Here, let me ruin Batman for you:

Strong opinions about pop culture
expressed on the internet? How novel!

I realize that this is probably something of a non-sequitur, but Christian Bale's Batman is, objectively speaking, the worst Batman. I mention this because I've recently found myself involved in three unrelated conversations about which Batman is the best Batman and I-huh? Yes, these are the kind of conversations I have...Don't judge me. Anyway, I just want to clear this up. Oh, and to be clear, while I don't care about Christian Bale as an actor, this isn't about him, but rather about the dreary, kind of overrated Christopher Nolan trilogy.

If the Rogue's gallery spent half as much
time on their schemes as they did developing
their themes, they'd have won years ago.

Ok, so everyone knows how Bruce Wayne becomes Batman. His parents get shot in an alley so young Bruce, filled with grief and justice trains for an amount of time to become a badass at the arts martial before dressing up and going out into the streets of Gotham to fight themed villains. Cool, so we see this origin story in Batman Begins for what seems like the three hundredth time, except that this time it's most of the movie. The movie is like seventy percent percent secret Tibetan ninja school, then Bale fights Liam Neeson's Ras al'Ghul who, for gritty reboot reasons is not magically immortal, but instead just some bloke with a beef against civilization. I guess he's pro hunter/gatherer or something.

Anyway, Batman wins and is then summoned to the roof of police HQ where Commissioner Gordon hands him a playing card in an evidence bag and tells him that there's a new villain on the loose. So to be continued. Ok.

Oh shit, I hope it's not Mr. Freeze...

It was the kind of explosion that burns
off half your face and makes you insane
 but leaves hair and eyebrows untouched.

That brings us to The Dark Knight, the second in the Nolan-tology. This film apparently picks up not long after the first as Heath Ledger's Joker is still a new threat in town. Anyway, after much hilarious murder, the Joker blows up the two people Bruce Wayne cares about who aren't his butler: his childhood friend/crush Rachel Dawes, who after suffering a brutal recasting, dies, and his pal/DA Harvey Dent who has half of his face blown off. Now a proper Batman villain with a theme and everything, he goes on a coin-toss based murder spree and Batman has to take him down.

Bummer, right? So much so that after apprehending the Joker, Batman and commissioner Gordon agree to blame all of Two-Face's crimes on Batman in order to keep the former D.A.'s reputation intact. Because justice. So Gordon smashes the Bat-signal and Batman, we learn in the next film, disappears...

On the other hand, it was really only useful if Commissioner
Gordon needed to contact Batman on a cloudy night.

"Mama mia! I know him! That's-a the
guy who cussed out the camera man!"

-Some Italian

...for eight goddamn years. Now we're at the last film, The Dark Knight Rises. Batman limps out of retirement to battle the incomprehensible Bane played by Tom Hardy along with Scarecrow and Talia al Ghul. Oh, and Catwoman's there...sort of. Batman defeats Bane and then fakes his own death while saving Gotham from a nuclear bomb. And then he moves to Italy. Leaving aside the conceit that Italy doesn't have access to TMZ and that the DC equivalent of Elon Musk can't just blend in, Christian Bale is now the Batman who retires to a Tuscan villa because being Batman is hard.

"I know I swore to avenge your deaths
by devoting my life to crime fighting,
but there's like, a lot of crime so..."

Batman's never-ending quest for justice, you know, the one he swore to undertake over his parent's graves? Well, in these movies that quest lasted eight years. It sounds like a lot, but if you do the math, he spends like six weeks actually being Batman, the rest of those years between Dark Knight and Dark Knight rises is spent sulking around Wayne manner because he had to kill Two-Face. Despite the critical and popular acclaim for the Nolan films, Bale's Batman is the briefest, emo-iest Batman who ever Batmaned.

Look, I'm not trying to yuck anyone's yum here, it's just that if we absolutely have to rank the Batmen, and we do-I mean, what is the internet if not a forum for nerds to construct and then endlessly debate meaningless lists? But if we are going to rank them, maybe we don't give first place to the whiney quitter. Yeah, you heard me: quuuuiiiteeerr.

Batman and Robin was an absolutely terrible movie and George Clooney is
basically just cashing a check in it, but he as an actor and it as a film understand
that Batman is about a billionaire who puts on tights and fights theme-crime.