Every big-screen Batman villain, ranked from worst to best
From cackling Cesar Romero to a riddling Paul Dano, we look back on a history of Gotham heavies
Film Lists Batman
Robert Pattinson’s The Batman, the
biggest box office hit so far in 2022, moves into the streaming space
on April 18 on HBO Max. Which makes this is an ideal time to revisit a major
debate in Batman lore. No, not the one over who wore the cape and cowl best—Michael
Keaton? Christian Bale? Ben Affleck? Pattison?—because the truth is
that Batman isn’t the most challenging or rewarding role in these films.
We know that the man behind
the mask probably matters less, in the grand scheme, than whatever colorful
lunatic he’s squaring off against. Consensus holds that the Bat has the greatest of all rogues’ galleries—an unparalleled perp lineup of adversaries. And over the years, that’s been a boon for Hollywood stars and character actors alike, who have stolen whole pictures (like Jack Nicholson did in 1989, demanding, receiving, and arguably earning his top billing) or just improved them.
Of course, all supervillains are not created equal. There’s a range even when it comes to a particular character; we’ve had great Jokers, and not so great ones. To that end, the following is an attempt to comprehensively rank every bad guy Batman has tussled with on the big screen—to create a hierarchy of dastardliness, to sort the well-baked hams from the undercooked ones, to differentiate between Gotham’s most wanted and its most inane.
We stuck to theatrical releases, hence the absence of, say, Hush and Mutant Leader. Henchmen, corporate foes, and disposable mob bosses are allowed. And we included reluctant villains that eventually become allies, like the Man Of Steel and multiple iterations of Catwoman. To be considered, a villain had to have some onscreen relationship to Batman, which is why Harley Quinn made the cut (she spars with Bataffleck for a few minutes in Suicide Squad) but fellow Arkham regular Killer Croc did not. And if our No. 1 is obvious, what can we say? A true flair for the dramatic is hard to miss.
271 Comments
When was the last time The A.V. Club did a theme week that wasn’t one of their annual The Year 20 Years Ago Weeks?
They did Love Week a few weeks ago. It was almost entirely reruns of old articles.
Perhaps if you offer suggestions for themes they’ll start it up again. That, or they’ll turn off comments and fire half the staff.
Speaking of A.V. Club fuckups, my new account is still in the grays after 3 months.
Three months? Child’s play. Mine’s been fucked since last June.
Didn’t we used to be able to get out of the grays if enough people liked our posts?
That’s how I thought it used to work, just get enough replies and likes, but honestly at this point I have no idea. My old account https://kinja.com/billm86 that was active from 2009 to 2021 got Kinja’d completely, basically got deleted I think? Not sure exactly what I did for that but comments stopped appearing in articles and old ones that had been up for a decade were seemingly lost. I could still log in and make comments but they’d never actually appear in the stories after refreshing or exiting, as seen below.
Tried to email Kinja a few times but shockingly never got a reply so I gave up and started a new account that’s now been in the grays for almost a year. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I already took the site off my bookmark bar and unfollowed on social media after the staff gutting/moving to LA fiasco and only popped into this one because someone else linked it so it’s not like my account is getting much use these days but it’s still annoying.
I had the same experience as you a little over 3 months ago: couldn’t make any new comments, all my old Kinja comments gone(good thing I didn’t integrate my Kinja account with my Disqus A.V. Club account, because all of my pre-Kinja comments are still there), and when I contacted Kinja they did nothing so I started this account and it’s been in the grays ever since. The thing that really sucks for me is that there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell people for a while that I want a lot of people to see and I figured now would be a good time with big changes about to happen in The A.V. Club, but I need someone to like my comment for it to be visible to everyone.
Ugh that suuuuuuuuuuucks. It’s a small comfort that it wasn’t just my account that it happened to, even though I bet that’s probably the last thing you want to read right now.
Maybe if we keep replying to each other enough the auto-bots will bring us into the promised land? Is it possible to fool the machines or is Kinja so super beyond fixing that there’s nothing we can do.
Your idea reminds me of the South Park episode where they become champions in WoW by killing a bunch of boars.
You know what, that sounds like a fantastic idea and I will find some boars.
And it had nothing to do with you defending blackface and transphobes…/s
Basically shot through just to insure that Phantasm was in there and also in the top 10 at least, so I’m content. She did show up one more time though, not entirely a one-off. Years later she would choose not to murder Terry McGinnis’ parents for Amanda Waller.
Yeah, that episode, “Epilogue” if I remember correctly, was such an emotional tribute that closed an era of a long-running, beloved version of Batman kicked off by Burton’s Batman.
I know it’s almost cliche at this point but wow, Ledger’s performance as the Joker is a tour de force. I was super wary about him as the Joker before the first trailer came out, having largely been unimpressed with many of the films he was in.But seeing the Dark Knight for the first time was something else – He dominates every second he’s there and you never forget about him.Also, I’m glad to see some props for Eisenberg’s Luthor – It’s a genuinely good performance and something mercifully different from the Gene Hackman/Kevin Spacey version of the character (no criticism of either of those performances though).
My problem isn’t so much with Eisenberg’s performance so much as the character he’s portraying. It felt more like somewhere in between Ledger’s Joker and Leto’s Joker. Lex Luthor may be obsessive and arrogant but he was never maniacally unhinged to the heights of Eisenberg’s run.
It’s a shame we’ve never seen the big screen treatment for the post-Crisis Byrne-onward take on the character as the ruthless business mogul. It’s been by far the most successful take on Luthor to the point where DC keeps coming back to it in the comics. Except for that weird period in the mid-late 2000s where Jeph Loeb and Geoff Johns were intent on resetting him as a Silver Age mad scientist again. Fuck that dumb.
It really is another one of those “copy the damn animated series!” moments. All those years in S:TAS with Lex being just a big, power hungry and egomaniac CEO who slowly gets pushed to more extremes was amazing. His hatred, fear and respect for Superman came through great, and it was believable when he finally snapped and went full supervillain.
Seriously, just cast Clancy Brown and shave his head and put him in an expensive suit. Instant Lex Luthor.
Yeah, the Clancy Brown animated version is still my favorite Lex Luthor. He’s a far better antagonist for Superman when he’s a publicly respected, even beloved mogul who secretly pulls the strings on a whole array of criminal shittiness. What’s Superman to do when Lex can’t be tied to any of the crimes that Supes knows he committed?
Even Lex Luthor heading the Legion of Doom in the 70s/80’s Superfriends cartoons was more sinister and calculating than Snyder’s rendition. Sure, he had a maniacal laugh but was still more reserved.
His version of Luthor would have fit better if he hadn’t been a megacorp CEO and went more Silver Age mad scientist with him. Or if we’d had more time with him as a CEO and then slowly saw him go nuts as he tried to make sense of the wildness of Superman and what he represents. But I guess we could say that the problem of most of the original DCEU was wanting to be at the end result as fast as possible.Side note, someone once told me that Eisenberg’s Lex would be perfect as Marvel’s Arcade and I can’t stop thinking about that casting now.
He’s trying to do Gene Hackman’s Luthor (BOOMER REFERENCE)And honestly I don’t get why ever big screen Luthor has to be in the mold, felt Spacey was aiming for that too. Slow, simmering, methodical Luthor, why can’t we get that?
Well, Spacey was supposed to be Hackman’s “Greatest Criminal Mind of Our Time” Luthor, so it makes sense that he took that performance and added some extra rage and brutality to it.
I definitely saw that in Spacey’s turn, to poor effect, but I didn’t get that at all from Eisnenberg.When casting rumors initially went out, I prayed they’d tag Brian Cranston, still fresh from his run in the multiple award winning Breaking Bad that seemed to be all but grooming him for the role. Lex Luthor is Superman’s greatest threat who should be menacing as he is calculating, not some kid doing a TED Talk for a half hour on screen.He wasn’t too old. I’d rather have gravitas over hammy granstanding.
Lex Luthor may be obsessive and arrogant but he was never maniacally unhinged to the heights of Eisenberg’s run.That is the fun thing about fiction, characters can be changed to anything they need to be, to fit the story they are placed into, just like every other character on the list
It really couldn’t possibly have been more clear from the movie that they wanted to reimagine Luthor as a Mark Zuckerberg-type modern tech guy, and that they cast Eisenberg because he had literally just played Zuckerberg. That kind of “write the end first and then let’s backtrack to make it sort-of make sense” thinking shows up so much in that movie (“hey, their mothers have the same first name – let’s use that!”).
The moment you title your movie Batman VERSUS Superman, you’re going to have to reverse-engineer it.
Fair point. I still maintain that it should have been a legal drama based on that title.
Framing Batman as anti-immigrant with the contention that Superman is an “illegal” in violation of numerous citizenship laws.
Yeah, I felt like Eisenberg went way too far into “crazed madman” since everybody was chasing Ledger’s Joker (which was the style at the time). Like so much of Snyder’s DC run, I like the idea far, far more than the execution. A smarmy, insufferable tech bro take on Lex Luthor is genius. The decision to make him a crazed, wide-eyed, hyperactive monologuing one-dimensional villain was not.
To be fair, Eisenberg’s Luthor is more calculating (bald) businessman than on-the-spectrum tech-bro at the end of Justice League. There were clearly plans for that but because every screenwriter thinks every character needs a journey to become their character we had to suffer through Jolly Ranchers and jars of piss.
True, but by then he’s a convicted felon and verified “bad guy” in the public eye. (Also, somehow prison completely changed his personality and fashion sense?) To my mind, the most interesting version of the character is one who has enormous public and political influence and pulls the strings on wide varieties of nefarious stuff, but doesn’t get involved personally and can never be publicly connected to any of it, even though Superman knows full well he’s the bad guy.
To me, it’s really the only good way to keep him as a natural foil for Superman. Supes could just punch him to death or drag him off, somewhere, but he obviously won’t do that, and the levers of the criminal justice system are useless against Lex.
i never read eisenberg’s luthor as ‘crazed madman’, comes off much more as ‘on cocaine’. he reminded me of andy garcia’s take on a villain in ‘8 million ways to die’, which was evil villain as portrayed as annoying guy at a party you’re stuck talking to.
I just felt the need to post this for some odd reason and I don’t know why…
I mean, he’s got a point. If you stray too far from the source material, you risk alienating the fans. As for everyone else, it won’t matter if they’re unfamiliar with the character outside of the logo and and cowl. They’ll either love it or hate it either way but at least the fans will pay to see it multiple times if you don’t go out of your way to piss them off.
No love for Terence Stamp’s Zod?
He is, in fact, my favorite Zod but what’s that have to do with Lex Luthor?
He was miscast as Luthor, he would have made a better Riddler honestly.
I will say that Eckhart is nearly as good – I’d probably flip him and Harley.
Agreed.Harley is a character who I feel works best in small doses – The Suicide Squad was her best appearance by a fucking mile. Birds of Prey was such a disappointment – Way too much Harley and the absolutely lifeless Cassandra and way too little Huntress and Ewan McGregor.
Honestly didn’t even watch BoP.No Barbara=No Thank You
Honestly? I love Ewan McGregor more than can possibly be healthy, but for me, his performance was basically just retreading Halston, and it was really distracting to me. The camp idea was right on, but it was like he just went on autopilot.
I feel like I’m the only person who just loved the shit out of Birds of Prey. It’s also the last movie I saw in a theatre.
Counterpoint: if Heath Ledger were still alive today, hardly anyone would remember or care about his Joker performance, and more people would recognize that TDK is an overlong, indulgent piece of crap.
Lex Luthor is possibly my least favorite of the major superhero archenemies. He feels like a bog standard arrogant mad scientist character with a boring design, one who admittedly lucked out and got in early to fight the first real American superhero.
Not long ago I watched “Superman” with a friend from the UK who’d never seen it, and he immediately said at the the first scene with Luthor, in his vast underground lair, “Oh, this is just like James Bond! He’s like a Bond villain!” And ooooh, I finally, after all these years, saw what they were going for. I knew the producers were going for a rival to the Bond franchise, but I’d never made that connection vis-a-vis the conception of Luthor.
I’m a defender of Eisenberg here as well, but I think I’d like the performance a lot less if it was in a better movie. He and Gadot’s Wonder Woman stand out more amidst all the depressive glowering navy blue and orange bullshit that the rest of that film is.
Someone made a compilation of all the weird noises Eisenberg makes in BVSDOJ, and it makes me extremely uncomfortable.
Making Luthor into a Zuckerberg type annoying little shit is honestly one of the best creative decisions Snyder’s ever made in a comic book movie. Best part of that shitshow.
I thought Eisenberg’s character was a decent villain, just not a good “Lex Luthor.” I know that adaptations are just that, and there’s something to be said for judging the performance on its own merits, but I also feel like the performance has to be good enough to justify the deviation from the source (for example, Ledger’s Joker is phenomenal, even if distinct from any iteration that came before).In my head, I’ve always had a simple solution to this problem though. A (post-credits) scene where an older, bald man (Bryan Cranston, or whoever) walks into the room or cell where Eisenberg’s Luthor is and says something to the effecdt of “Hello, Jr.” Reframing Eisenberg’s character as the cold and calculated Luthor’s son, trying to live up to his father’s reputation, makes him much more interesting imo.
Wow, I do not remember a single thing about any of those Justice League villains. What an utterly forgettable movie.I’m not sure how Arthur Fleck made the list. Did he have any sort of interaction with Bruce Wayne, even?
He goes to confront Thomas Wayne at Wayne Manor, and chats briefly with little Bruce through the bars of the gate.
I would argue that that hardly counts as an onscreen connection with Batman. Baby Bruce Wayne and Batman are not the same person.
Which leads to the follow-up question: does being Bruce Wayne’s enemy make you a Batman villain? If not, then we have to cross William Earle, John Daggett and even Joe Chill off the list.
And they should have crossed them off. They’re the thinnest of connections for ridiculous padding. Yet Gamble and Lao from TDK are completely snubbed.
He also (spoiler I guess) starts a riot that directly leads to the Waynes’ murder in that movie, even though he has no idea that this happens. Which was a very weird thing to throw into the end of a movie that almost certainly doesn’t want to actually go down the route of becoming a Batman franchise.
Their embedded video shows him doing magic for Baby Bruce and strangling a guy I refuse to believe is Alfred. It’s an odd inclusion. As are the justice league ones
For those who don’t want to go through over 40 pages of slideshow, here’s the full list:42. Bane (Batman & Robin)41. Victor Zsasz (Batman Begins)40. Steppenwolf (Justice League; Zack Snyder’s Justice League)39. Darkseid (Zack Snyder’s Justice League)38. Deathstroke (Justice League; Zack Snyder’s Justice League)37. Doomsday (Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice)36. Deadshot (Suicide Squad)35. Bob The Goon (Batman)34. Two-Face (Batman Forever)33. The Joker (Suicide Squad; Zack Snyder’s Justice League)32. William Earle (Batman Begins)31. Mr. Freeze (Batman & Robin)30. Carmine “The Roman” Falcone (The Batman)29. Joe Chill (Batman Begins)28. Sal Moroni (The Dark Knight)27. The rogues’ gallery (The Lego Batman Movie) 26. Arthur Fleck (Joker)25. John Daggett (The Dark Knight Rises)24. The Penguin (The Batman)23. The Riddler (The Batman)22. Carmine “The Roman” Falcone (Batman Begins)21. Talia al Ghul (The Dark Knight Rises)20. The Riddler (Batman Forever)19. The Penguin, The Joker, and The Riddler (Batman: The Movie)18. The Joker (The Lego Batman Movie)17. Catwoman (Batman: The Movie)16. Poison Ivy (Batman & Robin)15. Ra’s al Ghul (Batman Begins)14. Superman (Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice; Justice League; Zack Snyder’s Justice League)13. Scarecrow (Batman Begins; The Dark Knight; The Dark Knight Rises)12. Two-Face (The Dark Knight)11. Max Schreck (Batman Returns)10. Lex Luthor (Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice)9. The Phantasm (Batman: Mask Of The Phantasm)8. Catwoman (The Dark Knight Rises)7. The Penguin (Batman Returns)6. Harley Quinn (Suicide Squad)5. Bane (The Dark Knight Rises)4. The Joker (Batman)3. The Joker (Batman: Mask Of The Phantasm)2. Catwoman (Batman Returns)1. The Joker (The Dark Knight)
Those dastards snubbed KGBeast from BVSDOJ!
Who Batman even fights unlike several on this list.
Fuck, at least KGB actually did something, all the DCEU Deathstroke has ever done is just wear a costume and stand around.
More Hot takes: Max Schreck is the best villain in Batman Returns.Selina is an anti hero. Penguin is an unloved child.
Penguin ate the family cat. You can’t do that!
It seems like you’re arguing he’s the ONLY villain in BR.
Fair point, I could have worded that better.
Hotter take: Bruce Wayne from Joker 2019 is the best villain.
You can also just click the “List Slides” button at the top.
Bless you.
I find it annoying that Deathstroke is treated like a Batman villain when he has not direct connection to him. He as a Titans villain. Hell, most of his kids were Titans.Also, in the comics, he’s a pedophile and DC desperately tries to dance around this…The 2003 adaptation of The Judas Contract is probably the best interpretation of the story solely because they left out Tara being raped and completely glossed over because she was “evil”.
Fun list. I always liked that DeVito’s Penguin was a total reinvention of the character, a weird mutant instead of a gentleman villain. He’s also amalgam of Jewish references, physically resembling the caricature Nosferatu even if Max Schreck got the name, being sent down the river by his parents as a baby like Moses, and throwing out a Shylock line or two. I wish more superhero movies had the balls to be flawed and weird and cool as Batman Returns.
I feel like the MCU destroyed our chances for superhero movies that take any risks.
Eternals takes risks. Iron Man 3 takes risks too. I don’t think the MCU takes many, but they’re there. Love them or hate them, both those films do something different.
Eternals and Ironman 3 are, independently of their quality, extremely vanilla and theyale Batman Returns seem like wildly experimental
With the switcheroo, you mean, in Iron Man 3? That would have worked better if Killian was a more compelling villain. I appreciate them for trying it, though. And agreed with Eternals. Twisting one of the heroes into a heartbreaking villain at the end was bold.
Oh, bullshit.
I’m going to start a list of my own, which is “wrongheaded takes on superhero franchises”; in #2 is this listicle, which seems in more or less random order except for the Jokers, and #1 with a bullet is your take. Do you remember when the MCU did a movie where the bad guy won, killing half the people in the universe… and then let it hang for a year before resolving it? Or the one where the super-spy organization that was the foundation for the very successful Avengers movie got wiped out, turning out to have been infiltrated by the bad guys almost from the very beginning? Or having a movie starring Ant-Man? Or basing a movie on a character who was already dead? Honestly.
Yeah, and when we could not get an Edgar Wright film out of them, too.
Do you remember when the MCU did a movie where the bad guy won, killing
half the people in the universe… and then let it hang for a year
before resolving it? Or the one where the super-spy organization that
was the foundation for the very successful Avengers movie got wiped out,
turning out to have been infiltrated by the bad guys almost from the
very beginning? Or having a movie starring Ant-Man? Or basing a movie on
a character who was already dead?
I would describe those as absolutely being risks in the context of a one-and-done story, but normal and even expected in the context of an ongoing soap opera with ever-increasing stakes. TV season finales do the same sort of thing all the time.
OK, but these were 3-hour long movies with a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars that did not pay off for a year. The fact that they took a TV-like risk at that budget is, in and of itself, remarkable.
Then compare it to Empire Strikes Back or the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Ending on a downer has never been as much of a risk if the audience is aware they’re watching a serialized story. These things would have been risks in Iron Man, but they weren’t risks in movie 19 when movies 22-26 had already been announced.Ending a movie with a giant cataclysmic event is risky. Ending it with a giant cataclysmic event and then saying “to be continued” is classic, textbook sequel-bait, especially if you have a well-established audience that’s been on the hook for a decade by that point.The bigger risk at this point would be a definitive ending for anything that can’t be walked back by some cosmic power.
Hi there. This is a listicle about BATMAN villains. Not everything has to be about the MCU. Thank God.
“killing half the people in the universe… and then let it hang for a year before resolving it?”I will never not associate that with the rando in front of me who turned to his friend .7 seconds after the credits started and said “So you said there’s going to be a sequel?”No, Eisenstein. That’s the last Avengers movie ever and half the universe is dead now. It’s a bit experimental, but they really wanted to commit.
As much as I agree I do gotta mention that multiple characters that died in Infinity War had known sequels coming down the pipeline. It deflated the moment for me.
I was never gonna buy them killing off Black Panther or Spider-Man.
Sure, and it’s not as if the MCU was totally free of resurrections already—that’s the basis of Captain America’s character arc, really. But, still, leaving it hanging—how they were going to bring everyone back, especially as Thanos still had full possession and control of the Gauntlet—was the thing. And even the fact that they shot Endgame at the same time, meaning that the answer was basically already in the can, was kind of maddening. Saying that Feige & Co. don’t take risks, because those risks ended up having incredible payouts, is simply and factually wrong.
I mean, Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker exists
Deadpool? Suicide Squad?
Eh, I’d say The Batman takes a fair number of risks. Even just the most recent superhero movie released seems to contradict this statement.
They….kind of do sometimes. Nobody ever thought Ant-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy would be hits, but they played them fairly safe and Ant-Man had a ton of executive meddling
German expressionism was obviously an influence on Batman Returns and Batman (which ends in a chase up a tall cathedral, just like Metropolis*) but Devito’s Penguin seemed more inspired by Dr Caligari or even Lon Chaney’s lost London After Midnight (most of which unfortunately are full of Jewish caricatures).
*I always assumed Christopher Walken’s white wig was a reference to Metropolis’ Dr Frankenstein-ish Rotwang who gives life to the lady robot just as Returns’ Max Shrek creates our stitched-together Frankenstein’s monster-style Catwoman.
Maybe not either/or given the Nosferatu references elsewhere in the movie but, yes, Dr. Caligari is a clear influence on DeVito’s look. Edward Scissorhands also feels like a visual reference to the somnambulist.
Yo, I wanted to thank you for connecting that aesthetic to old german expressionism films, I’ve been trying to figure out what it reminds me of and it didn’t click till now. It fits so well!
More like silent film was a huge huge influence on Batman and Joker to begin with. We wouldn’t have either without The Bat and The Man Who Laughs.
Well, it’s not “more” like, I was speaking to Burton’s deliberate design choices for his adaptation of Batman. “Silent film” isn’t a genre, it’s just a technical divide that happened to have occurred only a decade prior to Detective Comics #27. The Bat and The Man Who Laughs are two of many inspirations for Bob Kane and Bill Finger that just happened to have been made prior to talkies. Pulp characters such as The Shadow, The Phantom, Dracula, Zorro, etc, were also a large influence. But just because Finger and Kane were partially inspired by films that happened to be silent doesn’t mean Tim Burton and his designers had to deliberately draw inspiration from and reference other German Expressionist films when making BATMAN.
Batman Returns is the best Batman movie.Semi hot take.Batman ‘66 is the next best Batman movie.Half hearted hot take.
Batman Returns is the best Batman movie.No arguing with that
Pretty easy to argue against that, actually.
Erm the word “references” is generous here. I don’t think there was evil intent, but these are not particularly, shall we say, favorable Jewish “references”.
Yeah, even Nosferatu himself was an antisemitic caricature. The German expressionistic films that Burton loved and referenced are unfortunately full of antisemitic tropes. I would say Burton simply referenced that aesthetic, but then he did make Penguin into a twisted baby Moses. Maybe that’s why Max Shreck is essentially the film’s villain.
It’s even weirder cause Penguin is originally a super WASPy villain, so everything was a really conscious choice by the filmmakers, and Shreck is pretty clearly coded to be a Jewish businessman even though Walken isn’t Jewish. It’s…not great. But par for the course for a movie folks seem to like but which to me is very Temple of Doomy: both very mean and spiteful movies, even though they’re also well-crafted and visually engaging.
Oh for sure, “Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot” doesn’t exactly scream Jewish cipher. But, “evil Moses” aside, I’m just not sure how much of it was conscious or subconscious, because some tropes that were founded in prejudice remain without that context.
But yeah, I never really understand the love for Batman Returns.
Sure, when I say conscious I guess it’s more that there was clearly “some” intention there (the Shylock lines, etc.). But I don’t think they’re making an anti-Semitic movie, just diving into uncomfortable “other” tropes, which is also something Temple of Doom did. Generally movies that are mean-spirited and broad delve into some pretty lame and stereotypical depictions.
Speaking of which, how fucked up is it that the Penguin has had Antisemitic overtones added in to his character in adaptations (BR and the Harley Quinn series)?
Yeah, that’s the big problem with Burton, he’s pretty incurious about anything other than “can I make this look cool”. The character assassination of Ed Wood for his biopic should be a prime example of that.
“Character assassination”? Ed Wood made Ed Wood look heroic. Yes, it wasn’t particularly accurate (like Amadeus it is using historical figures to tell a story, not be a documentary), but before Ed Wood Wood was remembered (if at all) as just a terrible director of some of the worst movies of all time. Depp’s Wood made him into a sympathetic character.
Nope, that movie took a very complicated man and turned him into a Gomer Pyle-esque character. Check this video out by Maggie Mae Fish about Burton’s flaws as a creator;
But the fact is nobody would care about Ed Wood today if weren’t for the movie. Things like Plan 9 from Outer Space have been surpassed in incompetence by things like The Room. And as unusual a character as Wood was personally, he is surpassed as a eccentric by Tommy Wiseau.
Pretty badly researched, knows very little about Wood apparently
The real Wood’s life was way, way sadder. It barely hinted at his huge flaws.
I know nothing about Ed Wood other than from that movie, but I came out of it really like Ed Wood. It may have been hugely inaccurate (as I said I simply don’t know), but I have a hard time seeing it as “character assassination”.
I think the intent was to do sort of a three-way character study of people (if the Penguin is a person) who have been dispossessed or otherwise rejected by society, and their resulting loneliness, all in the form of a dark cartoon. Yeah, we can certainly replace the word “references” with “stereotypes,” but I do think the Jewish stereotypes are deliberate in keeping with the theme of dispossession. Could be Burton is claiming the right to use images that aren’t really his to use, a la Robert Crumb using offensive caricatures of Black people or Patti Smith using the n-word because they’re Big Important Artists making Big Important Statements. But that’s debatable and Batman Returns is all the more interesting for its willingness to be weird and a bit transgressive.
Batman Returns rules!
Del Toro’s Hellboy films (especially Hellboy II) pick up the “flawed and weird and cool” spirit of Burton’s Batman movies. Both Burton and Del Toro used the heroes as a sandbox for their own best impulses.
GREAT SCOTT!A GRADING OF GOTHAM-IC GUNPERSONS!A NUMBERING OF NEFARIOUS NE’ER-DO-WELLS OF NATIONAL NOTORIETY!HAS THE AV CLUB TRANSFORMED INTO A COTERIE OF CRIMINAL CELEBRATION?!CAN OUR DYNAMIC DUO DEFEAT THEIR MULTIPLE-ITERATED NEMESES, OR IS THIS — THE FINAL END?!TUNE IN TOMORROW! SAME BAT-TIME! SAME BAT-CHANNEL!
Batman does indeed have a coterie of supervillains.
Would you say Batman has a plethora of psychopaths?
Oh yes, skipsatte…he has a plethora!
Do you know what a plethora is?
Why?
Forgive me, bfred. I know that I, skipskatte, do not have your superior intellect and education. But could it be that once again, you are angry at something else, and are looking to take it out on me?
“Yeah, because he’s too much of a candyass to kill them!”
All (Lego) Joker wants is for (Lego) Batman to admit, on some level, they do need each other.See, this smacks of being one of those cases where people take the metatext (that the Joker is clearly one of Batman’s most interesting foes and enables great stories to be told) and try to force it into the actual text in a way that doesn’t really work. Because in-universe the Joker might need Batman on a psychological level, but I can’t see any realistic reading where Batman wouldn’t cope with life just fine if the Joker fucked off forever one day.
i think it’s an interesting take that i like seeing explored, but the problem with batman in general is a lot of dummies have decided that certain things are ‘true’ and have to always be, despite the fact that what makes batman work after all these years is the fact that the creative teams have gone down all kinds of weird, contradictory places.
I can see an interesting take on Batman where all the colorful villains are providing him a focus for his rage at the fundamental injustice of an indifferent universe, preventing him from spiraling into a more existential depression. But I’m not sure that could reasonably be unique to the Joker.
It occurred to me that if you subbed in Uma Thurman’s Poison Ivy for Tommy Lee Jones’ Two-face, and had her play opposite Carrey and Kilmer’s Batman, you might have had a justifiably good version of Schumacher’s “like the old series, campy, but moreso” approach. At least, you’d have two actors who understood the assignment playing the villains in the same movie.
Yeah but then we’d be left with Two Face and Mr Freeze together and I’m not sure that would have worked.
I’d rather have one fully-campy-but-watchable movie and one dire trainwreck than two trainwrecks with a few individual entertaining scenes scattered throughout.
Maybe Schumacher would have come to his senses before that happened.
Frank Gorshin totally rules, dude.
So damn good.
Your opinion is correct.
A 40 page slideshow makes av club the worst villain.
Ledger teetering out of the soon to be exploding hospital…incredible.
Michelle Pfeiffer’s Selina Kyle is just a character that speaks generation to generation, there is something so inherently queer and campy and sexy about her. And it makes Pfeiffer’s iteration an enduring gay icon in her own right.
The rest of the 60’s villains deserved separate entries and higher placing, especially when you are bothering to individually rank so many irrelevant background/incidental villains. (Also, I guess the Birds of Prey movie was outside the scope of this? Black Mask and Zsaz are more traditionally Batman villains than someone like Doomsday)Romero, Gorshin, and Meredith’s renditions are iconic and deserved the space.
Yes, and Gorshin stands out in a way that makes it wrong to just group him with the other villains as one entry.Catwoman does have a bigger role in the plot, but The Riddler is my favourite villain of that movie. I like how The Joker gets annoyed with him because he makes it too easy for Batman to find them by shooting off rockets that write riddles in the sky. The Joker is like, “Riddler, you’re mad! You’ll lead him right to us! Stop sending him riddles!” Then Riddler insists, “But I must! It’s my only joy in life!” The Riddler’s compulsive behaviour is both hilarious and sad.
And when he’s not on screen, we’re thinking about him, like Harry Lime in The Third Man or the shark in Jaws. This is one of the best takes on Ledger’s Joker. He really is like the Shark in Jaws! You really are thinking about him even when other interesting stuff is going on. And like the Shark from Jaws, he is up there with Darth Vader as one of the best and most fun Villians in a movie of the last 50 years.I will say that Mask of the Phantsam Joker is the 1st time I said “oh fuck that, kill that mother fucker!” When you find out when he did as a hood and how he ruined Bruce life after Bruce could have been happy even after his parents death! Man, I wanted Bats to bash his head in! I mean I was 19 in 1993 so you can forgive me wanting to see Batman finally lose it on this asshole who in the comics killed Robin 2.0 and crippled Batgirl.
“I will make this pencil…disappear” is my favorite moment of his. Weirdo sitting there, goofing around with a pencil like it’s 3rd grade, insults dude who doesn’t want to be insulted…BOOM! Point made.
That was some great acting and writing during that scene, it showed how crazy and yet ruthless of a person you were dealing with.
That, and the other baddies’ incomprehension that he was burning his half of the money.
The fact that they couldn’t understand him burning his money but didn’t blink twice at him buring Lau (who was on the pile of money) shows you how bad the villians were and also how much money meant to them.
Mine is just the way he says “yeah” in that same scene. You know what I mean.
“It’s… gone!”
I hate being one of those “and everyone clapped” types. But when I saw that scene in the theater, people applauded. As soon as I saw the trailer for TDK and they showed the scene with Ledger’s Joker daring Batman to hit him, I said to the person next to me “Ledger is going to win an Oscar for this.” What a performance.
I don’t recall anyone applauding, but there was definitely a whole lot of “holy shit!” and half-laughter.
Agreed about Mask of the Phantasm. I was only 11, but this was the film that made me wonder if maybe its time the Joker dies once and for all. The theatrical release and stakes of it certainly lent it that kind of weight. What a movie
Yeah, I mean how much pain can one mass murder cause you before you finally just end him! Seriously its the 2nd best Batman Movie I ever saw and I barley say the Dark Knight is better than it.
Yes on the Phantasm point. Some of these villains are so obviously awful that like, I think maybe the moral thing is to just fuckin kill them. Like, if Superman just floated in and lasered him in half, the world would instantly be a better place, and sometimes that gets frustrating.
See if Krypto was in charge he could have done this and for sure the world would be a better place. But both Bats and Supes so badly don’t want to kill mass murderers! At least Wonderwoman wouldn’t put up with that shit and she would kill in the line of battle.
Please just do a live-action Clayface aleady before I die. Is that too much to ask?
A 42-slide slideshow should be covered by the Geneva convention
The Lego Batman Rougues Gallery deserves to be higher simply for getting Billy Dee Williams to play Two-Face, decades after playing Harvey Dent in the Burton movies (and I believe he took the role in 1989 hoping he would get to be Two Face).Lee Meriwether also deserves to be higher for how awesome she looked in that cat suit.
Yeah it was a crying shame that Billy Dee wasn’t in Batman Returns, setting up his eventual turn into Two Face. As that way it would have been harder for Warners to dump him in favour of Tommy Lee Jones. Though I guess the recent Oscar win made him hot and it made sense in box office terms.
Have you read the Batman ‘89 miniseries? Their version of Two-Face is pretty unique.
I need to check that out.
The animated series that was inspired by Burton era Batman, vaguely uses Billy Dee’s Dent as a template. IMO he seemed, if not black, then at least mixed race.
Though by the later seasons Two Face drifted back to comic book accurate white/Caucasian looking.
Billy Dee Williams as Two Face would have been the coolest cat in the room. Certainly too cool to fit in with Joel Schumacher’s zany take on the material. As much as I like the idea, I honestly don’t know how it would work.
I optimistically like to imagine his very casting would have altered the tone of the picture. But with Jim Carrey there, it goes without saying he would have been upstaged into oblivion. (Williams does not strike me as an actor that can match going that big with his performance. Not without embarrassing himself just as much as Jones did.)
Fair point. It probably would have changed the tone of Schumacher’s Batman, but maybe Carrey’s Riddler could have still worked if he was slightly more restrained.I get that Schumacher was probably trying to ape the ‘66 Batman feel, but sometimes less is more.
Poison Ivy is the worst performance of Thurman’s career. I’m shocked it’s this high in the list. Arguably she’s worse in that movie than Arnie. I revisited Nicholson’s Joker recently and it’s pretty phenomenal. I’d almost say he and Ledger should be 1a and 1b. As time progresses it’s almost like Nicholson’s Joker isn’t as heralded as he should be – it’s an absolutely amazing performance.
I’d argue Uma Thurman is one of the few people on that set who’s actually fully committed to the bit and bringing their A-game. I’m no apologist for that movie (it killed the franchise for a decade with good reason), but maybe it would’ve at least succeeded in what it set out to do if it had more Uma Thurmans and fewer Alicia Silverstones.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, so watching the embedded video (without the context of my hating everything I’d been seeing up to that point) actually makes it clearer to me what Thurman was trying to do, and I’m kind of facing an epiphany about her performance right now. Holy crap, I think I… get it?
I think Nicholson gets a few points off in the rankings for basically just being Nicholson in white makeup. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great performance and I love it, but he doesn’t exactly disappear into the character.
So I always take issue when folks talk about movie scores and say things like “The best score is the one you don’t notice.” Which is demonstrably false. There are two types of great scores: those that you don’t notice but make a subliminal impact; and those that are super out front and great. Nobody was mad they noticed the Superman theme or the Binary Sunset music or the Inception bwahms. I think the same can be said for great performances. You either melt into the role, or you don’t but are out front and great. Ledger was the former, Nicholson the latter. And if you rewatch, Nicholson is definitely a great Joker and not just being Jack – on rewatch I was struck by his physicality which was wonderful and which I hadn’t given credit for previously.
I think maybe people take for granted what a subtle actor Nicholson typically is, and maybe have seen The Shining too many times. There’s a distinct difference between Jack as Jack Napier and as the Joker, and they’re both pretty great performances.
What’s cool about Nicholson’s portrayal of the Joker was that both Jack Napier and the Joker were definitively Jack Nicholson characters. He leaned hard into one bit of his persona (the laconically cool and arrogant Jack) for Napier while going hard to another bit of his persona (the live wire lunatic) for Joker.
You mention The Shining, but there’s also bits of the Joker in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Witches of Eastwick, and many other roles.
Yeah there was also a difference between his character at the start of the shinning verus when he went off the rails.
That’s certainly true, and it is a great performance. But it was definitely JACK NICHOLSON playing the Joker, which, again, is great, but it’s not really a surprise, if that makes sense. If you imagined Jack Nicholson playing the Joker, you pretty much got exactly what you would’ve imagined, so he doesn’t get as much credit as someone like Heath Ledger, where no one could’ve foreseen what he did with the character.
I’ll add, no one was dissapointed to be aware of Howard Shore’s sweeping score in LOTR.
How do you feel about “the setting is a character”
Baby Driver, and Uncut Gems off the top of my heard are two films that have amazing scores / how can you not notice them.
I’m always a little baffled by this take that gets thrown out a lot, that Jack Nicholson is just playing himself. Many people have a very strange idea of both who Jack Nicholson is, and the breadth of his career. It’s also the only live action representation that balances the clown and psychopath sides of the character, with others leaning heavily in one direction or another.
Not really playing himself, but playing a “Jack Nicholson-type”. He’s played against type (especially as he got older) in things like About Schmidt, but if someone says “playing a Jack Nicholson-type” you have a pretty clear idea of what they’re talking about.
Nicholson captured the Englehart/Rogers “Laughing Fish” Joker perfectly (albeit 40 pounds too heavy), and was certainly not just “Nicholson in white makeup”:
Has Nicholson ever really disappeared into a character? He’s a great actor, but everything he’s ever played has been very much Nicholson.Different lenses of Nicholson, sure, but still.
They also stray from the official Batman story by giving him a name and having him help kill Bruce’s parents.
I was honestly surprised to see Carrey and Thurman that high, given how horrific the movies themselves were. Just oof.
Just because a movie is bad doesn’t mean you shouldn’t praise the performances of actors.
she was so much fun in that movie!
What about that movie where she had a giant thumb
Thurman’s Poison Ivy is a really bad idea, but she plays the role gamely and fairly consistently. She’s doing a Mae West impression, and knows that the movie she’s in is very silly. Arnold just shows us why none of the movies he’s been good in gave him monologues to deliver, or even more than a couple of short sentences at a time. Dude basically chokes on the dialogue, which I’m guessing was written back when they thought they might get Patrick Stewart for the role.
Counterpoint:Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, and why we died. All that matters is that today, two stood against many. Valor pleases you, so grant me this one request. Grant me revenge! And if you do not listen, the HELL with you!
I gotta hand it to you and just slow clap. Plus, he started delivering political speeches only a few years after B&R, so he must’ve figured something out. However, it’s still the case that he was horrible as Freeze and I remember at the time them making a big thing about how Arnold was working with a dialogue coach for the role.
Oh yeah, no argument he was awful as freeze, but even with his accent and (at the time) limited English he was capable of delivering (short) dramatic monologues.
Poison Ivy is the worst performance of Thurman’s career.
I dunno man, I’ve seen “Be Cool”.
The correct counter to my assertion is “The Avengers”.
Daaang.
1) I had forgotten about that movieand 2) I had forgotten how hot Ralph Fiennes is in it
Ugh what a let down that movie was. The weird chase/fight scene in the giant teddy bear outfits is really the only highlight, and that only because of the “what the fuck” value.
What an absolutely mediocre movie. So forgettable.
I watched it quite recently, a day after watching Get Shorty. WOOFIt’s literally the exact same plot as the first movie, only with worse characters, worse writing, and no logical motivations. Why does Travolta (who has a really bad rug in this one, wow which is especially ironic considering he keeps commenting on another characters rug) why does he… Okay in the first movie it makes sense. He’s a mafia guy, he LOVES movies, ends up in LA and decides to stay and get into the biz. And it turns out he’s great at it.
In Be Cool, he’s the same former mafia guy who is still in the movie biz and… suddenly wants to get into the music biz? Knows NOTHING about it. His only motivation is he sawr a singer he liked?They make the classic sequel mistake of essentially just doing the same thing, same beats/jokes/plot points as the first, but BIGGER. Why? If I wanted to see the same damn thing I’d watch the same damn movie. Have these characters oh I dunno, do something different? Right?Now I hadn’t read the sequel novel but apparently it shares next to nothing in common with it. You have an Elmore FUCKING Leonard novel to work with and you scrap it? IDIOTS. Instead we get this Hollywood self congratulating circle jerk horseshit.Sorry I could rant endlessly on how much I hated that movie.First one holds up though!
Counterpoint: Thurman’s take on Emma Peel in the misbegotten 1998 The Avengers was even worse.
It’s an amazing performance but it feels much more like “Jack Nicholson in makeup” than it does “The Joker” to me.
Completely agreed. I was shocked by that ranking. She’s trying her best to camp it up, god bless her, and that’s what the movie called for, in all its tasteless glory—but it’s just embarrassing to watch her for every horrible second she’s onscreen.
Disagree with Nicholson, its really just him in face paint. Ledgers was a completely transformation when he took that role.
The Ledger Joker is great, but the Halloween copycats and mythos around his death make it really hard to measure it on purely the performance.
This list is a crime…against one’s patience.There was no need to add in every peripheral bad guy/thug/sneering suited adversary. Joe Chill over Mr. Freeze? Come on, man.
Ledger at the top is the only way to save it. Well done.
Ledger was a foregone conclusion. Thurman and Carrey should be much lower. Their characters mostly exist to mark the spot where silly becomes too silly in a Batman movie.
I watched Batman Forever about a million times as a ten-year-old kid, and at 36, all I could see in that clip was Jim Carrey wearing onesie pajamas with his junk showing.
WOW time to lower expectations on The Batman.
Oh boy a slideshow
Most of these are completely forgettable and/or bad. I truthfully didn’t remember many of them despite seeing most of these movies multiple times.Otherwise, Hathaway Catwoman should be lower; Uma Ivy should be waaaaaaaay lower; Lego Joker should be higher.
I love Lego Batman, but wasn’t into the Galifanakis portrayal so much. If I remember right, I don’t think he laughed a single time in the movie. I don’t think you can craft a respectable Joker without that.
I’d like to see a list of which villains here got to do a “we’re not so different, you and I” speech.
Well, for a final combo slideshow for everybody to mess with, it was a good one to go out on. Best of luck, you guys.
Just to add to the Ledger Joker discussion: I remember the first time I saw that movie, I thought “holy shit, where did they find that psychopath and how did they get him to read lines?” rather than “wow, Heath Ledger is doing a good job here!” Most superhero movies (and blockbusters in general) seem to revolve around the actor as the character – people use Tony Stark and RDJ interchangeably, George Clooney as Batman was just George Clooney, and I bet a portion of the audience forgets that Tom Cruise is playing a character named Ethan Hunt. Heath Ledger did an amazing job blurring that line to actually come across as an unhinged madman rather than an actor playing a character.I am not an apologist for the Schumacher films, but they came out when I was in my early teens, which is probably the worst time to see them age-wise (not that any age is great – they are terrible). They really are childish in a way that I was too old to think was cool (I wanted Jurassic Park action, not Denver the Last Dinosaur and those movies skewed towards the latter more than the former) and too young to just appreciate as a campy so-bad-its-good movie, something I can do now. Uma Thurman is probably properly rated for correctly identifying the tone of the material and playing it accurately; just like Henry Cavill as Superman, it’s good casting stuck in a terrible movie.
Starred for mentioning Denver, the Last Dinosaur.The ‘80s, amirite?
Haha. I was actually going to go with Dinosaucers, but thought that might have been a deeper cut than Denver the Last Dinosaur.
Dinosaucers at least has a (very small) cult following, if only for the premise and some of the character designs. Denver, the Last Dinosaur just seems like something made up to mock the excesses of ‘80s suits trying to figure out how to appeal to those gosh-darn kids, except it actually exists.
I like the cut of your jib.
I don’t know….Anne Hathaway’s version of Catwoman was the least sexy version. Does that matter? Well…..yes. Catwoman isn’t supposed to be skinny and gawky. She would have made a better Scarecrow.
WTactualF
Halle Berry?
Halle Berry killed Catwoman as much as she killed Jinx in the Bond movies.And I don’t mean that in a good way. She lacks the tact and subtlety to put out innuendo and one-liners with a straight face.
Area Man Doesn’t Find Famous Actress Attractive
Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman arguably saves The Dark Knight Rises. She steals every scene she’s in and she’s sexy af. What you talkin’ bout, Willis?
agreed, that movie would have been a snooze of a watch without her.
I thought Hathawaay was much sexier than I normally find her. I guess a catsuit can do amazing things.
No.
There’s a Batman villain played by Vincent Price and it didn’t make the list? You owe us an eggsplanation.
…but it is perhaps the closest thing we’ll ever get to seeing Mrs. Mia Wallace’s turn on Fox Force Five.*Kill Bill Series has entered the chat*
Batman Returns is my absolute favorite superhero movie. Period. And i only went through this list just to see Michelle Pfeiffer rightfully at #2. Thanks.
Am I the only one who didn’t *hate* Leto’s Joker? I thought it was, at the very least, a little interesting. For better or worse, it’s a pretty modern take on the character that at least fits the movies in which he appears.
I didn’t hate him either. I’d go so far as to say his scenes are the only interesting ones in Suicide Squad because the gang itself pretty much sucked. (and I was someone against having a Joker in the movie at all.) The main problem was his design. But he was written in a way that brought appropriate chaos to the plot, as he should.
The scene where he decides to dive into the tank for Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad is one of the better scenes in that film mainly as it was something that a Joker normally wouldn’t do, and his expression for it does it was one I found to be rather compelling.
He was bad in Suicide Squad, although I feel like none of that is Leto’s fault – art direction was rough and rumor is they cut some of his best scenes. But I really felt like his scene at the end of the Snyder Cut redeemed his take on the character. I now think if they gave him a go at it in a movie where he was the starring villain, he’d do a good job. I really hope they decide to let Snyder finish his vision for the Justice League movies, because I actually really liked where he was headed with the plot, and it would give us an opportunity to see more Leto joker.
Its Sal Maroni, not Sal Moroni.Sal Moroni sounds like the lesser known brother of this guy:
Bob the Goon is owed an apology.
Facebook Luthor is #10? Seriously? UGGHHHH
I don’t get it either. Eisenberg is widley considered one of the worst miscasts in superhero movies- and for good reason, based on that twitchy performance. It’s like saying Topher Grace was a great Venom, actually. Shouldn’t Top 10 rogues actually have chemistry with their heroes?
Topher Grace’s two best film roles are:“Himself” in Oceans 11Whatever his character was in In Good Company
I’ve only seen The Dark Knight Rises once, and I don’t recall finding Hardy’s Bane much interesting or memorable. Putting him at #5 seems way too high. Hell, Pfeiffer’s Catwoman I’d put above Ledger’s Joker. Shame MP never got her own Catwoman movie. It’s not too late for her to be an older, retired Selina Kyle.
The voice is extremely fun to do. Probably the only entertainment I got out of that weirdly structured mess.
Tommy Lee Jones as Two-Face is enjoyable if you watch it as a continuation of his performance in Natural Born Killers, where he’s perhaps even more unhinged, just spitting and frothing all over the place.
You couldn’t find SOME justification for putting in Julie Newmar? Try harder!
I realize that she wasn’t on the big screen, but if they could justify slipping in some villains whose interactions with the Batman are limited to standing behind him or clowning around with little 10-year-old Brucie, they could’ve handwaved including the sexiest Catwoman ever.
I will, again, say that Mask of the Phantasm is probably the best Batman movie, and Mark Hamill’s Joker is the best Joker. Truly underrated.
Is he, tho? He gets tons of love for it daily, decades on.
Anything short of universal acclaim is his being underrated. Heath Ledger was spectacular, but whenever people say he was better than Hamill, they’re simply wrong.
My favorite Heath line:“Do I look like a guy with a plan?”
I also liked when he sees Rachel, he starts straightening his hair, like he’s going to make a move on her.His Joker wasn’t only scary and psychotic, but he was genuinely funny. And he could shift into all three gears in a second.
I think that’s the secret ingredient. Heath Ledger is goddamn hilarious in that movie. That’s what makes it such a sickly enthralling experience. He’s scary as shit, physically menacing, cunning, and funny as hell, and that’s a lot to deal with in a character. He’s a got a wee bit of Bugs Bunny in him, and that’s thrilling
“Do you think you’re going to get away with this?!”
“Yeah.”
The scene where he visits Dent in the Hospital and awkwardly delivers the line “hi” is legit funny – as if the only thing he did was commit some tiny social faux pas
It’s not “every” big screen Batman villain. Where are Dr. Daka and The Wizard? Movies existed before boomers!
Bane from Dark Knight Rises should be lower on the list. He was terrible.
really nice and interesting movie characters. Its in my watch later list now.
welp, glad I skipped most of those – what a shit-show of half-baked silliness.Ledger’s performance was pretty good, I did enjoy that – and I didn’t mind the Murphy’s Scarecrow character … but when Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman is so far up the list (Hathaway too for that matter) then there’s clearly a shitload of Batman wankery that I am not losing any sleep over avoiding.
Imagine being so out of touch as to think Pfeiffer’s Catwoman being highly acclaimed is an unpopular opinion.
Mostly due to teenage memories of that outfit.
Yeah, I’m sure it had nothing to do with the actress and the performance she gave.
-The best ‘hitman’ Zsasz was on Fox’s Gotham. But yes, I’d love to see the Red Dragon version.
-I’m just now realizing Jim Carrey’s hair and unitard remind me of Mother in HBO’s Raised by Wolves.
-Good point about how casting Liam Neeson added to the deception. Had he even played a bad guy before Batman Begins?
-Scarecrow being the first (and so far, only) recurring villain for several of the Batfilms is my favorite thing. How has this not happened more?
Yeah, it feels like Riddler in The Batman was really trying to be Zsasz? I dunno
They were leaning really hard into the “Hush” version of the Riddler.
Ooh, gotcha. I haven’t read Hush!
I’m amazed Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor ranks so high on this list. He’s unbearable to watch in Batman v. Superman. His dialogue is terrible, which isn’t his fault, but his delivery somehow makes it even worse.
You can see what they were going for and how it would’ve worked well on paper. But on screen, phew.
Awesome list, now do a Batman fights ranked.
How could you leave out the finest Batman villain of our time, Drew Russell as the Joker??
Harley Quinn is absolutely insufferable. Way too high.
Damn, Darkseid is ashy.
Just got back from The Batman. Might be recency bias, but I’d put Dano’s Riddler much higher, like around the top ten. He’s not that menacing out of costume, because he’s Paul Dano. But he’s believably, realistically unhinged. He brought to mind the pathetic, squirming killer in Dirty Harry. Which is appropriate, both of them being based on the Zodiac Killer. Also, separate from the Dirty Harry villain, Dano particularly bears a nerdy resemblance to the police sketches (and several of the actual suspects) in the Zodiac case. There’s a queasy feeling of accuracy here—far from the likes of Jack Nicholson as the Joker, this is kind of what a broken person really looks like. He sees himself as an agent of vengeance and justice, but is actually pathetic and average. Is, in other words, Paul Dano. (And the performance is good too.)
The Batman will surely inspire a new round of debate as to who wore the cape and cowl best. Was it Michael Keaton? Christian Bale? Ben Affleck?Obviously the answer is Kevin Conroy.
Obviously the loophole there is he wore neither the cape nor the cowl, even when he showed up in the flesh as Batman in Crisis.
It said “Big Screen Batman” not “live action.” (I just used the more iconic picture from the show)
And yet, the ‘Gotham’ TV prequel show versions, especially The Penguin, would easily have taken spots in this list.
The Schumacher films are what happens if the studio exec from Radioactive Man who wanted Dirk Richter to play RM again despite being 76 and dead got his way
I know this is only considering movies, but the Gotham series version of Victor Zsasz played by Anthony Carrigan is the best. It was a bad show, but he had fun with his character and it showed.He was also the absolute highlight of Bill and Ted 3.
There are at least 10 on this list ahead of Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker (probably more like 20) that don’t even come close to belonging ahead of him. The whole list feels so contrarian that I suspect the first draft had Heath Ledger’s Joker at 20 or something like that.
Shame on you. Frank Gorshin’s Riddler should be in the top 5. Everyone remembers Cesar Romero’s Joker (and he was great), but Gorshin’s Riddler was such over the top fun. Every scene he just went for it. He must have to take a nap between shooting scenes.
Just making sure, you have the following ranked higher than Paul Dano’s Riddler?LEGO joker, Anne Hathaway’s catwoman ( in the top 10?!?), multiple villains from Batman Forever/batman & robin, and Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luther.wut.
Where is Dr Freeze from SubZero? It could be easily at the top 10.
Tommy Lee Jones cannot sanction your buffoonery, Dowd.