Film

Batman

Other titles called Batman: the 1943 film, the 1966 film, the 1966 series (ABC).

Tim Burton's Batman swapped comic-book primary colours for gothic shadow, turning Gotham into a Deco-Expressionist fever dream. Michael Keaton's brooding, near-silent Bruce Wayne shares the screen uneasily with Jack Nicholson's gleefully unhinged Joker, who steals every scene he's in. It's less action movie than mood piece — atmospheric, operatic, occasionally clunky — and it quietly rewired what a superhero film could look and feel like.

TMDb rating3.6

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love gothic production design and a villain who steals every scene, and you don't mind a superhero film that plays more like a moody fever dream than a comic-strip romp.

Skip it if you want a lean, brisk action picture; this one lingers over atmosphere, and its story is thinner than its look.

What it asks of you: Settle in for just over two hours of deliberate pacing, where mood and costume do much of the talking and long stretches are spent brooding.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

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Batman Returns1992

Burton doubles down on the gothic strangeness with more confidence and less studio interference — Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman and Danny DeVito's grotesque Penguin push the film further into fairy-tale horror, and Keaton settles fully into the role.

But It's bleaker and weirder than the original, with a Christmas setting that feels almost perverse; some found it too dark for a mainstream release.

Batman Returns poster

Edward Scissorhands1990

The same director and composer, minus the cape — this is Burton's purest expression of the misunderstood outsider, with Johnny Depp's tender performance anchoring a suburban gothic fable that's equal parts funny and heartbreaking.

But No crime, no action, no Gotham — if you came for the Batman spectacle, this quieter fairy tale might feel like a change of pace too far.

Edward Scissorhands poster

Beetlejuice1988

Burton and Keaton's first collaboration, made a year before Batman, shows the same manic energy and production-design flair aimed at pure gross-out comedy instead of brooding menace.

But It's broad, silly, and cartoonish where Batman is moody — expect slapstick ghosts, not psychological darkness.

Beetlejuice poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Batman

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Metropolis1927

Production designer Anton Furst has cited Lang's vertical, Expressionist Metropolis as a direct visual template for Gotham City — the same architecture of oppression and shadow runs through both.

Fritz Lang's silent city of soaring towers and crushing shadows is the direct ancestor of Anton Furst's Gotham — watch it and you'll recognise Burton's skyline before Burton ever drew it.

But It's a silent film with operatic, sometimes overwrought melodrama; patience for intertitles and 1920s pacing is required.

Metropolis poster
More like this (8)

Dick Tracy1990

Warren Beatty's comic-strip noir arrived the year after Batman and mines the same primary-colour, gangster-and-gadgets territory, with Al Pacino hamming it up magnificently as the villain.

But It's flatter and more cartoonish than Burton's film, closer to a live-action comic panel than a gothic mood piece.

Dick Tracy poster

The Dark Knight2008

If you want to see how far the Joker and Gotham could be pushed toward realism, Nolan's version — with Heath Ledger's terrifying, Oscar-winning performance — is the obvious next stop.

But The tone shift is huge: grim, procedural, and stripped of Burton's theatrical camp — you might miss the gothic fairy-tale feel.

The Dark Knight poster

Sleepy Hollow1999

Burton returns to gothic horror-comedy with Johnny Depp as a squeamish detective hunting a headless horseman — the same fog-drenched, Expressionist visual world, applied to a different genre entirely.

But It's a horror mystery, not a crime saga, and the humour is drier and more macabre than Batman's.

Sleepy Hollow poster

Batman Begins2005

Christopher Nolan's reboot goes back to origins with a very different, grounded take — fascinating if you're curious how another filmmaker handles the same myth from scratch.

But Gone is Burton's operatic style entirely; this is procedural and psychologically realistic where the original was theatrical and dreamlike.

Batman Begins poster

The Crow1994

A different masked avenger, same gothic-industrial mood — Brandon Lee's tragic, iconic performance as a resurrected rock musician exacting revenge shares the same brooding, rain-soaked romanticism.

But It's grimmer and more melancholic, closer to tragedy than superhero adventure, and the real-life tragedy behind it colours the whole watch.

The Crow poster

Batman Forever1995

Val Kilmer's Batman and Jim Carrey's neon Riddler swing hard toward camp — worth seeing as the moment the franchise pivoted away from Burton's gothic vision entirely.

But It trades atmosphere for spectacle and jokes; fans of the moody original often find it a jarring, garish comedown.

Batman Forever poster

High Plains Drifter1973

Both are stories of a masked, almost mythic figure who returns to a corrupted place to enact a very personal vengeance disguised as justice — Eastwood's stranger is Batman's outlaw cousin.

Clint Eastwood's near-supernatural stranger rides into a corrupt town and delivers a reckoning that's less about justice than punishment — the same myth as Bruce Wayne's crusade, stripped of the cape.

But It's a Western, slower and meaner than Batman, with a moral ambiguity some find genuinely uncomfortable rather than cathartic.

High Plains Drifter poster

The Toxic Avenger1984

Strip away the tragic backstory and gothic polish and Batman's core fable — trauma transforms a person into a disfigured protector who terrifies wrongdoers — is exactly the one Toxic Avenger tells, just gleefully, grotesquely inverted.

A bullied mop-boy falls into toxic waste and becomes a hideous, super-strong vigilante who mutilates criminals in spectacularly gory ways — the same wounded-outsider-turned-monster-hero fable, played entirely for splatter-comedy laughs.

But It's deliberately trashy, ultra-low-budget Troma schlock with gore played for comedy — nothing like Burton's stylish gothic seriousness.

The Toxic Avenger poster

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Superman, The Rocketeer, Dick Tracy