Batman Actors Ranked!

so we have a brand new batman movie and with it a brand new batman that means there's currently over 50 years worth of theatrical batman so today we're gonna stop and rank all seven theatrical live action batman from the worst to the best [Music] hi my name is shawn and i love to talk about movies and tv way too much with that in mind go ahead and join me down below in the comment section share your ranking of the batman my list isn't the right list it's just my list and i would love to see yours as we go into this i'm basing my ranking based off the characterization of both batman and bruce wayne the character arc the physicality and how memorable and iconic are they there's nothing magic about this it's just my opinions and that's what i'm looking at and let's get started easily coming in in last place george clooney in batman and robin for what it's worth in the right movie i don't think george clooney would be a bad pick if you just look at george clooney the person clearly he can play rich playboy very well he has the right look to play bruce wayne and if you've seen from dusk till dawn you know he has a dark edge to him do you want this little girl to die or that little girl or yourself or your bosom buddy with a badge now i don't want to do it he can do action and so i think he had the potential to be a decent batman in the right movie he is definitely not in the right movie though and instead ended up in joel schumacher's live action batman cartoon that was called batman and robin bat nipples and all now of course it's easy to superficially pick on all the campiness of the film but it's also a movie that doesn't really have much to do with bruce wayne and batman's arc in the film it's much more interested in the villains with batgirl with alfred there's some moments of really bad acting there's just nothing here that feels true to either bruce wayne or batman and unfortunately that's what george clooney got stuck with there's just nothing here for him to do with it so he's delivering goofy lines about his bat credit card seven million never leave the cave without it and he's fighting over poison ivy in the slap stick over the top wired to death action sequences that look like ice capades it's just this weird joel schumacher thing that george clooney has been apologizing for for the last 25 years did you apologize to the crowd at comic-con for batman and robert i always apologize for that but you know i thought at the time this was going to be a very good career move um it wasn't next up val kilmer from batman forever now to be perfectly clear there's a very big jump between george clooney and val kilmer while i'm not a big fan of this version of batman it is a dramatic improvement and of that original four films batman films from the 80s and 90s this is the one with the most batman and bruce wayne centric story where he's having a bit of an existential crisis he's seeing a counselor he's processing through his understanding of his childhood and trying to decide if he wants to be bruce wayne or batman so there actually is a little bit of a story in there an exploration of the character much more so than you saw in the michael keaton films or of course the george clooney film but at the end of the day i have just never thought that vel kilmer was a very good fit as batman of course it's so jewel schumacherified where he's like you're trying to get under my cape doctor a girl can't live by psychosis alone it's the car right chicks love the car can i persuade you to take a sandwich with you sir i'll get drive through all of that stuff never makes this feel like i'm watching batman it feels like i'm watching this strange val kilmer cartoon so whether doing batman or bruce wayne he just never gives off the right energy for like over 25 years i've been trying to figure out exactly what that is and i've never pinpointed exactly what it is about the kind of persona that he naturally kind of gives off and maybe it is that he has so much of that ice man in him that bro fighter pilot that's simply not bruce wayne that's because every time you go up in the air you're unsafe i don't like you because you're dangerous that's right when he's being bruce wayne when he's being the dark knight it just doesn't naturally come off like this character with this very dark mysterious past because that that's just not his strong suit so i just kind of always have felt that he was miscast even in this joel schumacher film next up adam west from batman 66. now to state the obvious this is a very different version of the dark knight as this was an intentionally campy version of the character from a time period when in the comics batman was presented in a much more comedic fashion and not as the dark knight that we know and love from the last 30 years and so i'm evaluating in in terms of that it's an intentionally comedic version of the character it's almost self-parody [Music] the shark repellent fat and adam west does that so well he does the deadpan he delivers these ridiculous silly lines with the utmost sincerity and earnestness that makes them really funny some days you just can't get rid of a bomb now as this is based off the theatrical batman i'm just looking at the batman 66 film he's not given a big character arc there's not a bunch of emoting that he does even though he does get a little bit sad at the end when he realizes that miss kitka can't be a part of his life if you compare this version to these much more complex characterizations from the last 20 years it obviously seems very silly but that's the point it's supposed to be a silly campy version of the character that's just supposed to be amusing and of course this is an iconic version of the character though a simplistic one so i don't think it's a top-notch version but i think it's a very good version of what they were trying to do at the time in fourth place michael keaton from batman and batman returns and apparently the dceu in the near future now this is the batman of my childhood this film and this portrayal of batman was a huge part of my childhood but at the time i only had christopher eve superman and michael keaton's batman and as the decades have passed and we've gotten more and more comic book movies and more and more renditions of batman i think the flaws of this version have become more and more clear a big part of that is that tim burton in both of his films didn't seem very interested in batman in both movies he makes an appearance in the cold open where batman takes out whatever crimes being committed and then from there he kind of disappears for the next 25 minutes while the movies set up all of the villains and plot lines but we're not following batman through the setup of the plot you ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight what because it's not very interested in him he doesn't get character arcs he doesn't really grow and changes a character he just reacts to what's happening and i think michael keaton does a good job of being this mysterious brooding version of bruce wayne when he's in the costume it's iconic and he gets plenty of awesome looking shots looks imposing and intimidating in the suit despite the fact that he's not the biggest guy out there but because the movies don't explore the character much they don't see him grow and change it's difficult to say that this is a top-notch version of character it was important for cinema it was important for me as a person but i can't say looking back on it now that this is this great faithful version of batman i mean he's a version of batman that on multiple occasions kills people by planting bombs on them knocking them off buildings torching them with the batmobile and in which case as much as i love this version of the character because for nostalgic reasons i also don't think it is a great version of the character real quick before i give you my top three remember to join me down below in the comment section share your ranking of the live action theatrical batman my list isn't the right list it's just my list and i would love to see yours and with the release of the batman i'm doing tons and tons of batman content i've already gone back and reviewed each of the batman movies i hadn't previously reviewed and over the next couple of weeks i'm gonna do all the batman rankings the final battles the villains all of that fun stuff and i've already ranked the movies you can check that all out right up here if you've enjoyed this video in third place robert pattinson in the batman this is the version of the character that i've been waiting to see for a very long time for all the great things that other versions of batman have done we haven't really seen him as the world's greatest detective and that's what this movie and this version of the character set out to do it is absolutely a detective story with batman front and center working this investigation with gordon with catwoman you got a lot of cats everything about strikes working through riddles and ciphers and teaming up with alfred to figure things out this is one of the pieces that i feel was missing and we finally got it in this movie other side to it is that this is a very dark and brooding batman that is early in his career he isn't as matured and so he's just focused on the vengeance side of what he's doing and not the heroic side it tells this other origin story about his thinking about the mission that he's on in developing into a much more holistic fleshed out character and that also leads the fact that in when he gets into action he is a vicious vicious batman that that is hurting criminals striking fear in them because he's not a hero yet he's also striking fear in the people of i'm gotham and then in the suit robert pattinson is just able to communicate so much with his eyes his physicality his mouth while still being a very stoic version of the character now what holds this one back a little bit for me is the version of bruce wayne isn't very developed yet that's built into the plot that bruce wayne essentially doesn't exist my family has a history of philanthropy but as far as i can tell you're not doing anything he is fully in batman mode all the time he's all about the mission he's fully consumed by that there is no duality there is no other personality it's just the batman and his mission and one of the things he learns in this film is the importance of having that other side but it's not really there yet so i feel like it's not a fully developed version of the character this could quickly change they do a sequel which i'm sure is coming easily they could fix what i think is incomplete about this version the second one and he moves up a spot or two our runner up bat fleck from batman v superman and zack snyder's justice league here ben affleck and zack snyder crafted this version of batman heavily influenced by frank miller's the dark knight it's an older batman it's a more cynical batman and his starting point at the beginning of batman v superman is a version of the character that's kind of been driven mad by the fact that he's seen so much destruction caused by superman and he just is seeing red he just sees a threat and has to rediscover his humanity and discover the hero throughout the course of that film and by the end of it realizes he's made a horrible mistake that he has to make right and then zack snyder's justice league is all about his journey to try and be the hero again and fix the mistake he made in misreading who superman was this is by far the most physical batman we've ever seen that he just looks like an absolute tank some people have criticized this look for batman but it's straight out of the dark knight returns the look they were going for and when he's in action he's probably the most agile batman we've ever had while being the bulkiest the strongest the toughest of course the warehouse sequence in batman v superman is a standout as just this the best batman live action fight scene that we have ever had and because he is the version of the character that pulled together the justice league i don't care how many demons he's fought and how many hells he's never fought us not us united he's the one that comes off the most comic bookie in a holistic sense all the other batman essentially exist in these pocket universes where maybe there's subtle references to the rest of the dc universe but they don't actually interact with those characters whereas this batman actually talks to superman flash aquaman wonder woman cyborg it's a full dc universe that he lives in while we get to see a mature batman that is deeply flawed realizes his mistakes and changes all along the way now i'm not crazy about the fact that he goes full-blown punisher mode in batman v superman and has machine guns on his batmobile and it's killing people left and right but uh for me i really dug this version of the character and i think it is it's a tragedy that we never got a bat fleck film from oscar-winning screenwriter ben affleck who also directed a best picture that's unfortunate that would have been a special film i think but coming in in first place is christian bale in the dark knight trilogy here we see a full hero's journey for this version of bruce wayne and batman where we see before he became batman we see the training of how he became batman we see him in his prime defeating some of the classic rose jelly in particular joker and then we see him as an aged broken version of the character trying to close out the mission that he had for the city and try and save the city that he loves so much i'm batman likewise it's a version that understands that bruce wayne is this complicated person has the public persona of the playboy to throw people off he is bruce wayne the person that alfred and lucius knows and then there's batman this persona that goes out and fights crime and it shows you each of those and has all of them kind of have their own kind of mini journey in it along the way christopher nolan puts little moments of emotion of payoff for the journey that bruce wayne is on as he's trying to process through this mission that he's on this version of the character has been so developed that it he matters to the people around him and that's why i think this is easily the best version it's a fleshed-out character with relationships to a city with a mission and relationships to other people that care about him there's emotional payoff there's a hero's journey people nitpick the batman voice i i don't really care that the batman voice gets over the top as you go into it in general uh i think without question this is the most holistic version of the character with the fullest arc that actually had a beginning a middle and an end and a compelling character at its center that we spent time with saw him grow and change and become more than just a man uh he became a symbol for his city and was able to send it save it at the end of the day so christian bale and the dark knight trilogy comes in at number one if you enjoyed this video i've got more like it you can check out my reviews of the theatrically released batman movies right over there you can check out my other batman rankings right down there and you can see my ranking of the dc animated universe continuity down below bunch of those animated films they put out over the last decade thank you so much for watching and keep talking movies too much

Channel: Sean Chandler Talks About

Views: 123,857

Keywords: Batman Actors Ranked, Every Batman Actors Ranked, all 7 batman actors ranked, christian bale, batman, michael keaton, ben affleck, adam west, val kilmer, robert pattinson, all 8 batman actors ranked, george clooney, the dark knight, batman begins, all batman actors ranked, dc comics, best batman actors ranked, batman movies ranked, sean chandler, sean chandler talks about, ranking batman movies, batman returns, batman ranked, batman actors, best batman, batman forever

Id: bOK-5ql36No

Length: 17min 38sec (1058 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 08 2022