Danny Elfman takes a lot of heat in Hollywood, but his Batman and Batman Returns scores were the genius expression of a composer completely in touch with his director's vision of both the character and the film universe. For good reason, his work on those two films remains the best of the Batman franchise. That's not to say Hans Zimmer's score in the Nolan trilogy isn't great, it just goes the same way as Christian Bale's vocal performance as Batman, becoming too over-blown and too insistent by the time the final film ended. Had he continued to work with Nolan, it would probably have got to the stage where the score devolved into a booming, ominous monotone, and while the tone fit the agenda of the films, there wasn't the personality of Elfman's iconic score. Admittedly, Burton's soundtracks weren't the best (that accolade goes to Joel Schumacher's poptastic Batman Forever track), but in purely score terms, the winner has to be Elfman.
