Michael Keaton was never supposed to be a superhero. It’s easy to forget, nearly 40 years removed from his casting as Batman, that he made his bones as the meat-and-potatoes front man for yuk-yuk comedies like Mr. Mom. But it was his turn as Betelgeuse, the ghost with the most (ironically his funniest role), that helped Hollywood see him for the weird and woolly deviant he was.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the new, long-awaited sequel to the Tim Burton-directed phenomenon, is only the latest of the wildly different screen experiences he’s brought to life. The following is a totally biased ranking of the actor’s 10 best movies he’s made so far in his career.
10. Cars (2006)
Cars, like about half of Pixar’s output for the first decade of its existence, sounds profoundly dumb in the abstract. It’s yet another naked attempt to capitalize on the success of the studio’s debut film Toy Story with a “What if ____ could talk?” feature. (Insert “insects,” “vehicles,” or “toys” again.)
But where the rubber meets the road, John Lasseter’s 2006 animated film is a triumph of midcentury modern design, a kids’ movie that works (forgive me) like a machine and is a showcase for a now-past era of highly effective voice acting from the likes of Keaton as racing car heel Chick Hicks. (Obligatory “KA-CHIGGA!”)
9. The Other Guys (2010)
The finale of a remarkable six-year run by writer/director Adam McKay (Anchorman, Talladega Nights, Step Brothers, and this film), The Other Guys’ premise is simple – imagine if those tough-talking, death-defying policemen at the center of innumerable buddy-cop films faced the real-life consequences for their own idiocy/“heroism.”
Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson jump cinematically off a roof to their realistic grisly deaths, leaving Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg’s desk jockeys to take over the case. Keaton plays their long-suffering captain, returning triumphantly to the broad comedies that made his name after a half-decade spent in the service of “more important” stories.
8. Toy Story 3 (2010)
Before Ryan Gosling strapped on the beachwear in Barbie, it was Michael Keaton who voiced Kenneth Sean Carson, alias Ken, in the final justified sequel to Pixar’s Toy Story. (Two more, entirely unjustified, were waiting in the wings.)
The appeal of the franchise has always been how it reckoned metatextually with the advancing years and its own oncoming obsolescence, which thankfully had not yet arrived by 2010. Given that Keaton’s traditional roles are squat, harried everymen, this qualifies as a delightful bit of casting against type.
7. The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)
Aaron Sorkin’s second feature as director was dumped unceremoniously on Netflix during the height of the pandemic. It’s an underseen and underrated political docudrama, juggling an absurdly stacked ensemble cast (Eddie Redmayne, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jeremy Strong, Mark Ryalnce, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Frank Langella) and featuring a rousing role for Keaton as Ramsey Clark, LBJ’ attorney general, whose unlikely sympathy for a group of Vietnam protestors was a key factor in their ultimate acquittal on appeal.
6. Beetlejuice (1988)
That Keaton’s most iconic role is what amounted to a 17-minute guest spot in a movie that was, until this year, a standalone piece is testament to his extraordinary skill as a comic performer. (Really – that’s all the screen time he had in the original film!)
His belching line delivery and completely unique physicality as the self-described “bio-exorcist” hired by a pair of ghosts to rid their home of pesky mortals is nonetheless what makes the film, which is otherwise largely an exercise in style over substance.
5. Birdman (or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)
Cacophonous with conspicuous effort on the part of its director (Alejandro González Iñárritu), co-stars (Edward Norton and Emma Stone), and composer (Antonio Sánchez), Birdman is an exercise in maximalism.
The story of a former cinematic superhero actor (wink, wink) taking on a self-serious Broadway play, the film is shot to appear as if filmed in one continuous take, and much of the acting is done in busy, demonstrative close-up to a score of rat-a-tat jazz drums. In the midst of this hubbub, Keaton stands out in his stillness, a once-serious artist struggling to rid himself of an intransigent god complex.
4. Batman (1989)
There have been too many cinematic Batmen to list here. But the impact of Keaton’s weird and slippery turn in the suit was so paradigmatic that his two immediate successors, Val Kilmer and George Clooney, could do nothing but mimic his moves. (It wasn’t until 2005 that Christian Bale’s guttural, stiff-necked Dark Knight created a new blueprint for followers to copy wholesale.)
Occupying a liminal space between noir and cartoon, Keaton’s Bruce Wayne could not have been a better fit for director Tim Burton, or a better counterpart for Jack Nicholson’s Joker (who is basically just Jack Nicholson).
3. Batman Returns (1992)
Keaton does best when he plays opposite a female co-star who’s equally petal to the metal (as with Winona Ryder or Pam Grier). And of the first Batman’s few weaknesses, prominent among them is his lack of chemistry with Kim Basinger’s self-consciously voluptuous Vicki Vale.
In the 1992 Burton sequel, Keaton gets to play not just with Danny DeVito’s flawless Penguin (who is basically just Danny DeVito with fins), but also with Michelle Pfeiffer’s sinuous, kabuki-inflected Catwoman. What makes Pfeiffer perfect is that you’re never sure whether she’s 100% serious; that’s Keaton’s Batman in a nutshell.
2. Spotlight (2015)
Of the string of prestige historical dramas in which Keaton starred from 2015 to 2021, Spotlight is the first and far and away the best. As the editor in charge of the Boston Globe’s investigation into sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, Keaton, like the film, is never less than righteous and sincere. But the movie’s austerity doesn’t extend to its crisp visual flourishes; director Tom McCarthy takes us through crowded newsrooms and foggy New England streets with an alacrity that recalls the best of William Friedkin.
There’s also the obvious connection to All the President’s Men, and indeed, Keaton here is the obvious counterpart to Jason Robards’ Ben Bradlee in his institutionally minded restraint, paired with a searing desire to get the job done. (That John Slattery plays Bradlee’s son in the film only drives the comparison home.)
1. Jackie Brown (1997)
Quentin Tarantino’s follow-up to his world-beater Pulp Fiction is many different animals in one – an Elmore Leonard adaptation, a Blaxploitation homage, and a totally consistent entry in Tarantino’s shoot-‘em-up oeuvre. Keaton is ATF agent Ray Nicolette, what amounts to the law in the lawless, amoral world of Jackie Brown.
The film is complex and rewarding, and Keaton, as in so many of his films, is humility itself in acting as a pillar to keep it upright. He’s a character actor and a leading man, chameleonic as any star of the past 40 years.