Friday, June 3, 2005
BATMAN BEGINS: THE BATMOBILE
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- Of all the gadgets Batman has in Batman Begins, it's not even close when it comes to star Christian Bale's favorite.
It's the tank on wheels known as the Batmobile, a car that is like a crushing NFL running back -- it can go around you or over you just as easily. It's been described by director Christopher Nolan as a "hybrid of a Lamborghini and a Humvee."
Bale's face lights up just like Bruce Wayne's in the movie when it comes to talking about the car.
"They've done such a radically different thing with it," Bale said. "And what I love about is that it aesthetically kicks ass and looks stunning. There are a couple of times driving down the street in Chicago and it was like, 'We can load it on the truck or just drive five minutes down there.' And they just drove five minutes down there.
"And you see that thing just going down the street and everybody's stopping looking like, 'What the hell is this?'"
That's a fair question, considering the look the car, unlike any you've seen in previous Batman movies or in the comics.
Production designer Nathan Crowley set up a workshop in director Nolan's garage in the film's formative stages. As Nolan and co-screenwriter David Goyer wrote the screenplay inside the house, they would share ideas with Crowley about how they were envisioning the vehicle, and Crowleyıs designs contributed to important aspects of the script.
"Iıve never been on a project where I've gotten to do conceptual work so early on," Crowley said. "We set up a little machine shop and started making models of cars out of anything we could get our hands on. Chris would take a break from writing and come into the garage, where Iıd be with my car concepts, covered in glue. We made about five or six versions of the Batmobile over a period of about eight weeks."
In the film's story the Batmobile began as a military prototype bridging vehicle called The Tumbler, designed by the Wayne Enterprises; Applied Sciences division for the purpose of jumping across ditches and facilitating the moving of men and equipment over water and vast open space. Due to expense, Wayne Enterprises never mass-produced the vehicle, but upon Bruce Wayne's humorous discovery of the prototype, he maximizes its stealth design and extraordinary applications.
"We were just hammering the story out when we actually designed it," Nolan said. "What I felt, very strongly, is that if we could crack in the design stage of what element of the film would need to be, everyone would kind of get what we were doing with the film, the studio guys. I was looking for a way to the reality of the character, a way of creating this character from the ground up and creating a contemporary version of all the different element.
"I feel the character is timeless and I felt the character could sustain a contemporary, reality-based interpretation. In all the previous incarnations, we sort of reaching an element where they had become, I felt, very retro. They were sort of embracing elements of car design that no longer fit here.
"When the Batmobile was designed for the TV series, cars had fins. So they were able to exaggerate them. Cars don't have fins anymore. So, to me, what I felt we should do, very aggressively, is break this retro view of what this technology would be and try to design something that looks like it could do all the things that you want Batman to be able to do, and be a very useful tool for the character, rather than a design element."
"Honestly, the original inspiration was looking at the really elongated versions of the Batmobile in the other film, Chris and I other people involved in the film said that if that thing ever really tried to turn a corner, it would completely flip over in a heartbeat," Goyer said. "So we wanted a Batmobile that actually did things. We wanted to be able film proper car chases that weren't just a car going down a city block on the Warner Bros. back lot. So we put this thing through its paces and the reason it was designed that way was so that we could put it through its paces and do something really, really amazing sequences with it."
Here are the car's stats: The Batmobile is equipped with a 5.7 liter, 350 cubic inch, 340-horsepower engine with approximately 400 pounds of torque. 9 feet, 4 inches at its widest point, the vehicle is 15 feet long and weighs 2.5 tons. It accelerates from 0-60 in under 5 seconds and can jump 4-6 feet in height, up to a distance of 60 feet, and then peel off as soon as it hits the ground. It has six Monster truck tires.
The car actually has no front axel, which enables the vehicle to make extremely tight turns, with a very unique noise added in the film. Nolan wanted the wheels to be held from the side, which at first was considered impossible. But special effects workshop supervisor Andrew Smith and special effects supervisor Chris Corbould devised a way to make it work.
"There's nothing holding the wheels in the conventional way that wheels are held on a normal car," Smith said. "We built one prototype and modified it and came up with a very good system -- due to an increase in rear wheel diameter we turned the engine and gearbox around and went with a live axel. The design gives the vehicle an almost insect-like waist because it twists in the middle when being driven hard."
Nolan said he was amazed at how the car developed.
"Within six months, Andy and his team designed and built five of these things from scratch," he said. "I never expected them to be able to build a version of the Batmobile that could actually do all of the things 'hat it's supposed to be able to do in the film, but they did it. It's a monster, itıs a beast, and it's beautifully designed."
The Batmobile is featured in a huge chase scene, which was shot primarily in Chicao on Lower Wacker Drive in "The Loop" area of the city, just south of the Chicago River. Chicagoıs Amstutz highway, a two-mile stretch of highway that was never completed and does not flow into public traffic, was utilized for the portions of the chase that take place on the Gotham freeway.
"Chris really wanted the chase to have a loose, raw feel, something somewhere between a modern-day action-chase sequence with all the technology that we use today and something with the raw, gritty feeling of The French Connection," said director of photography Wally Pfister. "That's why I was determined not to use a digital Batmobile -- Chicago has these amazing subterranean streets, and I really wanted to get it out there."
"The cooperation we got in the city of Chicago was better than any film company has probably ever had in any city," producer Larry Franco said. "We closed down city blocks and did some extraordinary work with helicopters filming the Batmobile and police cars rolling over vehicles in the middle of the street."
According to Pfister, the Batmobile was running up to 105 mph (cars are usually going 60 mph or so during chase scenes) and actually outran a helicopter.
And as Batman rescues Rachel Dawes from the Scarecrow and tries to elude the police, he literally drives across the rooftops of the city.
"We built the miniature rooftop set at one-third scale, so the span was approximately 100 by 150 feet," Glass recalls. "Working at that kind of scale, things behave very close to reality. So when the car drives across a roof made of tiles, they break and fall like they would in real life. This enabled us to shoot the sequence as if it were a full size action sequence."
Bale recalled a funny story about the car's impact in the community.
"There was even this guy that crashed into it," he said. "This poor, drunken guy who didn't have a license who said he got so panicked when he saw the car he thought aliens were landing," Bale said, lauughing. "And he put the pedal to the metal. I wasn't in it at the time; it was the stunt driver. And he sideswiped it.
"So I love this affect it has on people. I just loved how it's indicative of the way we are making the movie as a whole. It looks nothing like any Batmobile that has come before it, and it completely has pratical applications that are explained. Very smart and makes complete sense. That's indicative of everything we've done with the movie, including the explanation of the suit, the cowl and all the different gadgets he comes up with and where he comes to them."
How did it drive?
"Stunning. Fantastic," Bale said. "I wish I had gotten to drive it more. The guy with the coolest job on the set was the stunt driver, you know? It didn't matter. I got a lot of attention the first few days with the Batsuit on. Everybody was like, 'Ooooh.' Then after a while, you get used to me sitting around in the Batsuit.
"The stunt driver, every time he came on the set, everyone was in awe. 'All right, here comes the man. This is the guy who's really going to make the movie.'
"And it is stunning. The things that they did with it. The actual engineering of it is stunning. I don't know an awful lot about cars, but its apparently the first car designed without any kind of front axle. It really can do the things you see in the movie. The actual cars could really do it.
"It is such a fantastic drive. You get in it -- and I've always been a fan of motor bikes, and not so much cars -- you get in that and you can't help but love cars. Because you see all the inner-workings and you can see the functionality of everything that's going on. And it screams, you know, when you get it up to a high speed. And it really flies. They couldn't keep up with it, the camera cars. They were having trouble keeping up with it and were having to ask, 'Could you please slow down because we can't keep up with the thing?' But it screams in your ear and you've got the smell and everything inside of it. It's elating. My heart was pounding every time I stepped out of that thing."
Eight Batmobiles were built for the film. Did Bale ask to keep one?
"That was the first question," he said, smiling. "And they looked at me and said, "Are you kidding?" So, no, I didn't get to keep one of them."
Copyright © 2005, The Comics Continuum