Every Batman Movie Opening Scene Ranked From Worst To Best

There's an agreeable simplicity to Tim Burton's intro to his 1989 Batman movie - the opening titles are set to Danny Elfman's immortal score, and Burton's German Expressionism-inspired visuals create a Gotham like we've never seen before.

The combination of grimy production design and scale-expanding matte paintings make Gotham feel so huge, so imposing, and so downtrodden, immediately assuring us that the city is a smoky, crime-infested hellhole.

That's confirmed moments later when Batman (Michael Keaton) makes his debut, subduing a group of thugs who robbed and assaulted a family bearing a rather fair resemblance to himself and his own parents years earlier on a certain fateful night.

It might seem a little quaint by modern Batman standards, but the moment that Michael Keaton tells a terrified thug, "I'm Batman," most fans' worries about the actor's ability to portray the Dark Knight fizzled away.

The atmosphere in this opening is so thick you can almost choke on it, such is the richness of Burton's filmmaking.