Nolan/Bale Batman franchise -- what Batman should have been all along

Rating: 8/10 (10 October 2012)

The Chris Nolan/Christian Bale Batman trilogy is what the Batman films should have been all along.
The 1989 Tim Burton/Michael Keaton "Batman" and 1992 sequel "Batman Returns," the 1995 Joel Schumacher/Val Kilmer "Batman," the 1997 Schumacher/George Clooney "Batman and Robin," were smarmy, disrespectful mockeries of the entire Batman mythos. They were akin to the Roger Moore James Bond films, only worse. To this day I still wonder how they ever got green-lighted.
Only the three Chris Nolan/Christian Bale Batman films adopted the properly respectful attitude and conveyed the properly somber emotional tone.
The 2005 Nolan/Bale "Batman Begins" resembles the equally excellent 2006 Bryan Singer/Brandon Routh film "Superman Returns." Both reboots breathed new life into superhero franchises which had been left dead by writers and directors who showed little respect for the source material.
Sadly the Singer/Routh Superman franchise appears kaput despite critical and commercial success.
The rebooted Daniel Craig James Bond series has been doing the same thing for the James Bond franchise. It is treating the mythos with the respect it deserves.
One can only hope that future superhero franchises follow the positive examples set by Chris Nolan and Bryan Singer, rather than the negative examples set by Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher.