General Editor Devin Gordon was on the set of the movie and talks to Nolan and new Batman Christian Bale in their first interviews about the film. In contrast to the gothic fantasia of Tim Burton's previous version, Nolan has opted for a gritty urban realism. He pored over 65 years of comics and came up this story: after a long exile, Wayne, now a 25-year-old scion, returns to Gotham City. His family's military subcontracting business, Wayne Enterprises, has been seized by shareholders, who've relegated the company's most ambitious designs - and their inventor, Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) - to the scrapheap. Wayne befriends Fox, using his designs to create an alter ego. And not a moment too soon because, naturally, there's a villain on the loose named the Scarecrow who's hellbent on poisoning all of Gotham, Gordon reports in the June 21 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, June 14, 2004).
The Batmobile and the Batsuit are also different this time around. The rear of the new Batmobile is stacked with four 44-inch Humvee tires, and the front is covered in jagged plates of armor. The Batsuit is translucent at first: it's a futuristic military design complete with body armor and muscle- recovery devices. Wayne sprays it black to camouflage it. "Chris wanted a serious, matte finish -- not shiny or gloopy," says costume designer Lindy Hemming. "We didn't want to depart from the classic silhouette, but we also didn't want to go too much in the homoerotic direction."
"This is obviously the highest-profile movie I will probably ever do," Bale tells Gordon. "And sometimes on a huge movie like this, every take becomes an event. You can easily lose any kind of intimacy. But it feels as good as it can here, because at the core of this huge production is Chris Nolan."
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