Non-militia Brutes couldn't switch weapons. In combat, a Brute could also be even more lethal once armed with weapons like knives gouging out of their gauntlets, which forced the player to perform a complex knife-counter each attack, electric gloves, which made them invincible and harder-hitting until the electricity dissipated, and shields, which forced Batman to do a shield takedown. Also, unlike the Armored Henchmen from the previous games, the Militia Brutes required two Special Combo Takedowns to go down, if the Beatdown or Dual Takedowns weren't used. Another difference was that you couldn't use a normal takedown or a Fear Takedown to defeat it. One difference was that you couldn't counter an attack from a Brute, but you could intersect it. Like Armored Henchmen, Brutes needed to be taken down with a Beatdown, as their blocks absorbed all direct attacks. These enemies appeared bigger than normal enemies. Most were aligned to the Arkham Knight's Militia, but some could be hugely generic thugs (only Harley and Penguin had brutes in the main story).

Mr.Brute was an enemy-type that was faced in Batman: Arkham Knight, and replaced Armored Henchmen and Enforcers.

Considering that, it’s a treat to keep up with Crane. Despite Batman’s rule against killing, his villains don’t tend to stick around for more than one movie. Murphy tops himself in “The Dark Knight Rises,” which sees Crane becoming the snooty leader of a kangaroo court that sends Gotham’s elite to execution. Nolan recognized what he had on his hands after “Batman Begins,” electing to bring Murphy back to play a B-villain for both follow-up films. Murphy makes the psychologist utterly reek of self-superiority, a stink that is only subsided by the utter glee that overcomes Crane when he meets the Caped Crusader - the only figure he can imagine as an equal. There’s a fun thought experiment to imagining what Nolan’s Batman films would look like if the production had cast Murphy as Bruce Wayne after the actor’s audition for the lead role, though missing out on his Scarecrow would be a tough loss. With that housekeeping out of the way, here is our ranking of “Batman” villains from worst to best.

Additionally, all four villain performances from the 1966 “Batman” starring Adam West are in a league of their own, as the conceptions of those characters originated on television with the ’60s series.

This list only considers villains from live-action movies that have titles alluding to or naming Batman - thus disqualifying not one, not two, but three Jokers in Jared Leto, Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Hamill, along with plenty of other performances.

However, considering that the superhero genre has expanded to cinematic universes, spin-offs and complicated content architectures, it’s necessary to set a few parameters for such a ranking. Before these additions are unveiled to the public, Variety is taking a look back at the franchise’s history of supervillains, pitting memorable performances against each other. With this Friday’s release of Matt Reeves’ “The Batman,” the pantheon of villains that the Caped Crusader has fought on the big screen will see three new arrivals: Colin Farrell’s Penguin, Zoë Kravitz’s Catwoman and Paul Dano’s Riddler. That’s almost never been a problem for “Batman” though the franchise has arguably been defined more by its rogues gallery than by Batman himself, with most of the antagonist roles offering the opportunity for actors to capture oversized egos and laissez-faire shtick. The cultural landscape has reached a state where a new comic book adaptation is unleashed on the public practically every other week, yet the genre can still struggle to offer truly memorable villains for its marquee heroes to battle.

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