Batman V Superman: Ranking Every Movie From Worst To Best

3. Batman Begins

If there was going to be any more Batman movies after Batman & Robin, something would have to be majorly different. Warner seemed to have locked onto the idea of going right back to the start and adapting Year One in some form, with various projects in this vein floated, but it was ultimately Christopher Nolan who took it through to fruition in spectacular fashion. There's been plenty of imitators of the Batman Begins formula, but none have managed it with the same confidence; The Amazing Spider-Man tried to go for the same prolonged origin story, yet baulked at the mid-way point and shoehorned in a basically unrelated villain plot. Taking Bruce Wayne from aimless drifter to iconic vigilante, with plenty of time to fill in what happened to him previously, we get a full lock on the character of Bruce Wayne, and an immediate understanding of the two masks he wears; the playboy and the crime fighter. Unlike the later films, where Nolan managed to wrangle more creative freedom and thus deliver on his distinct, glossy-yet-grounded style, there's a sense of honouring blockbuster conventions in Begins. Lest we forget, at this point he was simply the wonder kid from Memento - he hadn't yet become a named brand in himself - and so some box-ticking was still required. That the film works in spite of that is testament to his versatility.