Spoiler warning for The Batman (2022)
No comic book movie franchise has the legacy of Batman. In 1966, a feature-length movie arrived with Batman and Robin battling the villains from their iconic television show. Over 20 years later, Tim Burton brought the first serious Batman movie to the big screen, and the rest is history.
Through the years, Batman has been gothic, he has been bright and colorful, he has been dark and brooding, and he has even fought Superman. As each movie passes, the villains morph and change based on the personality of the Batman and the aesthetic of the director helming the film, and some of these villains remain more memorable than others.
Updated on March 11th, 2022, by Shawn S. Lealos: With The Batman hitting theaters in 2022, a new era of Batman villains showed up on the big screen. Many of these were villains that had shown up in previous movies but in very different roles. The new movie brought back Penguin as a crime lord rather than an outsider, Catwoman as an antihero wanting revenge, and Riddler as fans had never seen him before.
With the new entries to the Batman universe, it made it necessary to reconsider which villains in Batman movies were the best and brought the most danger to the Caped Crusader and the people of Gotham City.
Riddler (Batman Forever)
When Joel Schumacher took over as director of the Batman franchise, things changed. The gothic sensibilities of the Tim Burton movies were gone, replaced by the colorful cartoony aspects of the Batman world. There is a reason only one of the villains from his two films made this list.
However, Jim Carrey was over-the-top and wild as Riddler. His performance was a highlight of Batman Forever and made him by far the best villain from Schumacher's run on the franchise.
Max Shreck (Batman Returns)
In Batman Returns, an unlikely actor stepped into the role of a lesser-known comic book villain and delivered an iconic performance. While most people remember Penguin and Catwoman as the main villains in the movie, the primary antagonist was actually Christopher Walken's Max Shreck.
Shreck was the millionaire who tried to kill Selina Kyle early in the movie, causing her to become Catwoman. He is who manipulated Penguin into taking on the life of crime. Shreck pulled the strings, and he did it in a way that only Walken could, gloriously over the top.
United Underworld (Batman 1966)
Batman was a kitsch television cult classic from the '60s that saw Batman doing strange things like dancing and playing chess with his young protege Dick Grayson, or Robin. It also featured a who's who of actors taking on the roles of villains in the TV show. In 1966, a movie arrived based on the show and featured four of the top Batman villains.
Joker (Cesar Romero), Penguin (Burgess Meredith), and Riddler (Frank Gorshin) were joined by a new Catwoman (Lee Meriwether) as they teamed up as the United Underworld to battle Batman and Robin. They were gloriously over the top in the best possible way.
Carmine Falcone (The Batman)
Carmine Falcone was one of the main villains behind the scenes in The Batman. This wasn't the first appearance of the Gotham City crime boss. Tom Wilkinson played him in Batman Begins, while Eric Roberts took on the role of Sal Maroni in The Dark Knight. John Turturro bested both of those actors with his performance in The Batman.
He was a part of Bruce Wayne's past, as he knew Thomas Wayne and helped Bruce's father in ways that horrified Batman. However, the movie also hinted that Falcone could possibly have been responsible for Thomas and Martha Wayne's deaths, adding more blood to the man's hands.
Scarecrow (Batman Begins)
Christopher Nolan brought in some great villains for his Dark Knight Trilogy, and Cillian Murphy is so great in what he brought to the role of Scarecrow. It seems almost hard to believe that it was Scarecrow of all people who tied all three of the movies together from the villain's side of things.
He was scary, he was complex, and he was dangerous, especially in Batman Begins. He was never the main villain, and that is likely why he remains so criminally underrated.
Joker (The LEGO Batman Movie)
There have been several portrayals of Joker in the movies, from the Cesar Romero version to Heath Ledger's Oscar-winning portrayal to Joaquin Phoenix's depiction in Joker, the only one that had nothing to do with Batman. However, one of the most interesting came in The LEGO Batman Movie.
This movie was the closest any big-screen Batman adaptation came to the kitsch of the Adam West era. The relationship between Batman and Joker was a highlight, with the two proving how much they needed each other and doing it in a way that allowed kids in on the fun.
Bane (The Dark Knight Rises)
While Bane was not the main villain in The Dark Knight Rises and turned out to be a lackey to Talia al Ghul, he was still the best villain in the movie and a genuinely terrorizing monster. He had a great backstory and a tragic tale as he wanted to protect Talia, but became a terrifying mercenary at the same time.
Tom Hardy and Christopher Nolan caught some flack due to the voice modifiers making him almost impossible to understand, but that never mattered. Bane was dominating, and when he got the crowd-pleasing moment of breaking Batman's back, it was one of the best shots of the movie.
Penguin (Batman Returns)
Colin Farrell had a lot to live up to when he appeared in The Batman as Penguin. That is because Danny DeVito already turned in the perfect role as the crime lord. Batman Returns had three main villains, with Max Shreck the one getting the short end of the stick.
However, Penguin was spectacular here, his backstory making him a sympathetic villain and DeVito, in turn, delivering an impressive and frightening performance as the diminutive Batman villain.
Riddler (The Batman)
The main villain in The Batman was Riddler, but this was a version of the Batman villain no one had ever seen before. The only thing that Riddler offered here that was similar to the comics or previous movies was his penchant to give clues in the form of riddles.
This man was a killer but thought he was the hero in his own story. He punished the corrupt in Gotham City and believed Batman was his accomplice. Paul Dano turned in an eclectic performance that hit its crescendo when he ended up in Arkham, making the character a memorable addition to the franchise that could return in the future.
Ra's Al Ghul (Batman Begins)
Liam Neeson played an ally to Bruce Wayne for the first part of Batman Begins, and it isn't until he reveals that he is not Henri Ducard, but is, in reality, the evil Ra's al Ghul that the movie launches into a straightforward superhero film.
Neeson is excellent as the leader of the League of Shadows, a master tactician who can move pawns on his board to get the results he desires. He was so essential in the overall story that his daughter arrived to almost bring down Batman in the final movie in the trilogy.
Penguin (The Batman)
While not the primary villain, Penguin was a breakout character in The Batman. An almost unrecognizable Colin Farrell transformed into the long-time Batman villain in a characterization that was as far removed from Danny DeVito's performance in Batman Returns that it is almost two different villains.
Like in the comics, Penguin here is a club owner with aspirations for bigger things. With Carmine Falcone gone, Penguin now has a chance to become the new crime boss in Gotham City, and an upcoming HBO Max series will likely tell that story.
Catwoman (Batman Returns)
There have been almost as many Catwoman actresses as there were Batman actors. Between the original TV show and movie in 1966, three women played the villain. Halle Berry played a version in a solo film, and there were two in the mainstream Batman movies, with Anne Hathaway in The Dark Knight Rises, and Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns.
Most fans agree that Pfeiffer is at the top of the ladder when it comes to Catwoman, bringing sex appeal to the character while making her a sympathetic character that Batman tries to save at the end.
Joker (Batman)
For over a decade, Batman movie fans had one face that they always went back to when they looked at the Caped Crusader's greatest enemy. Jack Nicholson created The Joker in a new and deadly style. Nicholson took the theatrics of Cesar Romero and gave it a deadly twist, showing that Joker could kill anyone and do it with a smile.
Heath Ledger, Joaquin Phoenix, and Jared Leto brought their own versions in later years, but many fans still consider Nicholson as the best Joker in cinema history.
Two-Face (The Dark Knight)
In Tim Burton's Batman in 1989, he introduced Harvey Dent, as portrayed by Billy Dee Williams. While that version of the character is fun, The Dark Knight presented one of the greatest Batman villains of all time in all his glory.
Aaron Eckhart played Dent as a true hero, but as he prophesied in the movie, heroes die as heroes, or they live long enough to become villains. When Dent lost the woman he loved and half his face, he became a tragic fallen hero and the heart and soul of the best Batman movie ever made.
Joker (The Dark Knight)
While Two-Face was the perfect villain in The Dark Knight, the fallen hero who found himself as Batman's most dangerous villain, the best Batman movie villain of all time also appeared in that film. Heath Ledger took on the role of Joker and made him into something unique and brilliant.
Gone was the goofy one-liners of Jack Nicholson, and replacing it was a dark and sarcastic sociopath who killed anyone for fun and never once took the situation seriously. Ledger won an Oscar posthumously for the role and deserved it. Joker is the standard-bearer of superhero movie villains.