Val Kilmer: struggling for energy levels. Movies: Batman (1989), Batman Returns (1992) Critics always mention the silly gruff voice, yet it’s really just a clever way of maintaining one’s secret identity while scaring the bejesus out of more fragile opponents. Bale’s performance levels dipped slightly for the final instalment, The Dark Knight Rises, but his jaded, late-era Bats is still head and shoulders above any of his rivals. Bale gave us a Batman we could believe in, in more ways than one.Ĭrucially the character is never overplayed: Bale may wish he had mined the horrors of the dark knight’s ruined soul more thoroughly across the Nolan trilogy, but Heath Ledger’s razor-edged Joker was always going to need a less flamboyant foil. It gave us the caped crusader’s first proper origins story, and didn’t shy away from the grim reality of Bruce Wayne’s angst-ridden existence.
Batman Begins arrived in cinemas at a time when studios were largely clueless as to how to realise comic book material on the big screen. It’s hard to remember what a shock to the system Bale’s debut turn as Batman was in 2005: the Welsh-born actor – for better or for worse – almost single-handedly forced Hollywood to take superheroes seriously. Movies: Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008), The Dark Knight Rises (2012) And why many of his rivals simply weren’t fit to wear the cape. So here’s why Bale, despite his own misgivings, will most likely be remembered as the greatest dark knight ever to stalk the rooftops of Gotham City. It’s particularly pertinent right now, with the world set to get its first look at the new caped crusader, Ben Affleck, in the much-hyped superhero smackdown Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Just as Bond acolytes will never stop arguing about which actor best rocked the Walther PPK, the issue of who made the greatest ever Batman is likely to be whirling in the ether for as long as Hollywood makes superhero movies. Now Christian Bale has stepped up to take aim at his own generally rather well-received turn as Batman in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, telling Yahoo! Movies: “I didn’t quite nail it.” Not so long ago, Pierce Brosnan publicly lamented his run as James Bond being “never good enough” and admitted he hates watching himself as 007. Hindsight in Hollywood can be a terrible thing.
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