Every Batman Movie Ranked Worst To Best
2. Batman Returns
Given how hard Warner Bros put the break on after its release on Tim Burton's vision, it's strange now to think how more creative freedom the director was given for the first Batman sequel. Presumably they didn't quite know just how Burton Burton could be, but the result was a glorious, dark take on Gotham that dialled all of the stranger elements in Batman up to about 19.
Parents at the time may have hated the more adult material, the more grotesque characters and the more-than-a-little-faint whiffs of death about the place, but looking back, Batman Returns is the purest adaptation of the best parts of the character and the Dark Knight's mythology.
it understood the value of fear, perfectly captured the awkward conflict of Bruce Wayne and most intriguingly offered the strange insight that Gotham might not actually be all that worth saving. It presented an image of the city as a nest of villainy - corporate, mutant and supernatural - that only a mother (or a Batman) could really love. And that's exactly what Gotham and Batman SHOULD be.