The new Batmobile has been spotted in London. The modern tool for urban crime fighting was in Covent Garden Saturday (11 June) showing off it’s powerful abilities (although it seems that the jet engine in the rear was not allowed to be used in such a confined environment).
It is heading off for the premiere in Leicester Square on Sunday evening and will then make its way acros the Channel to Paris. (Does it have underwater abilities?).
This batmobile has its roots in the urban crime fighting machine used by Batman in the Dark Knight Returns but where that machine was a tool for an aged Batman this one is used by the young Bruce Wayne as he hones and refines his skills.
Batman Begins is on general release this week and as the ‘fifth’ outing for the caped crusader it is best to keep an open mind and not be swayed by the comments of reviewers, many of whom seem to be suffering hero fatigue and even (as evidenced on Friday nights Newsnight review) seem to have forgotten that The Batman is a product of comics who has transferred to the screen rather than the other way round and of course that the deep psychological aspects of the legend have been a part of the Batman for much longer than it has been a part of established psychotherapy.
Christian Bale plays Bruce Wayne/Batman in an inspired and adept way and his supporting cast of stellar actors (Liam Neeson, Gary Oldman, Micheal Caine, Morgan Freeman and others) help launch a new and distinctly more adult phase the franchise.
Follow the link below to see images of the Batmobile going through its paces for the press and public in Covent Garden and once you have done that, get on the phone and order your tickets for what is set to be the big blockbuster of the summer from Christopher Nolan.
Read more for the Production notes on the Tumbler and Nolans design and philosophy.
THE BATMOBILE
– Bruce Wayne, Batman Begins
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.”