10 Most Bad-Ass Batman Movie Moments

5. Batman Versus Catwoman

Batman Returns gets rather cruelly pinned as the too-dark film that drove Warner Bros to hire Joel Schumacher to make a more family friendly (and toy sales friendly) threequel that set the franchise on the road to ruin. But in hindsight, the baroque classic has grown in stature even beyond the first film.

It's the perfect exploration of the idea of Gotham city as a circus of freaks, and the perfect channelling of the image of Batman as a character tied deeply with psychosis and fear. And as much as The Penguin stands out as the living embodiment of those ideas, Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman is the true MVP of the villains on show.

And when she and Batman go toe-to-toe in their first fight on Gotham's rooftops, we see the high-octane crash of sexuality, chemistry and fight choreography that is everything we'd want from Catwoman. And while Batman's initial reaction to her is a little reductive, there's something quite compelling in the idea of her educating a pillar of the old school thought on masculine superiority.