Tuesday, June 14, 2005
BATMAN BEGINS: THE BATSUIT
No nipples. No codpieces.
One needs to look no further than Batman's costume to get an idea of how much more serious the approach for Batman Begins was than its predecessor, Batman and Robin. If there's one thing Christian Bale didn't want to be in Batman Begins, it was silly.
And thanks to costumer Lindy Hemming, Bale felt suitably dark and dangerous before the cameras.
"I could not wear that suit without making myself feel like some kind of beast," Bale says. "And, so, I found it just happened organically and I just went with as much aggression and rage as you could, bordering on appearing like a bad guy when he's got the suit on, that you should be unsure when you're faced with him."
In the film's story, Bruce Wayne modifies a prototype he discovers in Wayne Enterprises' Applied Sciences division: the Nomax Survival Suit, nearly impervious body armor designed for soldiers to wear in combat.
The Batsuit designed by Hemming and her team is comprised of a neoprene undersuit, much like a diver's wet suit, with molded cream latex sections adhered to it.
"The suit is made of waterproof armor with components inside that maintain the body temperature and keep the muscles from freezing up, so it's multi-functional," says Hemming.
There are seven separate latex sections of the Batsuit: the knees, calves, legs, arms, torso, spine and cowl.
The Batman Begins Costume FX workshop, codenamed "Cape Town" for security purposes, was located at Shepperton Studios in London. The workshop was a 24-hour security-controlled compound, comprised of a whole village of portacabins. Upwards of 40 people worked on the Batsuits at the height of the Workshop's output.
The suit does have similarities to its predecessors -- it is still Batman, after all. But Bale has more movement that the Michael Keaton, et. al., had in their rubber outfits.
"A major consideration with the Batsuit was that Chris (Nolan, direcotr) didn't want it designed just to look at, but to be very functional in execution," Hemming says. "He wanted the legs to be supple so that he could crouch down when necessary, and he very much wanted Christian to be able to move his head and not have to do the superhero movement of turning the shoulders and the head at once."
Even so, Bale says it took a while to get used to wearing it.
"When you first put it on, you feel like you're scuba diving for something and it feels kind of claustrophobic," he says. "But I just sat with it for a while.
"And, also, I think, they made a lot of advances in the actual makeup of the suit. It was kind of like they cooked it, really. It was like a kitchen where they were boiling up all these different ingredients to try to get just the perfect mobility and rigidity in certain areas, etc. So I think, by far, I have had the easiest time of anybody short of probably Adam West, who I think was running around in some kind of cotton get-up or something."
One aspect of the Batsuit that Nolan was determined to capture was Batman's cape.
"There are wonderful illustrations of Batman striking iconic poses with his cape flowing, and we wanted to capture that element into our portrayal of the character," says Nolan. "We designed a flowing cloak that's used for concealment and therefore is a matte black fabric that blows and flows as it does in so many of the great graphic novels."
"I'm especially pleased with the cape," says Hemming. "Chris didn't want that armored feeling. He wanted to take the romanticism of the cloak from the comics, and he wanted him to be able to emerge from the darkness and fade into the darkness in places on the screen -- it's almost like parts of him vanish."
To achieve the look and feel, the team invented its own fabric a parachute nylon that was electrostatically flocked to achieve a velvety finish. The flocking is a British Ministry of Defense-approved process that is employed when minimum night vision detection is required. It is used on London police force helmets, and it was their technicians who ended up teaching the production team how to flock the cape fabric.
The flocking is achieved by running a static electric charge underneath the material, which has been brushed with glue. Fine hairs are then dropped onto the fabric, which they cling to, attracted by the charge.
In previous incarnations, the cowl restricted the actor's movement so that he would have to turn his entire torso instead of just his neck when he wanted to look around.
Hemming worked with Nolan and sculptor Julian Murray to devise a way to make the cowl thin enough to permit movement and supple enough to prevent it from wrinkling up when Bale turned his head. "I love the sensitivity of the cowl," says Hemming. "You can almost feel the workings of his face underneath it."
Despite all the cutting-edge technology, Bale said he still endured a "love-hate relationship" suit.
"It induced headaches and would send me into a foul mood after half an hour," Bale says. "But I wasn't going to be some little acting ninny who says I can't deal with it anymore, take it off. I used the pain as fuel for the character's anger."
In the end, it worked. There's nothing silly about Bale's Batman.
"The first time I saw him in the suit I knew that he was meant to play Batman," says producer Charles Roven. "He just takes on a completely different presence. He's a fantastic actor and a tremendous guy in real life. But when he puts on the Batsuit, he becomes very intimidating."
"Everybody on set felt quite a charge when Christian would walk on in the Batsuit," Nolan says. "It was quite shocking and quite striking. You felt it in your bones."
Copyright © 2005, The Comics Continuum