Five Reasons Why Christian Bale Is The Best Batman Ever

Let me just say it right now: Christian Bale is the best Batman out of all the actors who have ever played Batman (shockingly enough, I include Adam West on that list). Bale’s past films have greatly prepared him to take on Batman’s mantle. Here are five reasons why Bale is the best Batman ever:

5) He Knows How To Handle The Ladies, Onscreen and Offscreen – What do Scarlett Johansson, Katie Holmes, and Jennifer Jason Leigh all have in common? Christian Bale has bagged them all…at least onscreen. In the film world, Bruce Wayne is a billionaire playboy and he needs to have the suavity to pick up unimaginably beautiful women. In his films, Bale has been able to convey that magnetism, which makes him irresistible to any female within 15 feet. 

Also, have you seen Bale’s wife? Stunning. 

4) He’s Got Plenty of Experience Playing a Tortured Soul – For a man who has everything in the world, it would take a lot to make him spend his time in a cave, dress up like a bat, and go around trying to bring the most wretched scum in society to justice. Bruce Wayne has always been a tortured, fucked up soul, whose motivations always came from an extreme guilt and anger from the killing of his parents. To portray this, Wayne needs to be played by an actor that can convince you of his inner torment. Bale is that actor. 

In Brad Anderson’s creepy thriller, “The Machinist,” Bale shed 60 pounds and played the part of an insomniac with a body that looked like it’d been ravaged by an eating disorder. Constantly haunted by strange hallucinations and totally unable to sleep, Bale drew us into his dark world, even as we kicked and screamed for him to stop:

The man can act, and he’s willing to sacrifice his body for it too.  

3) He Knows How To Be Cultured – Being a billionaire public figure is hard work. You have to know what toys to buy, what cars to drive, how many supermodels to sleep with…all decisions that need to be made on a daily basis. In Mary Harron’s “American Psycho,” Bale portrayed a relentless businessman who could argue the finer points of business cards and who was willing to kill to be on top, but not before first covering up his furniture with newspaper and giving an insightful monologue about Huey Lewis and the News’ well-deserved success: 

If Bale taught classes on music appreciation, I would take them.

2) He Can Scare The Shit Out of You – The man that plays Batman needs to be able to put the fear of God in criminals. In “Harsh Times,” Bale played an unhinged ex-soldier with a severe case of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He killed dozens of people in Afghanistan and was on his way to a job that would allow him to kill more. But sometimes all this killing would bleed into his daily life, like in this scene when he’s looking for a job with his friend: 

If I were the guy driving that Lexus, I’d need new underwear after this scene. Gotham’s criminals will also feel the same way. 

1) He Can Kick Some Serious Ass – More than anything else, Batman needs to be able to inflict vigilante justice on his foes, through physical pain if necessary. Bale demonstrated he could do this in spades in Kurt Wimmer’s “Equilibrium.” Although the film didn’t really catch on in the mainstream, even today, it still has a strong cult following. One of the film’s most creative innovations was “gun-kata”, a method of gunfighting that combined rapid fire with dramatic martial arts stances. Depending on how much of an action geek you are, this is either the coolest thing you’ve ever seen or the dumbest. In any case, it helped Christian Bale take out two rooms full of guys with machine guns in “Equilibrium,” and that can’t be a bad thing. Check out this clip starting at 3:40 :