Batman Live-Action Movie Villains, Ranked

 Posted on July 4, 2024  |  12 minutes  |  2498 words  |  Martina Birk

The cultural landscape has reached a state where a new comic book adaptation is unleashed on the public practically every other week, yet the genre can still struggle to offer truly memorable villains for its marquee heroes to battle.

That’s almost never been a problem for “Batman” though; the franchise has arguably been defined more by its rogues gallery than by Batman himself, with most of the antagonist roles offering the opportunity for actors to capture oversized egos and laissez-faire shtick.

With this Friday’s release of Matt Reeves’ “The Batman,” the pantheon of villains that the Caped Crusader has fought on the big screen will see three new arrivals: Colin Farrell’s Penguin, Zoë Kravitz’s Catwoman and Paul Dano’s Riddler. Before these additions are unveiled to the public, Variety is taking a look back at the franchise’s history of supervillains, pitting memorable performances against each other.

However, considering that the superhero genre has expanded to cinematic universes, spin-offs and complicated content architectures, it’s necessary to set a few parameters for such a ranking. This list only considers villains from live-action movies that have titles alluding to or naming Batman — thus disqualifying not one, not two, but three Jokers in Jared Leto, Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Hamill, along with plenty of other performances. Additionally, all four villain performances from the 1966 “Batman” starring Adam West are in a league of their own, as the conceptions of those characters originated on television with the ’60s series.

With that housekeeping out of the way, here is our ranking of “Batman” villains from worst to best.

  • Talia al Ghul (Marion Cotillard, 'The Dark Knight Rises')

    Cotillard landing at the bottom of this ranking isn’t really any fault of hers. Two years before “The Dark Knight Rises,” the French actress united with Christopher Nolan for “Inception,” delivering a fearful performance that lent the proceedings both a sense of physical danger and emotional stakes. In “Rises,” she is mostly left waiting around before being asked to sell a heel turn that’s both completely obvious yet largely implausible. It’s hard to imagine any actress being able to make this character track.

  • Ra's al Ghul (Liam Neeson, 'Batman Begins')

    For all his speeches about the usefulness of theatricality and deception, Neeson’s Ra’s al Ghul could use more of either — there’s an unmistakable absence of showmanship from his performance. With “Taken” still three years off, the actor was still some time away from inventing an action movie persona with sheer grizzled grumpiness. Instead, what’s offered here is a hum of unimaginative Zen and a waiting game for a big Gotham-threatening scheme to be unveiled. Like father, like daughter.

  • Poison Ivy / Dr. Pamela Isley (Uma Thurman, 'Batman & Robin')

    We’re only three entries in, and this ranking has already entered “good performance” territory. While some performers struggle to match the tone of director Joel Schumacher’s Halloween party flair, Thurman transcends her role’s paper-thin characterization to command the screen. Her party entrance at a gathering of Gotham’s elite, complete with a monkey costume introduction ripped from a Marlene Dietrich number in Josef von Sternberg’s “Blonde Venus,” is the apex of the film. Even George Clooney, who has expressed regret over playing Bruce Wayne in the production, acknowledged that “Uma’s fantastic in it” during an interview with the New York Times in 2020.

  • The Riddler / Edward Nygma (Jim Carrey, 'Batman Forever')

    After the triple-whammy of releasing “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective,” “The Mask” and “Dumb and Dumber” in 1994, Jim Carrey all but owned popular cinema in America. At his absolute prime, he grabs this $100 million blockbuster by the neck and attempts to swallow it whole. If a criticism could be levied against Carrey, it’s that his rambunctious elasticity can’t always keep up with Schumacher’s dazzling design. But moments when the two are in harmony, like Carrey wearing a rhinestone jumpsuit and basking in a panopticon of spotlights, are indelible.

  • Scarecrow / Dr. Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy, 'The Dark Knight' Trilogy)

    There’s a fun thought experiment to imagining what Nolan’s Batman films would look like if the production had cast Murphy as Bruce Wayne after the actor’s audition for the lead role, though missing out on his Scarecrow would be a tough loss. Murphy makes the psychologist utterly reek of self-superiority, a stink that is only subsided by the utter glee that overcomes Crane when he meets the Caped Crusader — the only figure he can imagine as an equal. Nolan recognized what he had on his hands after “Batman Begins,” electing to bring Murphy back to play a B-villain for both follow-up films. Murphy tops himself in “The Dark Knight Rises,” which sees Crane becoming the snooty leader of a kangaroo court that sends Gotham’s elite to execution. Despite Batman’s rule against killing, his villains don’t tend to stick around for more than one movie. Considering that, it’s a treat to keep up with Crane.

  • Mr. Freeze / Victor Fries (Arnold Schwarzenegger, 'Batman & Robin')

    “Batman & Robin” sports a series-worst script by Akiva Goldsman, but you wouldn’t know that whenever the film shifts into a Schwarzenegger close-up. In ice-o-lation, the action legend turns crimes of screenwriting laziness into the sort of one-liner poetry that can only be found in the movies. An impractically ornate body suit and shining blue skin are just the cherry on top of the sundae.

  • Joker / Jack Napier (Jack Nicholson, 'Batman')

    By the end of the 1980’s, Nicholson’s on-screen persona had completely transformed from scoundrel to prankster to full-on Cheshire Cat. As such, he provides Tim Burton’s noir-ish adaptation a performance that plays to the back of the house, complete with a dance number set to Prince. But while the actor recognizes the cartoon he’s meant to occupy, his performance remains rather collected and sly, particularly for a character that has since trapped other actors in a suffocating fussiness. Simply, Nicholson plays the Joker as a mobster who thinks he is really, really funny. His casting in “Batman” lent the genre a legitimacy that comic book adaptations still benefit from today. While Nicholson reportedly netted a pay day in the neighborhood of $90 million, it’s hard to argue against it as a worthy longterm investment.

  • Two-Face / Harvey Dent (Tommy Lee Jones, 'Batman Forever')

    While his co-star Jim Carrey runs rampant across “Batman Forever,” Jones maintains a certain dignity to his performance. That’s not to say he isn’t completely off his rocker here, committing to a kookiness atypical for such a famously stern performer, but there remains a sense of the level-headed person that Harvey Dent was before going bozo mode. With such gaudy zaniness surrounding him on all sides, Jones has the air of a man compromising himself in “Batman Forever,” which is a fitting mood for a disgraced district attorney that decides to make a career in assassinating circus acrobats while wearing a suit made out of the skin of a purple zebra.

  • Catwoman / Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway, 'The Dark Knight Rises')

    Hathaway announces her Catwoman as a force to be reckoned with from her very first dialogue scene, when her character is caught attempting to steal jewelry and her face collapses from a feint of ditzy confusion into a hard stare with a slinky, knowing “Oops.” It’s an effective tone-setter that establishes Selina Kyle as a woman who has become jaded to the blindspots and prejudices of the civilized world, and has weaponized herself to navigate them as stealthily as possible. It’s a testament to the strength of Hathaway’s performance that the film can’t quite sell the idea that Kyle finds something worth fighting for in her fellow man during the film’s climax.

  • Two-Face / Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart, 'The Dark Knight')

    Considering the massive amount of attention and praise rightfully devoted to Heath Ledger’s turn in “The Dark Knight,” Eckhart’s own contributions to the film too often go unsung. He’s note-perfect as Gotham’s golden boy district attorney at the start of the film, playing Dent as a politician who’s able to sell his idealism because he whole-heartedly believes in it. It’s such a charismatic performance because of its fittingly workmanlike execution, which also makes the character’s descent into theatrical vengeance that much more striking. The unifying arc of “The Dark Knight” is Dent’s, and Eckhart is essential to what makes the film so beloved.

  • Maximillian Shreck (Christopher Walken, 'Batman Returns')

    Though he frequently finds himself captive to a duo of maximalist villains played by Michelle Pfeiffer and Danny DeVito, Walken still possesses the most menacing of the three, playing a ruthless businessman who is an eternity removed from surrendering his sympathies. Shreck operates in a sinister, tactical mixture of quiet gangsterism and public philanthropy, with Walken’s performance serving as a funhouse mirror to his landmark turn a few years earlier in Abel Ferrara’s “King of New York.” On top of all that, what terrific hair!

  • Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg, 'Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice')

    Though Lex Luthor is traditionally a Superman villain, he’s pulling double-duty in Zack Snyder’s bravura showdown. Eisenberg’s Luthor believes he carries an unmistakable sense of swagger, yet he remains tremendously unlikable to every other character he encounters during the movie. Readopting the tics from his performance as Mark Zuckerberg in “The Social Network” and broadening them into outright burlesque, the actor fashions a sharp parody of wealthy men who have such aspirations to play God that they feel they’re beyond behaving like a human being. It’s a strikingly contemporary performance that acknowledges the bad manners of such a figure, and delights in them.

  • The Joker (Heath Ledger, 'The Dark Knight')

    Almost 15 years have passed, and no film performance has come close to being as mythologized as Ledger’s in “The Dark Knight.” Each beat has been absorbed into pop culture memory, yet it’s still difficult to predict the unsettling rhythms of Ledger’s Joker, with acts of lip-licking and a fluttering nasal Chicago accent maintaining a moment-to-moment erraticism that drives the film. It’s a performance that’s still in complete possession of its own power. Most of the entries on this list could be coherently parodied in a comedy sketch. Ledger’s work cannot.

  • The Penguin / Oswald Cobblepot (Danny DeVito, "Batman Returns")

    Perhaps the most sexual creature to grace a big screen comic book adaptation, DeVito’s Cobblepot is a whirlwind of full-tilt vice. What makes his snappy, borderline literal portrayal of the Penguin that much funnier is that his section of the film is devoted to a doomed mayoral campaign, with Cobblepot touting himself as the meek abandoned sewer baby who should inherit the civilized Earth. And yet, the only thing he wants more than chowing down on raw fish and screwing anything that moves is… to belong. Libido and laughs sustained alongside operatic pity — it’s a tightrope walk that no other could manage.

  • Bane (Tom Hardy, 'The Dark Knight Rises')

    “You’re a big guy,” a CIA agent tells Bane in the opening sequence of “The Dark Knight Rises.” Hardy is a fairly standard 5 foot 9, but his physicality and Nolan’s direction transform him into a hulking mass of brute force. Beyond being a physical threat, Bane is also a captivating orator. Hardy creates something one-of-a-kind by never skimping on the chance to ham it up, even with roughly 65% of his face obscured by a goofy, toothy breathing mask. “Rises” is a hot mess of a movie, ridden with arbitrary plotting and a snowballing cast of characters, but Hardy’s Bane single-handedly salvages the film by returning Nolan’s grave trilogy to the inherent goofiness of its source material, which it had too often resisted. Every moment he is on screen is a blast.

  • Catwoman / Selina Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer, "Batman Returns")

    While Batman and his villains are often defined by their relationship with one another, Pfeiffer’s Catwoman comes into her own all by herself: chugging milk, losing her mind at her mother’s voicemail and then tearing her pink apartment to shreds. Her transformation scene is the best in a genre chock-full of them. While her dominatrix routine plays delightfully against Michael Keaton’s quietly kooky Batman and the unhinged DeVito, Pfeiffer remains just as magnetic on her own, simply delighting in the destruction of a luxury sporting goods store. It’s a brilliant, reckless performance that amuses itself in all its psychological acrobatics before returning to an essential, irresolvable bitterness: “Life’s a bitch. Now so am I.”

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