All 7 Batman movie directors ranked from worst to best

5. Joel Schumacher

Directed: Batman Forever (1995), Batman and Robin (1997)

Joel Schumacher’s Batman movies are remembered in infamy and that’s mostly all because of the poor critical reputation that his second outing, Batman and Robin, holds. It’s true that the 1997 movie killed the Batman franchise for close to a decade but we shouldn’t overlook the studio’s involvement in the failure of that movie and how its toyetic approach was responsible for that.

Schumacher himself has apologized for that movie, particularly to fans of his first outing Batman Forever who were disappointed by the sequel. And believe us when we say those fans are out there, because Forever was a pretty great experience to behold and that was mostly down to Schumacher’s colorful vision.

When a director has nothing to say, it can greatly hinder a movie. But that’s not something we can say about Joel Schumacher’s approach to the Batman franchise, because his style had a lot to say.

With large, Greek-god statues all over the city, Gothic architecture that somehow still reeked of the ’90s, and neon lights everywhere to be seen, Schumacher’s Batman movies were full of life. Batman Forever attempted to pair that cartoonish backdrop with a mature story while Batman and Robin just went all in on the madness. The result in both cases is vivid entertainment.

Objectively, Batman and Robin is not a good movie, but Joel Schumacher ensured audiences were in for a ride with his Caped Crusader adventures – two adventures that at least looked like they had been ripped from the pages of a comic book. And that’s more than enough to earn points with us.