The Better Bat: Every Batman Actor, Ranked By Comic Book Accuracy

Batman is one of DC Comics’ most iconic characters and many have portrayed him over the years, but which portrayal was the most comic accurate?

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Who is Batman? On his most basic level Batman, like Iron Man, is a genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist. Unlike Iron Man/Tony Stark, the playboy persona is all an act. The real Bruce is Batman. Bruce’s incredible wealth allows him to buy an incredible arsenal of weapons and train his body to perfection.

He trains to prevent anyone else from going through the trauma he did as a child (losing his parents) and is very much a detective, on top of being a hero. His deductive abilities, coupled with his strength make him a great defender of Gotham City. His loss also puts him into a strange parenting mode, as he cares for a number of Robins over the years. Not every characteristic plays out successfully on screen in every interpretation. Below is the live-action Batman actors ranked from worst to best in terms of their closeness to the comic book character.

11 Lewis G. Wilson

Lewis G. Wilson was the first actor to take on a live-action interpretation of Batman. He took on the cowl in 1943. There was nothing to compare his performance to then, but there is now, and unfortunately, Wilson doesn’t live up to the source material. He had a Boston accent and wasn’t didn’t have quite the right physique to match the imaginations of fans. He also lacked much of the complexity that Batman’s backstory offers the character on the page.

10 Robert Lowery

The 1949 follow up to Lewis G. Wilson’s film saw Batman recast as Robert Lowery, instead of Wilson. While Lowery looked better in the bat suit and took on a sidekick, Robin the Boy Wonder, he still lacked much of the complexity and complicated history of the comic book character. Again, it was an early performance, with only Wilson before him, but with all the content offered by the comic books, it’s too bad that more of Batman’s philanthropy and detective skills were not on display.

9 David Mazouz

David Mazouz is the youngest actor on our list, playing the part of the pre-Batman, and very early Batman, on Fox series Gotham. While Gotham deserves credit for its originality, looking at the early life of Bruce Wayne alongside the career of Gotham PD’s Jim Gordon (who did appear in the first-ever Batman comic) its originality loses some of the classic feel of the comic book character. Aside from his age, Gotham’s version of Batman also lacks some of the anger, edge, and father figure aspects of the written version.

8 Adam West

Perhaps the best-known television Batman, Adam West is known for giving Batman and company a much campier appearance and reputation than any other actor.

This campy approach certainly doesn’t match the focused detective methods of the comic book character, but West gets credit for the care and time he spends with his sidekick, Robin. Audiences certainly appreciated getting to see the caped crusader in color as well.

7 George Clooney

George Clooney was a much better Bruce Wayne than he was a Batman. He had the playboy air and the billionaire good looks, however, he is perhaps the least popular of the big screen Batman actors. Aside from the fact that the batsuit had nipples, the film also had campy aspects like the Adam West performance though it didn’t seem as intentional as the West version. Batman couldn’t even play the superhero dad because there wasn’t enough of an age difference between Clooney and Chris O’Donnell’s Dick Grayson/Robin.

6 Iain Glen

Iain Glen is the most recent actor to take on the Bruce Wayne/Batman role. While he has yet to don the batsuit on DC’s Titans, he gets a lot of credit for playing up the mysterious obsessive detective skills of the original comic book hero as he keeps tabs on two of his Robin sidekicks. As is obvious from the Clooney and Wilson performances, the suit isn’t everything when it comes to playing a comic book style Batman. Iain Glen has gotten off on the right foot.

5 Val Kilmer

Batman Forever saw Val Kilmer take on the cowl, though his performance is neither remembered as outstanding (Bale) or horrible (Clooney) but that means he often gets passed over. Kilmer’s performance gets credit for introducing Chris O’Connell’s Robin and putting Bruce/Batman’s protectiveness on display. But besides finding his sidekick Kilmer’s outing is more memorable for its villains than its Batman.

4 Michael Keaton

Keaton was both funny and intimidating, and that made him work on screen as Tim Burton’s version of the comic book hero.

Keaton’s loneliness and obsessive focus made him work even if critics didn’t find him to look as much like the playboy as they would have liked. But the real Bruce is Batman, not the playboy, and Keaton certainly played that on screen.

3 Christian Bale

Christian Bale starred in the most highly acclaimed outing of the caped crusader on the big screen. His performance gets credit for showing the training and money that Bruce had to put into becoming Batman. However, his inward focus on his trauma (without a Robin to externalize his feelings) made him match the comic book version of Batman seen in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns rather than the original character in Detective Comics.

2 Ben Affleck

Ben Affleck never got his own Batman movie, but his appearance in Batman vs Superman and The Justice League did a decent job of matching to the Batman present on the pages of the classic comic books. He wasn’t as haunted as Bale, nor was he as separate from everyone around him as Keaton’s Wayne seemed to be. He looked the part both in the batsuit and out, and his focus on protecting the young and the innocent worked very well.

1 Kevin Conroy

Kevin Conroy may be best known for voicing Batman in a few different places, but especially on Batman: The Animated Series. Conroy got the chance to portray Batman himself recently in the crossover event in the Arrowverse, Crisis on Infinite Earths. While his live-action performance mirrors Batman in the Kingdom Come graphic novel more than the original DC comics series, his work both on-screen and as a voice actor put him closest to the Batman that is recognizable on the page.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/dc-batman-actors-comic-accurate/