7. Batman

The best part of Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman is what it did for the franchise. In 1989, audiences were accustomed to the spiky POW! graphics and tiny underwear associated with the 1960s Batman TV series. It had (and still has) merit as an accurate representation of Batman’s Silver Age comics, and as proof that billionaire orphandom doesn’t need to make a guy any less charming.

But Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman destroys that feel-good image in compelling ways. What it lacks in fascinating plot (the lovely journalist Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger) is kidnapped by Jack Nicholson’s frighteningly lucid Joker, and smitten Michael Keaton has to save her), it makes up for in psychology. It creeps into you. Everything is gray, bleak, foggy—except for the Joker’s catlike smile, which stretches into a red wound.

“Have you ever danced with the devil by the pale moonlight?” Joker asks a young Bruce Wayne after killing his parents.

That single line alone has attracted decades of fan analysis and discussion. And, single-handedly, Batman has made it captivatingly impossible for its hero to ever recover his Adam West sparkle.