Christian Bale (The Dark Knight Trilogy)
After Joel Schumacher’s crippling films, it seemed that Batman was destined to remain a joke. Then came Christopher Nolan, the acclaimed director of Memento, who set out to reinvent the franchise with Batman Begins. With Christian Bale at the helm, Nolan certainly did so, creating the first entirely dark Dark Knight.
Bale’s performance reminded several critics of his turn in American Psycho. However, they weren’t impressed by his now-trademark voice – even famous voice-actor Kevin Conroy thought it was “ridiculous.” Next, however, came the universally beloved The Dark Knight, a film so great that even Bale’s “off-putting” speech could be ignored.
Now that the trilogy has ended with 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises, Bale’s Batman is fondly reminisced, and always comes into the discussion of “who’s the best?” When it comes to quality, there’s no question that Nolan’s films are at the top. But the nearly incomprehensible voice cannot be ignored, and as great as he was, how much help the director offered Bale is unknown. It’s because of that that we don’t put him at the top.