All 6 Batman movie theme songs ranked from worst to best

5. The Schumacher Batman movies

When Joel Schumacher took over as director of Warner Bros.’ Batman franchise in the mid ’90s, everything pivoted towards a much campier light-hearted direction. With that, the eerie quiet and bellowing triumph of Danny Elfman’s iconic Batman theme was replaced with a more loud, boisterous and, well, ’90s-ish score. For that Elliot Goldenthal was brought in as composer.

There were a lot of poor decisions made during this time, but bringing in Goldenthal was not one of them. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that he’s probably the most underrated of the Batman composers, because the music he gifted us with during both of these movies (but especially Batman Forever) were a triumph in and of themselves.

From the moody yet triumphant fanfare opening to the track, “Fledermausmarschmusik”, which very much became the basis for the movie’s main score, there was a carnival-esque approach to Goldenthal’s work and it just matched the world of Schumacher’s Batman movies so well. They sounded how they looked, and honestly we don’t appreciate that enough.

This theme tried something completely different from the Danny Elfman theme and yet it still felt completely, definitively Batman.