Maybe I need to trim my neckbeard, but that was the most infuriating and pretentious article on Batman I think I have ever read. And I loved Tim Burton's Batman. It also commits numerous sins against the character of Bruce Wayne and Batman. And it is not the best Batman film.

Having the Joker kill Wayne's parents was a blatant cop-out and a cinematic cheat to make the Joker's evil more real. Since all he had been up to that point was cartoonishly evil. But a person who kills the protagonist's parents in cold blood makes the connection and conflict personal.

Bruce Wayne is incredibly dorky and awkward in this iteration of Batman. Something he is pretty much not, in any other interpretation of the character. This is blatantly poor characterization. Bruce Wayne projects a persona vapidity and self-interest to deflect the idea that he might be Batman. He occasionally lets down that shield to people whom he becomes close to, see The Long Halloween and Batman: Mask of the Phantasm if you really want to see Bruce Wayne emotionally vulnerable. But he is pretty much always self-assured. But that would probably be too nerdy for this enlightened scholar of modern cinema. After all, these are just "funny-underwear films" right?

In '89 Batman, the stakes are that Bruce Wayne might be cuckoo. In 2005 Batman, the stakes are that Bruce Wayne might make Katie Holmes sniffle.

These are not stakes. Batman has always been partially to completely insane. No superhero is not at least somewhat unhinged. Batman is just slightly more so. And the actual stakes in both films are widespread death and chaos, so...did the author even watch these movies? Or just read the Wikipedia entries? Seriously, some parts of that article read like they deliberately calculated to piss comic fans off. Come to think of it, they probably are.