What’s your favorite gadget from the film?
The car. It has to be because they’ve done such a radically different thing with it. What I love about it is that aesthetically it kicks ass. It looks f***ing stunning.
There were a couple of times driving down the street in Chicago where it’s like, “We can load it on the truck or just drive 5 minutes down there,” and they just drove 5 minutes down there. And you see that thing just going down the street and everybody is stopping and looking. “What the hell is this?” There was even this guy who crashed into it. This poor drunken guy who didn’t have a license, who said he got so panicked when he saw the car he thought aliens were landing and he put the pedal to the metal. I wasn’t in it – it was the stunt driver driving it at the time. He put the pedal to the metal and sideswiped the Batmobile. So, you know, it has this affect upon people.
I just loved how it’s indicative of the way that we are making the movie as a whole. It looks nothing like any Batmobile that has come before it. And it completely has practical applications which are explained and are very smart, and make complete sense. That’s indicative of what we’ve done with everything that has to do with the movie, including the explanation of the suit, the cowl, all the different gadgets that he comes up with and where he comes to them.
How did the Batmobile handle?
Stunning. Fantastic. I wish I got to drive it more, you know? The guy with the coolest job on the set was the stunt driver. I got a lot of attention the first few days I had the Batsuit on and then after a while you get used to me sitting around in a Batsuit. The stunt driver, every time he came on the set everyone was just in awe. (Laughing) “Here comes the man. This is the guy who’s really going to make the movie." And it is stunning. The things that they did with it. The actual engineering of it is stunning. I don’t know an awful lot about cars, but apparently it’s the first car ever designed without any kind of front axle. It really can do the things that you see in the movie. The actual cars really did do them. They built like 12 or 13 of them.
Did you get to keep one?
That was the first question [I asked]. They looked at me and they went, “You f***ing kidding?” So I didn’t get to keep one of them. But it is a fantastic drive. I’ve always been a fan of motorbikes and not so much of cars. You get in that and you just can’t help but love cars because you see all of the inner workings inside of it. You can see the functionality of everything that’s going on. And it screams when you get it up to a high speed.
It really flies. They couldn’t keep up with it – the camera cars. They were having trouble keeping up with it. They were having to ask, “Can you please slow down a little bit because we just can’t keep up with the thing?” But it screams in your ear and you’ve got this smell and everything inside of it. It’s elating. My heart was pounding every time I stepped out of that thing.
Some of the other actors have had a tough time acting in the suit. Was that a problem?
It wasn’t. I think some of them were talking about just the physical stamina that you kind of need for being in that. When you first put it on, you feel like you’re scuba diving or something, and it feels kind of claustrophobic. But you know, I just sat with it for a while and like I said, I could not wear that suit without making myself feel like some kind of beast. And so I found it just happened really kind of organically and I just went with as much aggression and rage as I could, bordering on appearing like a bad guy when he’s got the suit on. That you should be unsure when you’re faced with him.
First of all, I wanted it to be that he was never somebody that kind of just stood still saying, “Hi, I’m Mr. Batman. How are you?” That it should always be almost as if you’re witnessing a very rare and dangerous creature in the jungle or something. Like somebody that you just glimpse momentarily. And also I think that they made a lot of advances in the actual makeup of the suit. It was kind of like they cooked it, really. It was like a kitchen where they were boiling up all these different ingredients to try and get just the perfect level of mobility and rigidity in certain areas, etc. So I think I, by far, have had the easiest time of anybody short of probably Adam West who I think was trotting around in some kind of cotton get-up or something. They really came up with some good stuff. It’s much more mobile than any of the other suits have been.
Page 4: Christian Bale on Other Actors Who've Played Batman and Whether Batman is Mentally Ill
