Batman Film Series / YMMV

Broken Base: Oh and how. The general census seems to be "The first film is good, Returns is okay-to-good, Forever is meh, and Batman & Robin is hilariously bad". But there are many sides who say otherwise.
- While the first film and Returns are for most people still regarded as the best of the anthology, they still have attracted criticism for things like the portrayal of Batman and his killing of criminals, the gothic tone which some feel got out of hand in the second film, the lack of comic book accuracy in Returns, having basic stories and how both pale in comparison to other Batman/Burton films.
- Forever is usually regarded as "not great, but still better than Batman & Robin", however, there are people who think Forever is even worse than its next counterpart, mostly because of Franchise Original Sin of introducing a more Lighter and Softer direction with the franchise, and also the portrayal of Batman, Robin, and Riddler.
- Batman & Robin seems to be the weirdest example: most people agree that it's far from a good movie, but everybody has different reasons for it to think so. Is it because the movie tries too hard with its camp? Is it because it's ashamed of being campy and has a serious subplot with Alfred dying? OR is the actual existence of Camp in Batman the problem? Should the movie go into full camp like the Adam West show or full dark like newer Batman films? Does the movie have any redeemable qualities or is it irredeemable garbage? Is it So Bad, It's Good or just plain bad? Or maybe it's actually not bad at all, and most of the movie's problems are exaggerated? And most importantly - is the Bat-Credit Card actually a funny joke or the final straw that breaks the camel’s back?
- And then we have people who say how only one of these movies is any good, which just adds more fuel to an already huge fire...
- The other big debate is whether Burton and Schumacher's movies are canon to each other or not, especially how Batman 89 and The Flash retconned the Schumacher movies from the Burton ones. Some people prefer to keep them separate, because of the changed actors and general tone of movies. Other people would rather keep them together because they have enough similarities to be considered as legitimate Batman sequels and provide an almost decent character arc of Batman changing from I Work Alone to Family Man.
Can't Un-Hear It: For many, Michael Keaton was the definitive live-action Batman. Ditto for Michael Gough as Alfred, Jack Nicholson as Joker, Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman, and Jim Carrey as The Riddler.
Complete Monster: Of the numerous villains faced by Batman and his allies, this duo stands out:
- 1989 film: The Joker, real name Jack Napier, is an insane, sadistic criminal. Murdering the young Bruce Wayne's parents, Jack is only stopped from killing the boy himself when his partner warns him the cops are approaching. After being transformed into the Joker, Jack goes on to kill the mob boss who betrayed him, before killing the other Mafia higher-ups to take over the Gotham syndicate. Using Smylex mixed in with everyday products, Jack causes a string of deaths of unsuspecting innocents. Jack also abuses his girlfriend Alicia Hunt, disfiguring and eventually killing her, before trying to seduce Vicki Vale immediately after her death. Taking advantage of Gotham's 200th-anniversary parade, Jack tries to gas the gathered civilians with Smylex to amuse himself and takes out his frustration over Batman stopping his plans by killing his loyal second-in-command.
- Batman & Robin: Poison Ivy, formerly Dr. Pamela Isley, relishing in her newfound power, declares herself Mother Nature and wishes to start anew for the world. Delighting in murdering numerous men with her painful poison kiss, Ivy tries to turn Batman and Robin against one another with her pheromones, seemingly murdering the sleeping Nora Fries to provoke Nora's husband, Mr. Freeze, to true despair. Deciding to help him kill every living thing in the world after freezing Gotham solid, Ivy intends to enact her own fantasies of creation upon the new world she creates.
Fanon Discontinuity: There's no shortage of fans that consider Batman Forever and Batman & Robin to never have happened. Multiversal crossovers such as Crisis on Infinite Earths and The Flash have reinforced this a great deal, with the use of "Earth-89" (and a cameo of Robert Wuhl as Alexander Knox) for the former and the return of Michael Keaton as Batman in the latter. Though The Flash did allow George Clooney to cameo as an alternate Bruce Wayne.
- Even when they first came out, the Schumacher films rarely acknowledged the Burton ones apart from some Role Reprises for Alfred and Commissioner Gordon, and the odd in-joke. Only the Novelizations (particularly Peter David's for Forever) made any serious attempts to link them all.
- Word of God and Batman '89, which showed the Keaton version of Batman encountering Two-Face in a different manner to Forever, seemed to establish that the Schumacher films are set in the Alternate Continuity of Earth-97.
First Installment Wins: The 1989 Batman is widely beloved in comparison to its far more controversial sequels. It's also the obvious favorite within the "classic" Batman quadrilogy.
Franchise Original Sin: Several creative liberties from the Tim Burton films such as Batman killing his enemies or making the Penguin a Moses analogue have parallels with Zack Snyder's take on DC properties. Unlike Tim Burton, Zack Snyder's choices weren't so easily forgiven.
Harsher in Hindsight: Of course, it depends on how one feels about Zack Snyder's DC films, but seeing a DC film series have a change of directors after the second entry and Executive Meddling demanding a Lighter and Softer tone that ultimately results in a divisive film before ultimately getting scrapped in favour of Darker and Edgier takes on both Batman and the Joker is oddly prophetic. That said, at least with the DC Extended Universe we eventually got the (more-or-less) intended followup later, but this series would have to settle for a comic book retcon, a cameo in the Crisis miniseries and a not-quite (and short-lived) return in The Flash.
Magnificent Bastard:
- Batman Returns: Catwoman, real name Selina Kyle, was once the put-down secretary of shady businessman Max Shreck. When Shreck pushes her out of the window of his building for learning too much, Selina is given cat powers by strays out on the streets and uses them to become a vengeful vigilante herself. As Catwoman, she overcomes a thug mugging a woman with ease, blows up one of Shreck's stores while timing her escape perfectly, and, on more than one occasion, bests Batman in a physical fight. Catwoman also briefly teams up with the Penguin to successfully pull off a scheme to frame Batman, and later saves the Dark Knight while finally taking out Shreck once and for all.
- Film/Batman Forever:
Moral Event Horizon: Happens in all four films:
- In Batman (1989), it's not a question of whether The Joker crosses it, but when. Perhaps the most agreed crossing point is killing Thomas and Martha Wayne when he was younger, leaving behind a traumatized 8-year-old Bruce Wayne that he was fully prepared to kill as well if his accomplice didn't tell him to run. It's the only one the Joker's murders that is played seriously, with no levity of retribution (like with the mobsters) or dark humor (like with the Smilex product poisoning). And once Batman realizes that the Joker is the man who killed his parents, he goes from seeing the Joker as a public menace he unwittingly created to the devil of his nightmares that needs to be killed.
- In Batman Returns, the Penguin crossed the line after he had to ditch the mayoral campaign and decided to kidnap all of Gotham's firstborn children, including the babies, with the intention of drowning them in a deep puddle of Shreck's industrial byproducts.
  - The brilliance of Penguin's character in Returns is that he was already on the other side of the line from the start of the movie. His reemergence into society, and his attempts to gather census data on the populace of Gotham, were all done from the start so he could identify and kill the firstborn children of every wealthy family in the city. It is even implied that he's already murdered children back when he was the "bird boy" at the Red Triangle Circus's freak show.
- Batman Forever has an In-Universe example. Fred Stickley decides Edward Nygma went over by using him as a guinea pig for his brain manipulation device thing. Despite being an overall awesome and funny villain, Nygma really went over later in the same scene by pushing Stickley out the window for firing him and trying to report him to the proper authorities. He cements it when he tampers with the security log to make it look like a suicide, without caring one whistle about the repercussions it would have for Stickley's loved ones.
- In Batman & Robin, Poison Ivy crosses it with attempted murder via deactivating Nora's cryo pod out of pure jealousy. To further rub salt into the wound, she then lies to Mr. Freeze about Nora's fate. When Mr. Freeze finds out who really pulled the plug, to say he's not very happy would be putting it mildly.
  Poison Ivy: I never was too good with competition. Who needs a frigid wife anyway?
My Real Daddy: The first two films directed by Tim Burton are considered the best out of the four, especially the first one.
Narm Charm: All films have this in spades, especially Returns with Penguin's storyline.
Rooting for the Empire: The films all had a great deal of hype surrounding who the villains would be and who would be playing them. In fact, the villain roles often went to bigger stars such as Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jim Carrey, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Uma Thurman. It helped that the series had the tendency to have its villains be Jerkass Woobies, with backstories to justify their nastiness; Jack Napier was himself a victim of conspiracy and betrayal (although he partially brought it on himself), Oswald Cobblepot had just about the worst life anyone could imagine, Selina Kyle was repressing a whole lot of rage at workplace mistreatment, Edward Nygma worked for a very high-handed supervisor, Victor Fries nearly lost his wife, and Pamela Isley had her research stolen and perverted toward evil purposes. Not to mention that Napier, Cobblepot, Kyle and Isley all survived attempts on their life.
Sequelitis:
- The two Tim Burton films (Batman and Batman Returns) are unquestionably the most well-regarded of the bunch. Batman Forever got mixed reviews by comparison, and Batman & Robin was outright panned. Warner Bros. themselves feel ashamed of the latter two, as they've since given the go-ahead for any follow-up stories regarding Earth-89 to only acknowledge the Burton films.
- Returns also suffers from this for some people who feel it's not as good as the first one. More explained in these movies' YMMV section.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The Soft Reboot the series underwent with Forever and the recasting of Billy Dee Williams as Harvey Dent with Tommy Lee Jones denied fans a chance to see Williams' Dent have an arc about becoming Two-Face.
Vindicatedby History: Returns, Forever and even & Robin to some degree, all got these to various degrees. Described more on their individual YMMV pages.

YMMV / Batman Film Series

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