Not that 1989's Batman is particularly heroic, at least by superhero standards. Over the course of the movie, Batman kills a ton of criminals, including bombing a factory and throwing henchmen off the clock tower to their deaths. Opinions on this one vary, but in the whole "should Batman kill people" argument, I come down pretty hard as a purist. Maybe it's just me, but I find a billionaire who, as Hamm put it in that interview, "has a sick hobby" to be a lot easier to root for if he's not also a mass murderer. Burton's Batman, on the other hand, has a body count that's pretty comparable to his arch-villain's, and he isn't even the one Prince was writing songs for. Put it all together, and you've got a movie called Batman that doesn't seem to want you to like Batman. Even Alfred isn't on board with this whole costumed vigilante scheme, and tries to get Vicki Vale involved so his employer has something else to focus on that doesn't involve bat-shaped boomerangs. No one is on board with this movie's entire premise!

I should note here that none of this is really a reflection on Michael Keaton. I love that dude, and he actually does some really great work with the material, especially in terms of playing Bruce Wayne as exactly the kind of distant weirdo that you can imagine realistically deciding to become a vigilante. If nothing else, "because I bought it in Japan" is one of the best line deliveries in a movie, and considering it's stacked up against Jack Palance wheezing "youuuuu... are my numbahhh onnnne... guy," that's saying something.

I will say that as good as he is as Bruce Wayne, I don't think he's a great Batman. That's less about performance than physicality, though. Despite having the best eyebrows of anyone to ever play Batman—seriously—he never really looks like a superhero. Instead, he looks like... well, like a 5'9" actor in an uncomfortable leather suit who falls down a lot.

To be fair, though, with Tim Burton at the helm, Keaton was probably the best-case scenario. Burton does, after all, tend to cast from a small group of actors that he likes to work with, and in that respect, Keaton getting the job right after Beetlejuice makes a lot of sense. If this movie had happened a few years later, we might've been living in some kind of horrifying nightmare world where Johnny Depp was Batman.