Moviegoers were introduced to a new on-screen incarnation of Bruce Wayne earlier this year in Matt Reeves’ grisly neo-noir epic The Batman. The movie was full of exciting set-pieces, from the opening train station brawl to the hallway shootout in the Iceberg Lounge, but one of The Batman’s most talked-about sequences was the Batmobile chase. Robert Pattinson’s Batmobile has taken a worthy place alongside the legendary Batmobiles driven by Adam West and Ben Affleck’s Batmen.
Pattinson’s Batmobile is more practical than most on-screen versions of Batman’s wheels. Michael Keaton’s Batmobile is more stylish than functional, whereas Christian Bale’s Tumbler is basically an armor-plated urban tank.
7 George Clooney’s Batmobile
The Batmobile driven by George Clooney’s Batman in Batman & Robin was more of a threat to the Caped Crusader’s life than any of the villains in the movie. This car is just an accident waiting to happen. Despite having his sidekick’s name in the title of the movie, this Batman only gave his Batmobile one seat, so he can’t drive Robin to crime scenes, leaving the Boy Wonder to waste fuel by driving himself or waste money by taking a cab.
This Batmobile’s single-seat cockpit isn’t reinforced with bulletproof glass or even glass of any kind. It’s out in the open, so if the car crashed or flipped over (which happens during the course of most Batmobile chases), the Dark Knight would be flattened into a Bat-pancake.
6 Val Kilmer’s Batmobile
When Joel Schumacher took over the director’s chair from Tim Burton for the third Batman movie, he radically reinvented the franchise with a campier tone harking back to the Adam West era. The Batmobile driven by Val Kilmer’s Bruce Wayne is a sleeker yet clunkier take on the design from the Burton movies. This Batmobile has big, goofy wings attached to it that would make it a nightmare in traffic.
There’s plenty of futuristic tech in the cockpit, but it’s not a great car for a superhero. The car has no safeguards in place; the Riddler managed to destroy it simply by dropping a bomb into the driver’s seat.
5 Michael Keaton’s Batmobile
The Batmobile driven by Michael Keaton’s Batman in the first couple of blockbuster movies was the original big-screen design that created the template for Kilmer and Clooney’s Batmobiles. Keaton’s Batmobile is more practical than Kilmer and Clooney’s, but it’s still more stylish than functional. The design is based on the Chevrolet Impala, but the car in the movies has been built out to match the gothic, expressionistic tone of Tim Burton’s heightened visual style.
It’s more important for this Batmobile to look cool than it is for it to drive efficiently. The car protects whoever is inside its cockpit from outside dangers, but it’s too long and lumbering to go smoothly around corners.
4 Adam West’s Batmobile
Adam West’s Batman drove around in a ‘55 Lincoln Futura that was modified by renowned Hollywood car designer George Barris. While West’s Batman is primarily defined by his camp tone and biting self-parody, his red-tinged Batmobile design is one of the parts of his mythology that’s just as cool as the other portrayals of Gotham’s masked protector.
The Lincoln-brand concept car is very cool from a visual standpoint, exhibiting a bunch of features that were thought to be futuristic in the 1950s, like tailfins and pods. But it’s not as useful in the realm of fighting crime as the gadget-laden cars driven by later Batmen. It’s just a regular car with pictures of bats painted on it.
3 Robert Pattinson’s Batmobile
In this year’s The Batman, Robert Pattinson played a Bruce Wayne who is only in the second year of his vigilante career, so he’s still figuring out how to use his gadgets to fight crime effectively. Reeves used a few visual pointers to demonstrate that this “Year Two” Batman isn’t a well-oiled crimefighting machine just yet, like getting punched by crooks as many times as he punches them and opening a parachute under a bridge.
Pattinson’s Batmobile is a lean, mean, intimidating machine designed to have the screen presence of a horror movie monster. It’s a muscle car with a little too much muscle for this inexperienced Batman. As he unveils the car to scare the Penguin into a chase, he accidentally stalls it.
2 Ben Affleck’s Batmobile
After Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies placed the character in the real world, Zack Snyder took him back to a heightened comic-booky reality in the interconnected adventures of the DC Extended Universe. This Batman had to take on Superman himself in hand-to-hand combat, so he’s kitted out with all the most advanced weaponry.
Relying on his high-tech gizmos to get him out of trouble, Ben Affleck’s Batman is more 007 than Dark Knight. His unstoppable wall-smashing Batmobile is tricked out with more gadgets and weapons than James Bond’s Aston Martin.
1 Christian Bale’s Tumbler
Christopher Nolan reinvigorated the superhero genre with the gritty realism of his Dark Knight trilogy. The movies aren’t totally grounded in reality, but Nolan came up with real-world takes on concepts like the Batcave and the Bat-Signal and, indeed, the Batmobile. Dubbed the “Tumbler,” Christian Bale’s Batmobile is essentially an urban tank. The vehicle is heavily armored with a bulletproof body and wheels that turn themselves the right way up.
The Tumbler also has a breakaway motorcycle hidden inside it, so it’s a Batmobile and a Batcycle in one. This car can withstand ridiculous amounts of force. When the Joker shoots the Tumbler with an RPG, the car remains intact and Bruce Wayne remains unscathed.
