Batman Begins (2005)

As young Bruce Wayne discovers in chilling fashion, beneath the foundations of Wayne Manor exist vast caverns inhabited by legions of bats and a spectacular waterfall. Nolan set out to portray Bruce Wayne’s gradual build-up of technology and functionality in what becomes the Batcave.

“The Batcave has previously appeared to be a very elaborately and improbably constructed place,” says Nolan. “In Batman Begins, we show the Batcave as a cavern that’s damp and filthy and full of bats, and we see Bruce Wayne installing trestle tables, stringing lights and moving equipment in himself, building up the world of the Batcave that will eventually come to be.”

Crowley’s atmospheric Batcave set was constructed at Shepperton. Approximately 250 feet long, 120 feet wide and 40 feet high, the Batcave housed 24 water pumps used to power 12,000 gallons of water through the set every minute, bringing to life the waterfall, a river and dank, dripping cave walls. “It was quite surreal to walk through what had once been a very small model that I used to crouch down and peer into in my garage,” Nolan says.

“My eyes popped out of my head when I saw the Batcave model and I realized I was going to have to pull a few tricks to light it,” Pfister admits. “I think we really achieved the look of a real cave, with this wonderful glistening rock all throughout.”

Visual effects supervisors Dan Glass and Janek Sirrs and their team created most of the Batcave’s nocturnal denizens with CGI. “There are limitations to what you can train a bat to do, and the numbers of bats that you can get hold of that will behave in the way you want, so we created a lot of digital bats,” he says. “We used a freeze-dried bat on a stick for reference during filming, and then used the look of the bat in that space and lighting to build the digital flock.”

Audiences may be surprised to discover that a sequence in which Batman “flies” through the Gotham skies with the aid of his rigid, high-tech cloak was achieved on a stage without the aid of visual effects. “We didn’t do any green screen work at all,” Pfister attests. “The flying was done using real wires and real cameras. We put a camera on a wire and flew Batman 800 feet across the stage. That encapsulates Chris’ philosophy of filmmaking: Let’s do it for real.”

“The most challenging aspect of making this film was the sheer scope of it,” Nolan says. “We tried to tell an enormous story, and we tried to tell it on the grandest possible scale because that’s what Batman demands and what Batman deserves.”

According to Franco, “The most impressive thing about Chris is his maturity as a filmmaker at such a young age. He knows what he wants instinctively, and he knows how to get it, which is even more important.” “As specific as Chris is,” Roven says, “he’s incredibly open to hearing other ideas and thoughts and points of view, and he embraces those that resonate with him.”

“I’m drawn to directors like Chris who can talk and listen,” says Morgan Freeman. “He strikes me as being a Spielberg type – directing comes very easy for him.”

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