito’s Penguin was the focus of the film: a deformed underground man who rose from poverty to become a crime lord.

He was convinced by Shreck to rise from the shadows and run for mayor. After Gotham rejects him as a freak, Penguin opts to kill the first-born sons of Gotham.

Keaton’s Batman served as a beckon of hope that never shines. He’s not able to stop Catwoman from murdering Shreck. Nor was he able to bring Penguin to justice.

It wasn’t a perfect Batman film, but it was a story done in a style that only Burton could pull off. A great movie that can never be duplicated, nor should it.