Best BATMAN Movie

[Forever Knight]

Vote & Discuss

 

[Daikamonohashi]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNaDZIrxh-0[/ame]

'nuff said.

 

[UkiyaSeed]

I go for the Dark Knight. We have the best movie Joker, Ever.

 

[Jacky392000]

Batman Begins. I loved Christian Bale in there.
The Dark Knight only rocked because of Heath Ledger.

 

[Reito-sama]

Dark Knight for me. Ever since because of Joker's threats.

 

[Shougo B'Stard]

Batman '89. It's a good movie, it's a cool movie, and uniquely Batman. Burton goes a little overboard in Returns, Schumacher never took the character seriously, and Nolan's movies are interchangeable with any run-of-the-mill crime flick. It explores the admirable fucked-upness of a psyche that would put on a Bat-suit to fight crime in the middle of the night without devolving into Nolan-esque cynicism.

Michael Keaton killed in the role, Nicholson's Joker is actually the Joker, the set designs are creative, and Batman '89's Gotham City is one creepy place. Yeah, yeah, mock it for the Prince soundtrack, but that's not as bad as Clooney's head-shaking or as distracting as Bale's Batman voice.

And I know it's blasphemous to the comic book fans, but I just always thought it was sort of genius to make the Joker the mobster murderer of Batman's parents. The Joker is Batman's ultimate foe, and that really added another dimension.

 

[Daikamonohashi]

I couldn't stand the Burton Batman last time I watched it. All the practical effects were pretty but the pacing in that film hurt me so badly.

 

[Lynxara]

The Burton Batman flick has the same basic problem for me as The Dark Knight. Both movies feature these super-long scenes of the Joker mugging for the audience that slows the pace of the film down for no real reason.

Of the two I slightly prefer Batman '89, since the Nicholson Joker is just a more well-rounded and interesting take on the character than Ledger's. The Ledger Joker is more something out of a horror film than anything else, complete with the script arbitrarily on his side and Voorhees Unreality Engine to aid his movement. Ledger's Joker is frankly so inhuman he's kind of boring.

I went with Batman Begins as a favorite because it was such a completely Bronze Age movie, and that era is probably my favorite of the actual Batman comic eras. Everything from its take on the Scarecrow to the Henri Ducard subplot was well within the realm of things Neal Adams might've drawn in the late 70s or early 80s.

Incidentally, I really don't understand why people dismiss the Nolan flicks as general crime movies when at points he references specific issues, stories, and layouts. Writing Batman into what are essentially crime stories goes back as the 40s, when Jerry Robinson decided a pastiche of the titular Man Who Laughs would make a good Batman villain.

In fact, Batman spends pretty much all of the 40s fighting gangsters until Dick Sprang's popularity as an artist influenced the more light-hearted comics of the 50s and 60s. Part of the 70s Batman "revival" that brought the character back to his dark roots involved writing him into more comics that featured crime stories and film noir-like plots.

 

[Shougo B'Stard]

The difference is that you can eliminate anything related to Batman from the Nolan movies and have the same exact movie. When even Frank Miller -- Frank Miller! -- is like "Hey, where's the Batman in this?" about The Dark Knight, you know you've got a problem.

 

[Sage Shinigami]

The difference is that you can eliminate anything related to Batman from the Nolan movies and have the same exact movie. When even Frank Miller -- Frank Miller! -- is like "Hey, where's the Batman in this?" about The Dark Knight, you know you've got a problem.

Maybe Frank Miller should do comics that aren't All-Star Batman and Robin.

And, Dark Knight. I had this argument before on HJU and it went awful, so that's it for me.