Whose Batman films are darker – Burton's or Nolan's?

MakeEmLaugh

Recently re-watching Batman Returns (it is a Christmas film, after all, and 'tis the season), I was reminded once again of the ceaseless war between internet commentators over whose Batman films were better, Tim Burton's or Christopher Nolan's (Nolan usually wins, but Burton has his defenders.)

Leaving aside whose films are actually better, I'm interested in hearing whose films you feel are actually darker (tonally - not in terms of how well-lit they are).

People often say The Dark Knight is the darkest Batman film by far. James Berardinelli, the internet film critic, said at the time of its release

Compared to how Nolan sees the character, Burton's version was a pantomime.

But is that really the case?

Consider Batman Returns.

• It begins with a wealthy couple throwing their unseen deformed child into a river, and watching it float into the sewer, where it will presumably die.
• Said child grows up to be a lecherous psychopath – Penguin - who, at one point, gnaws on the face of a man he has just met, squirting blood across the room (easily as violent as any moment in The Dark Knight)
• Penguin plans on seeking revenge on Gotham City for his abandonment by abducting the first born children of the city's elite and drowning them.
• When one of his henchmen hesitatingly questions this, he is immediately shot dead.

Meanwhile

• Selina Kyle, a secretary, is pushed from a multi-story building by her corrupt boss, a fall which would undoubtedly kill her in real life.
• She miraculously survives, returns to her one-bed apartment and has a nervous breakdown (a quite disturbing moment for a Hollywood blockbuster).
• She re-emergences as a leather-clad vigilante, whose first task is to foil a mugging (with heavy undertones of sexual assault), stabbing the criminal in the eyes.
• She finally seeks revenge on her boss, electrocuting him, and leaving a charred corpse, which is graphically shown.

Really, all things considered, whose Batman films are darker... Tim Burton's or Christopher Nolan's?

Sad Professor

Burton’s take on Batman is much darker, I never thought there was any question of that. Nolan’s is more serious and grounded in a realistic environment.

Professey Chin

Burtons and its not even up for debate. Batman & Batman Returns were really dark. Bits of humour & campness but much darker then Nolans overall.

Turtyturd

Burton's for me but as with most of his films they walk a line where at any moment they can (and do) stray into ott campy/cartoony darkness.

Wedwood

Burtons movies were darker. Nolans movies are grittier, but carry a lighter tone overall, with a few exceptional moments here and there.

Both sets of movies have their camp moments, how can a movie about a guy in a cape not be ?

Arghus

I would have always said Burton's was a darker view, but I do think, while pondering on it now, that there's an element of Gothic pantomime to the edgier elements. Sort of like saying that the Penguin is grotesque cartoonish bogeyman, but the Nolan version of the Joker is a manifestation of our current worst nightmares. And much more terrifying because of it.

Nolan's films might be less overtly horrific and bloody, but I think they provide food for thought that makes them arguably fundamentally darker than the Burton films. Both TDK and TDKR tried to deal with real world concerns, through the medium of the comic book movie. They weren't as "dark" as Batman Returns, but the Nolan films implicit support of quasi-facist force and the dangers of mob rule, seems to me to endorse a deeper and more depressing view of human nature.

MakeEmLaugh

There is also the fact that Burton's Batman films were classified as '15' in the UK, whereas Nolan's were classified as '12'.

It always struck me as strange, as a child, that a character as universally popular as Batman would be the centre of two films which no one under the age of 15 could see.

I couldn't imagine Warner Bros. or a film studio or comparable size allowing that to happen to a blockbuster today.

(It should also be pointed out that both Batman and Batman Returns were classified '12' in UK cinemas, but their certificates were moved up to '15' on subsequent VHS and DVD releases).

Cows Go µ

I can't really tell which are darker because I haven't seen the Burton ones since I was a kid but Jack Nicholson's Joker terrified me. I can't remember how old I was when I saw it but I was quite young and to me he was just what villains were meant to be. He was just so evil and the phrase "Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight" still gives me shivers.

I'm scared of watching the movie now because it was such important part of my childhood and I'm worried it won't be as good as I remember