Tim Burton’s Batman Films Are Far Worse Than You Remember

Hailed as dark and edgy, “Batman” and “Batman Returns” are small, silly, and largely ignore The Dark Knight in favor of the villains

From Deadpool to Captain America: Civil War to X-Men: Apocalypse to Suicide Squad, we are truly living in the age of the comic book film. Studios pour hundreds of millions of dollars into films that try valiantly to remain true to the source material and translate the artwork of a splash page onto a movie screen.

It wasn’t always this way.

Not that long ago, superhero films were seen as something for children, a two-hour commercial to sell toys and merchandise. This is best exemplified by Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin, a movie so silly and awful that it derailed the franchise and made Warner Bros. hesitant to ever make another comic book film.

It would take eight years and the vision of Christopher Nolan to finally bring Batman back to the big screen.

Today, most people remember Schumacher as having ruined the legacy of the cinematic Batman, and with good reason. After all, he is the one that put nipples on the Batsuit, gave Batman a credit card, and showed us all the Batsmile. He took a tortured, haunted character with…