Gotham City has seen many different designs depending on the movie or TV show, but no one has understood the city’s essence better than Tim Burton did in his Batman movies. The Caped Crusader has been adapted to film a number of times, beginning in the 1940s with two serial films and a feature adaptation of the Batman TV series in the 1960s, starring Adam West and Burt Ward. Since then, Batman has gone through very different adaptations, but his history on the big screen can be divided into three: the Tim Burton-Schumacher series, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy, and the DC Extended Universe.

The first began in 1989 with the film simply titled Batman, directed by Tim Burton. The movie introduced viewers to Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne/Batman and Jack Nicholson as the Joker, all with that dark and gothic style that has made Burton’s work stand-out. Three years later, Burton returned to Gotham City with Batman Returns, with Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman and Danny DeVito as Oswald Cobblepot/The Penguin. Batman Returns is considered among the best superhero movies ever, but it also drew a lot of criticism due to its darker tone, and Burton didn’t return to direct more Batman movies. Instead, Joel Schumacher was brought in and directed Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, both with different actors playing Bruce Wayne (Val Kilmer and George Clooney, respectively). Burton not only gave Gotham a darker tone, but he also understood the city better than Nolan and Snyder did years later.

Related: Why Schumacher’s Batman Movies Aren’t Set In Burton’s Universe

Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy has been praised for its dark and realistic style, with the second installment, The Dark Knight, often regarded as the best superhero movie ever. His Gotham City, then, was like any big city you can find, with big buildings, cars everywhere, and nothing that would make it stand-out – except for the fact that it has a vigilante dressed as a bat and a variety of criminals. Snyder’s version, on the other hand, is also dark but in a bleak way that didn’t appeal to many viewers and critics. Still, it doesn’t stand out either, being just another city. Both Nolan and Snyder focused more on the characters living and working in Gotham City, and that’s not bad, but they forgot a very important character: Gotham City.

Tim Burton Batman Gotham City

More often than not in movies and TV shows, places are characters themselves, as they carry a lot of history and are unlike any other setting. This is the case of Gotham City, a place with a history of its own and defined by the crimes and characters that live in it. Gotham is not a city like any other, and as such, it should stand out. Burton’s Gotham might be too comic book-ish now, especially after seeing Nolan and Snyder’s takes, but it treated the city as the character it is. Anton Furst, production designer of Burton’s Batman, has said that he and the art department deliberately mixed clashing architectural styles in order to make Gotham the “ugliest and bleakest metropolis imaginable”, and based the overall concept on “what New York City might have become without a planning commission. A city run by crime” and “as if hell erupted through the pavement and kept on going”.

Burton’s Gotham City is far from the well-built and aesthetically pleasant version in Nolan’s trilogy and the also realistic city in Snyder’s films, and that’s exactly what it should be like. There’s an unsettling vibe in the clashing styles in Burton’s Gotham, as well as in its lack of color, all very on par with what’s really going on in the city: crime and corruption on every corner, and not just on the streets. In the end, every filmmaker will have their own vision of how the Batman universe would be like in the real world, but there are some details that shouldn’t be forgotten, as is the importance of Gotham City as a character.

Next: What Tim Burton's Batman 3 Would've Looked Like (& Why It Didn't Happen)