Other Titles • Batman Begins (2005) • Batman 5 • Batman: Intimidation • Batman: Intimidation Game (2003) • Batman Begins: The IMAX Experience • The Intimidation Game
To film Bruce Wayne’s down-and-dirty confrontation with seven prisoners in a Bhutanese jail, which takes place before he acquires the training to develop a brutally effective fighting method of his own, Forman choreographed a series of crude movements for Bale.
“This is where we see Bruce Wayne at his rawest,” Forman notes. “He’s got a lot of inner anger, so his fighting has to come from pure brutality. No formal techniques and nothing too technical.”
Staging a realistic seven-on-one battle also presented a challenge. According to Forman, “It’s difficult to choreograph a fight where you have seven characters assaulting one character and make it feel like they’re all attacking him at once. We wanted the fighting to be as realistic as possible.”
The first fight sequence filmed was Bruce Wayne’s grueling swordfight with his mentor Ducard, which was staged on a frozen Icelandic lake beneath a towering glacier. “It was beautifully dangerous and quite daunting,” Neeson says of filming in the shadow of the largest glacier in Europe. “Every so often between set-ups we’d see ice crumbling away at the head of this glacier and bits of rock and muck falling off, and we knew this thing was a big living force that was moving towards us.”
Due to the danger of filming on the temperamental ice, the safety team allowed only six people, including Bale and Neeson, to be on the frozen surface at a time. “We’d start hitting each other and smashing into the ice and then suddenly hear a big crack! right through the middle of the lake,” Bale recalls. “We’d all stand dead still and look around. Then the safety guys would shout Okay, get off! Get off! Thankfully, we got the whole thing in that one day, because by the next, there was no ice whatsoever. It had melted into a lake again.”
In preparation for filming the backbreaking swordfight, Forman and his team spent weeks rehearsing with Bale and costar Liam Neeson at an ice rink. The actors were trained in the art of wielding Samurai swords, defending against blade attacks with forearm gauntlets, and as Bale puts it, “practicing how to fight while standing on ice without falling on your ass all the time.”
“The cuts are very powerful,” Forman says of Samurai swordfighting movements, “and it’s difficult to defend yourself against them. It takes a lot of energy and Christian and Liam both put one hundred percent into their performances. They did very well, both with the Keysi and the swordfighting.”
“Lawrence Olivier was once asked what he thought the greatest attribute an actor can have, and on top of his list he put stamina,” Neeson says. “Christian has unbelievable stamina. He’s also a very talented actor. When he says his lines, I believe him. I believe what comes out of his mouth and that’s what it’s all about for me.” “It’s a great advantage to have actors like Liam and Christian, who are willing to dive in and express their characters’ physicality even in the most extreme situations,” says Nolan. “I was extraordinarily impressed by the authenticity and intensity that they brought to the film’s fighting and action sequences.”
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