Everybody thought Tim Burton was crazy when he decided to make Michael Keaton - then thought of as a comedy actor - Bruce Wayne in his filmic adaptation of Batman. The big surprise came when Keaton turned out to be brilliantly cast in the role - good-humoured, fiercely intelligent, and - best of all - believable as The Dark Knight. In the wake of Christopher Nolan's immensely popular modern Batman trilogy, Burton's efforts in the series have been overshadowed somewhat; a shame, really, considering how well he handled such a difficult task. Batman is a very, very dark movie, but it also succeeds in its attempts to look and feel like a comic book; indeed, you can tell that Burton knows his stuff and was careful to pay respect to the work of his predecessors. And let us not forget the awesome Jack Nicholson, who is expertly cast here as The Joker. Heath Ledger gets all the attention nowadays, of course, and though all the praise he's received is warranted, one could certainly argue that Nicholson set the golden standard; his Joker is - at once - terrifying and downright hilarious. Awesome.