Here, let me ruin Batman for you...

Why do we, nerds that is, love to rank things so much? Like, I'm going to estimate that fully 9% of the entire internet is devoted to lists and rankings and top 10's. All of them subjective and all of them kind of meaningless.

Yeah, but what else are we supposed to do?
Not obsess over where on a continuum of
ten arbitrary positions something falls?

Above: yes.

That said, I take issue with this list. Go on, click on it. See my problem? You don't? Did you even click on the-fine, I'll just sum up: it's a ranking of the Batmans...Batmen? Bats Man. Whatever, it's a top ten list of the different live action and animated versions of Batman from the last fifty years. Well, the well known ones anyway, and I have an issue with it. The writer, Matt Fowler from IGN, is of course correct when he ranks Kevin Conroy's Batman from the Animated Series at number one, but he puts Christian Bale at number two. Two!

I know this isn't a popular opinion, but Christopher Nolan's Batman movies are overrated and Christian Bale's Batman is the worst Batman. Ok, maybe not the worst, Val Kilmer was the worst. But Bale's pretty low on my list. Not that I'm making a list...

Hey, incidentally, when Dick Greyson's parents die in
Batman Forever how come Val Kilmer adopted him? I mean, Chris
 O'Donnell was an adult, shouldn't he have just gone and got a job?

One of his most formidable foes quacks and
steals bejeweled bird statues. Professionally.

Blasphemy, I know, but hear me out. Sure, Christopher Nolan's films, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, were like super-successful and everybody loved them, but I found their grounded take on Batman kind of uncalled for. It's a story about a kid who, after his parents are murdered in front of him, devotes his life to fighting theme crime whilst wearing tights. I guess I just have a hard time seeing what part of this premise calls for gritty realism.

"This is the only clue we have, we're not 
even sure what to call him. I was thinking
Clownface, but I'm not married to it..."

But I digress, here, let me explain my Bale beef in spoiler-filled detail. So movie one spends more than half its run time explaining in needless detail every single step of Bruce's training with ninjas in Tibet-which, do they even have those there? Anyway, then he and Alfred build the Batcave and get a Batmobile. All that out of the way, he goes up against the conspicuously non-magical Ra's al Ghul, wins and then has a chat with Jim Gordon on the roof. Gordon hands him a playing card and says something like, 'hey, there's a new villain in town, maybe go stop him?'

Which brings us to movie 2. According to my extensive internet research, some time has passed, but we're more or less picking up shortly after the first movie. Anyway, he goes up against Joker, one of the Gyllenhaals-I forget which one-gets blown up and Batman is forced to kill his best pal, Harvey Dent.

Was it Jake? Was it? What? Don't look at me like
that-wait weren't you Katie Holmes in the first one? 

Who, because the screenwriter had
apparently never heard of Batman
before, is a cop whose name is Robin.

Blamo, movie three. We learn that Batman, distraught after the events of The Dark Knight has given up his secret identity and has spent the last eight years bumming around stately Wayne manner. Bane shows up, growls out some impenetrable dialogue and tries to blow up Gotham City. Batman stops him, and is apparently killed in the process. But in a surprising twist he's totally not killed in the process. No, Batman just faked his own death and goes on vacation to Italy with Catwoman, leaving his crime fighting mantel to be picked up by the kid from Third Rock from the Sun.

Now, I'm no mathematician and admittedly the elapsed time between the films is open to some debate but as near as I can tell Christian Bale's Batman was Batman for a total of like eight months before taking an early retirement. Yup, this Batman quit. He never faced the Rogue's Gallery, never decked out the Batcave with souvenirs from crimes he foiled. Again, I'm not a top ten list person, but Christian Bale's tenure as Batman was, at best, eighth place. Maybe seventh depending on how you feel about George Clooney.

He never even got to recklessly endanger the life of a youthful ward...