We Ranked the Best (and Worst) Actors to Play Batman

There's a great moment in the 2014 comedy Neighbors where an intoxicated Seth Rogen and Zac Efron are just sitting back, talking shop, and a natural topic comes up: the Caped Crusader.

"Who's Batman to you?" Rogen asks his co-star. "Are you kidding me?" Efron replies. The only option is Christian Bale in his mind. Rogen's character seemed to know this would be the answer, but just wanted confirmation. "Michael Keaton is Batman to me," he replies, before the two launch into their own Batman voice impressions of the two actors.

This conversation is one that's surely replicated often around the country. It could easily be argued that Batman is the closest thing the United States has to England's James Bond: an iconic character who will seemingly go on forever, passing from actor to actor.

In 2022, we get yet another contender: Robert Pattinson, who was cast as Bruce Wayne way back in the pre-pandemic stone age of 2019, and finally gets to unveil his take on the stoic crimefighter in director Matt Reeves' sweeping, visually stunning The Batman. Pattinson had his work cut out for him, but with a take that's "inspired by Kurt Cobain," it promised to be different from any we've seen before. And it delivered.

And that's just a handful of the picks. Now, for this piece we're keeping our options to the movies that were released cinematically in a major way. That means that Will Arnett (The LEGO Batman Movie) counts, but Kevin Conroy (the iconic voice from Batman: The Animated Series) does not. When Keanu Reeves makes his Dark Knight debut in DC League of Super-Pets (out later this year), we'll have some serious thinking to do. When Michael Keaton reprises his role as Batman in The Flash and Batgirl, we'll have to once again reconsider his place within the ranking.

That said: let's get to the rankings. To the Batcave!