The reaction to news of Michael Keaton’s return as Batman in this year’s The Flash was enough to show exactly how much the world loves the original big screen iteration of DC’s biggest export. Now a new poll has once again delivered the perhaps not surprising news that Keaton’s Dark Knight is considered the undisputed greatest Batman by fans in the U.S.

The data for this latest poll comes from Valencia Theater Seating, who compiled the information from over 150,000 tweets that contained certain keywords and phrases including “GOAT Batman” and “Best Batman.” Although by no means a very scientific way of deciding such an important cinematic debate, the results were pretty conclusive enough as far as Keaton’s dominance of the role was concerned. However, it also threw up a quite surprising turn of events further down the list.

The data was compiled using geo-tagged tweets, which resulted in the U.S. being divided into states, with Keaton’s Batman proving to be most popular in 23 of the 50 locales. Christian Bale landed second place with a very respectable 18 states. However some were surprised by the remaining two names on the list, as despite being universally praised for his recent appearance in The Batman, Robert Pattinson failed to beat the previously criticized Ben Affleck to third place, with Affleck’s seven states massively outpacing Pattinson’s two.

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Michael Keaton Batman
Warner Bros. Pictures

Although Ben Affleck got off to a shaky start in the role of Batman, with many slamming his performance in Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League at the time. However, at some point that changed, and fans got behind “Batfleck,” to a point that his upcoming appearances in The Flash, and reportedly Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, have fans excited for his return. Pattinson on the other hand arrived with a mostly positive air about his completely stripped back Dark Knight appearance in The Batman, but it seems that it will take a little longer for fans to fully get behind his younger version of the character.

While both Affleck and Pattinson’s future appearances as Batman are not surprising, the return of Michael Keaton to the role after more than 30 years did come as a shock when it was first announced. While Keaton was meant to reprise his role for the Batgirl movie, his first appearance will now be in The Flash, when Barry Allen ends up discovering his older Bruce Wayne on his multiverse travels. Although Keaton was believed to have a much bigger role in the DCU’s future at the time of his announcement, it seems that the reworking of the franchise’s future has seen that fall by the wayside, at least for now.

All in all though, there are clearly many people who still consider Keaton to be the greatest big screen Batman. Whether that could lead to him reprising the role again somewhere in the future of DC Studios’ output is something that we can only wait to find out, although it is clear that many fans will be hoping for this outcome.