batman whatever happened to the caped crusader

George Clooney’s phoned-in turn as the Dark Knight is nothing to write home about either.īut if you were six years old when this movie came out, you were showing up for the zany action sequences that make little sense but feature wild gadgets (Bat-skates!), Arnold Schwarzenegger chewing up and spitting out every scene as the dad-joke obsessed Mr.

It almost happened when the director and writer made Bats the butt of the joke, complete with a Bat-credit card and those nipples (which still are nowhere near as offensive as some modern directors’ takes on the character). With this pun-riddled, truly unfunny, very questionably cast, and toy-obsessed installment, director Joel Schumacher and writer Akiva Goldsman almost achieved what Batman villains could only dream about: killing off the Caped Crusader for good. We also decided to exclude the more ensemble-heavy Justice League.Īlthough Batman & Robin has its fans and defenders (this writer included, honestly), there’s no denying that the movie was a misstep for Warner Bros. That means all of the straight-to-video animated films and Batman serials of the 1940s have been omitted. *Editor’s note: We have decided to limit this list to theatrically released feature films where Batman is the lead character. Yet who’s is the best? Which Batman stands above them all? We’ve polled our staff to figure it out!

Over the span of nearly 60 years, multiple generations of auteurs and distinct stylists have offered their take on the character, from Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher, to Christopher Nolan and Zack Snyder. This has created a landscape where both Adam West and Robert Pattinson have played this character, and each version is perfectly valid.īut while all Batman movies might be valid, not all Batman movies are created equal. As the template for many superhero characters, he lends himself to cinematic reinterpretation and elasticity. There is something elemental about Batman. After all, Batman co-creator Bob Kane once described the character as “half-Zorro,” and for most folks of his generation, Zorro was synonymous with Douglas Fairbanks in The Mark of Zorro (1920), the movie which made the story of a daring rogue in a black cape and mask (when he wasn’t playing the rich fop by day) famous. Much of the iconography Batman would come to define in superhero comics was on the silver screen first. The visceral mystique of a dark cowl and cape the shadowy world of an urban landscape crying out for a hero even the universally relatable origin of an orphan who seeks to fill the void left by his parents’ deaths. There’s good reason for that ubiquitousness too.

He’s certainly been the most adapted to the big screen, with the Caped Crusader starring in 12 theatrically released films when you count animation and William Dozier’s Batman: The Movie tie-in from 1966. A case can be made that Batman is the quintessential cinematic superhero.

Batman whatever happened to the caped crusader