BATMAN BEGINS

The Batmobile, Batsuit & Gadgetry
The Batmobile is an integral part of the Batman legend, and in accordance with director Christopher Nolan’s credo that every aspect of the film be firmly rooted in reality, the vehicle driven by the Dark Knight in Batman Begins was conceived in such a way that ensured that its design be absolutely in tune with the narrative. Says Nolan, “We were looking to present Batman as a very functional figure, somebody very concerned with utility, and so we wanted to create a vehicle that would actually perform in ways that are useful to the character.”

Production designer Nathan Crowley set up a workshop in Nolan’s garage, where he focused on many key elements of the film, primarily the Batmobile. 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; their ideas informed Crowley’s designs, and Crowley’s designs contributed to important aspects of the script. 

“I’ve never been on a project where I’ve gotten to do conceptual work so early on,” Crowley comments. “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 I’d 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.”

Throughout the course of the Batman legend, the Batmobile has always been presented as a contemporary vehicle, but with a sense of exaggeration and extremity to it. Following Nolan’s mantra of realism, it was important that every aspect of the Batmobile have a clear purpose, rather than just a mishmash of impressive-looking details. What resulted is a design that evokes a hybrid of a Lamborghini and a Humvee, a vehicle that combined the functional muscle of a tank with the finesse and handling of a sports car. 

In the universe of the 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 its expense, Wayne Enterprises never mass-produced the vehicle, but upon Bruce Wayne’s discovery of the prototype, he maximizes its stealth design and extraordinary applications to become a powerful weapon in Batman’s quest for justice. 

Because Crowley preferred making three-dimensional models rather than conceptual drawings, when he and Nolan brought their Batmobile concepts to special effects workshop supervisor Andrew Smith, they had a fully-formed, three-dimensional plastic model that detailed exactly what they envisioned for the vehicle. 

“Within six months, Andy and his team designed and built five of these things from scratch,” says the director. “I never expected them to be able to build a version of the Batmobile that could actually do all of the things that it’s supposed to be able to do in the film, but they did it. It’s a monster, it’s a beast, and it’s beautifully designed.”

“I finally understood men’s fascinations with cars after I saw the Batmobile in action,” Katie Holmes recalls with a laugh. “I thought, Okay, I get it. This is awesome! I have the privilege of riding in it in the movie and it’s even better on the inside.”

While most film vehicles are comprised of a pre-existing car frame with a plastic shell placed over it, Smith’s team custom-made every aspect of the Batmobile, from the wheels to the chassis to the bodywork.

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.

One of the most distinctive design features of the Batmobile is that it has no front axel, which enables the vehicle to make extremely tight turns. Nolan wanted the wheels to be held from the side, which at first was considered impossible. But 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 explains. “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.”

The Batmobile was outfitted with six monster truck tires. Depending on the driving performance that the filmmakers were trying to capture, the tire treads were shaved off mechanically and their pressure was adjusted to give the driver varied levels of grip for performing sliding stunts. There were three basic sets of tires, with treads ranging from fully-skinned to semi-skinned to bald.

A total of eight Batmobiles were created for the production. In addition to the five fully operational, gas-powered models, there was an electric version that featured a sliding top to enable Batman and his passengers to easily enter and exit the car. The stunt driver was hidden behind the main seat and drove the vehicle from a sideways position. There were also two “cannon” vehicles, which were lightweight and contained no engines, and could be catapulted from a cannon for specific action sequences. 

Building a vehicle as massive and powerful as the Batmobile necessitated that Smith and his team rigorously test every aspect of the car before handing it over to the stunt drivers and actors who would be piloting it onscreen. “We try and test absolutely everything,” says Smith. “We knew we were going to jump the car, so we went out and spent days and days jumping. That’s where our prototype car went – we got 35 jumps out of it. We just keep going until things break. And we do break a lot of stuff during testing, but that means that we don’t break a lot of stuff after shooting actually begins.” 

The most demanding Batmobile sequence to film was Batman’s breakneck car chase through the streets of Gotham City. Among the action that had to be performed and captured on film were scenes in which the vehicle crushes other cars, maneuvers in and out of traffic at dangerously high speeds and executes razor-sharp cornering in extremely tight spaces. Upwards of 30 drivers were used to create the car chase, which was staged on the streets of Chicago. 

“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,” says director of photography Wally Pfister (Laurel Canyon, Memento, Insomnia). “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 cockpit of the Batmobile does not provide a great deal of peripheral vision for the driver, so a video system was installed with cameras mounted on top of the vehicle facing backwards and just over the driver’s eye-line to match his viewpoint. If the driver ever lost his “real” vision, he could pilot the vehicle using the monitors. “It’s a handful,” Smith says of the car. “It looks like it’s very responsive but there’s a lot of physical effort involved, a lot of wheel twirling in that cockpit to keep it under control.”

“I would spend all day driving the Batmobile and then get in my car to go home, and it would take me a while to adapt to driving a normal car,” says stunt driver George Cottle. “The whole body of the Batmobile rolls and flexes from side to side, making the vehicle up to six inches wider on either side because of the flexing movement.” 

As Batman, Christian Bale was afforded the unforgettable experience of piloting the Batmobile himself. “It’s like nothing else,” says the actor. “Driving it is like having Ozzy Osbourne screaming in your ear – it’s insane.” Not only was cutting-edge technology employed in the fabrication and operation of the Batmobile, it also played an integral part in bringing the chase to the screen in the most dynamic way possible. The stunt team and film crew worked with an innovative new type of camera car: the AMG Mercedes ML tracking vehicle, outfitted with a device called the Ultimate Arm and Lev Head, a gyro-stabilized head on a robotically-controlled arm that is controlled by joysticks inside the vehicle. The Lev Head gave such a stable, solid image that the filmmakers shot approximately eighty percent of the chase with it. 

Nolan and Pfister rode in the ML during filming, while built-in monitors and an open microphone enabled the director to simultaneously communicate with Cottle as he piloted the Batmobile and the tracking vehicle driver, and make real-time adjustments in speed or handling. 

“The ML was the best tool we’ve ever had for a car chase,” says stunt coordinator Paul Jennings. “It meant that we didn’t have to pull back the speed of the Batmobile, because it could keep up. It was invaluable in terms of getting shots that you couldn’t dream of doing with a normal tracking vehicle. There are shots in the film that I’m sure people will think were sped up, but they’re not – they were done for real.”

Says Pfister, “You very rarely drive a car more than 50 or 60 miles an hour in a chase sequence. We had the Batmobile up to 105 miles an hour. It was amazing to us, and it nearly outran a helicopter – particularly flying sideways, the helicopter couldn’t even keep up with the Batmobile.”

Additionally, the crew utilized a combination of the arm and the lever head attached to a motorcycle with a sidecar, and a camera was mounted to the front of a police car that one of the stunt men drove and kept within a few feet of all the big action sequences. Pfister and Nolan also used a space cam and a helicopter to capture spectacular aerial footage of the Batmobile driving around Chicago and on the open highway.

The massive amounts of planning, work and dedication devoted to developing and executing the Batmobile earned it a special place in the filmmakers’ hearts. “For a long time there was actually going to be a moment at the end of the movie where we were going to destroy the Batmobile,” recalls producer Emma Thomas. “But in the end we just couldn’t bring ourselves to do it – the Batmobile had become like a character to us.”

Batman’s image invokes something primal, almost bestial, striking terrible fear in the hearts of those the Dark Knight has sworn to defeat. It was imperative to the filmmakers that their Batsuit enable Christian Bale to strike that menacing chord. “I looked at the great comics and graphic novels through the history of Batman to try and distill the essence of what those extraordinary pictures and drawings were saying about what Batman should look like,” says Nolan. “Each artist interprets the costume differently, but there are these common aspects that define the essence of the character.”

The Batman Begins filmmakers wanted to create a very mobile Batsuit, as opposed to previous suits, which were quite stiff and thus physically restrictive. The newly designed suit allows Bale to perform all of the demanding action that the film’s stunts and martial arts fight sequences called for.

“A major consideration with the Batsuit was that Chris didn’t want it designed just to look at, but to be very functional in execution,” says costume designer Lindy Hemming (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Lara Croft Tomb Raider). “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.” (Full head movement was not possible in previous feature film incarnations of the Batsuit.) 

In Batman Begins, the Batsuit is born when 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 that contained administration office and canteen, as well as all the technical workshops, including the Sculpt Room, Dye and Laundry, Spray Room, Cutting and Sewing Room, Art Finishing Room, Mold Shop and Foam Lab. Upwards of 40 people worked on the Batsuits at the height of the Workshop’s output.

Christian Bale was sculpted and molded for the Batsuit at Cape Town months prior to filming, before he began training to build up his body into the necessary physical shape and condition for the role. “We always knew that when Christian came back from training, he would have developed into a different shape,” Hemming says. “He did get enormously bigger, and when he first came back, we were like, Oh, no. It’s never going to fit!” (Bale gained back the 63 pounds that he had lost for a previous film role, then put on an additional 20 pounds of muscle to complete his Batman physique.)

Once a full body cast was taken, a plastic model of Bale was produced from that mold and then sculpted with clay. Next, a specialized material called plastiline was added to achieve a smoother surface – if the suit were molded straight from clay, imperfections would be picked up that would be visible on-screen. After the plastiline molds were made, they were taken to the foam lab, where they were injected with a latex foam mixture. 

An enormous amount of research and development went into finding just the right recipe for the mixture – hours were spent trying to achieve the level of foam that would give the suit flexibility and lightness, as well as the durability that it needed. Getting the foam as black as possible was also a problem, as that process reduces the durability of the material – the more pigment that is added, the more it undermines the strength of the foam. After arriving at the perfect balance, the molds were injected with the foam mixture, cooked in a large oven, and the pieces were de-molded and trimmed very patiently with fine scissors, as they must appear as if they were cut by laser rather than by hand.

“It was like a chemical lab, with people actually stirring big pots and sticking stuff in ovens and getting the perfect temperature, then testing and working out the flexibility,” Bale says of Cape Town.

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 this distinct look and feel, the team invented their 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. “It’s like when you were a kid and you combed your hair to make it stand on end,” costume effects supervisor Graham Churchyard describes. “It’s the same thing, except we use 60,000 volts to hold it in place.”

The cowl, Batman’s distinctive mask and head covering, also presented a challenge to the designers. 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 – inevitably, it looked quite awkward. 

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. The result is a sleek, almost panther-like silhouette that allowed for natural movement. “I love the sensitivity of the cowl,” says Hemming. “You can almost feel the workings of his face underneath it.” 

“The cowl itself is very expressive,” adds Churchyard. “This is a man who has angst and that really shows through the mask – rather than concealing his emotions, it actually reveals his character.” 

In the film, the cowl boasts many features that make it a practical tool as well as an intimidating disguise – crafted with an impact-resistant graphite-composite exterior, there’s a Kevlar panel that shields Batman’s head from small caliber weapons fire; high-gain stereo microphones are concealed in the ears, allowing Batman to eavesdrop on distant conversations through walls or magnify his voice to formidable volume via a hidden loudspeaker; and a radio antenna in the earpiece that allows him to monitor police band and emergency response channels.

While the suit may have been more supple and allowed more movement than previous versions in prior Batman films, it was by no means comfortable, and during filming, Bale had to wear it for hours at a stretch. It took three people to suit Bale up every day. Overheating was a major concern, and at times Bale wore a “cool suit,” which had tiny plastic tubes running through the inside of the body, similar to what high-altitude pilots and astronauts use as a cooling system.

“I put it on as much as possible so that I could really get a feel for it and get the moves and the presence of the Batsuit correct,” says Bale. “Naturally, after six months of filming, I had a kind of a love-hate relationship with the thing. It induced headaches and would send me into a foul mood after half an hour. 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. Batman’s meant to be fierce, and you become a beast in that suit, as Batman should be – not a man in a suit, but a different creature.” 

“Christian had a very controlled and specific approach to how he wanted to portray the aggression and the animal-like quality of this character,” says Nolan. “He spent a long time looking at graphic novels and illustrations of Batman, to form his own sense of how he should move and communicate with the other characters. I think that his portrayal is very striking in its intensity and its seriousness.”

“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.”

In creating his character, Bale thought of Batman as a creature, an image that was aided by his menacing guise. “The suit gives you this huge neck, like a Mike Tyson neck, which you really rarely see amongst humans. It’s more like a panther. It gives you this real feral look, as though you’re going to pounce on somebody any moment.”

“I was very surprised at how intimidating he becomes and how much it changes him,” agrees Gary Oldman of working with the Bat-suited Bale. “It was very disconcerting.”

“Everybody on set felt quite a charge when Christian would walk on in the Batsuit,” Nolan concludes. “It was quite shocking and quite striking. You felt it in your bones.” 

Batman captures the imagination so strongly in part because he is a superhero with no super powers; he is a mere man striving to eradicate injustice, and so in order to gain an edge over the vast evil that he must overcome, he equips himself with an array of innovative tools and weapons.

It was important to Nolan that every piece of Batman’s arsenal have a clear and practical purpose. In the film, Bruce Wayne takes a gritty, do-it-yourself approach to developing his tools, including spray painting his suit matte black and grinding his own Batarangs. In this way, it’s possible for the first time to see the genesis of Batman’s weapons and gadgetry, from their crude beginning until they are refined enough to fully equip him to begin his crusade. 

Originally a Wayne Enterprises prototype climbing harness, the Utility Belt was modified by Bruce Wayne, who removed the shoulder straps but retained the Belt’s convenient sliding attachments. Because Batman vowed never to take a life in the pursuit of justice, all of the apparatus in the Utility Belt are considered non-lethal deterrents. 

The Utility Belt features a grappling gun with a magnetic grapple and monofilament decelerator climbing line; a flexible fiber optic periscope that allows Batman to see around corners; Batarangs, weapons with razor-sharp edges that can be thrown shuriken-style, with its sharp points imbedding in an intended target, or used like a boomerang (Batman’s gloves are Kevlar-reinforced so that the returning weapon doesn’t slice his fingers); ninja spikes that can be affixed to Batman’s hands and feet for scaling sheer walls; mini-mines and explosives; a mini cellular phone with an encrypted signal; and a medical kit containing antidotes to various nerve agents and toxins.

Another of Batman’s key tools are his scalloped brass forearm gauntlets, which are painted matte black like the rest of the Batsuit, and are used by the Dark Knight for climbing and defense against bladed weapons, so he can parry sword strikes without injury. Batman also uses a special sonic device, located in the heel of his boot, to call swarms of bats to a scene, either for protection or to create a terrifying distraction.

Next Production Note Section

TOP

Home | Theaters | Video | TV