All 13 Batman movies ranked from worst to best

3. The Dark Knight

You’d be hard-pressed to find a cinema fan who wasn’t impressed by some aspect of The Dark Knight. The movie is celebrated as not just one of the finest in the comic book genre but in the history of filmmaking itself. That speaks volumes as to what Christopher Nolan and the creative team accomplished here, as they turned a genre that people once turned their noses up at into a celebrated, award-winning piece of history.

What makes The Dark Knight so successful? The fact that it followed up the already-adored established world of Nolan’s Batman Begins certainly helped, but it was the elements introduced in the movie itself that offered up its greatest attributes. Elements like the grounded and complex storytelling of the crime thriller kind, as Christian Bale’s brooding hero found himself caught in the middle of a war with a crime-lord interested in nothing but anarchy itself, setting up a battle of many layers between the corrupt and the incorruptible.

Its greatest attribute comes from that very crime lord, with the late, great Heath Ledger delivering a truly remarkable performance as The Joker, etching his name in history as one of the greatest movie villains – if not the greatest – of all time.

Contrary to what the genre critics say, this is cinema. And it’s cinema at its finest.