Other Titles • Batman Begins (2005) • Batman 5 • Batman: Intimidation • Batman: Intimidation Game (2003) • Batman Begins: The IMAX Experience • The Intimidation Game
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.”
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