From Rebecca Murray,
Your Guide to Hollywood Movies.
FREE Newsletter. Sign Up Now!

The rumors of a surprise appearance by Batman himself, Christian Bale, turned out to be totally bogus but screenwriter David Goyer and Cillian Murphy ('Dr. Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow') did turn up at the 2004 San Diego Comic Con to share a little insight into "Batman Begins," directed by Christopher Nolan.

In a press conference prior to appearing before 6,500 comic book and movie fans, Goyer and Murphy walked a delicate line, hedging on questions that required detailed information on the look of costumes or other closely held secrets. But even without the ability to give intricate details, Goyer and Murphy were able to give us a preview of what we can expect from this latest incarnation of "Batman."

DAVID GOYER AND CILLIAN MURPHY PRESS CONFERENCE:

Can you tell us where you’re at in the production?
DAVID GOYER: I think wrapping around September 16th, something like that, so we’re nearing the end.

CILLIAN MURPHY: I wrapped the film.

DAVID GOYER: I think, let’s see, about a week ago they were on day 91 or something like that.

Where are they shooting?
DAVID GOYER: Well, they’re about to make a move to Chicago where they’ll be shooting for three weeks and then - I think it’s okay to say that, it’s been reported on the ‘net all over the place – and then it’s back to England.

How did they first approach you to play Scarecrow and how is the character like or unlike the comic book?
CILLIAN MURPHY: Well, I think – I don’t know how much I am at liberty to discuss like plot and stuff...

DAVID GOYER: I was actually told by Chris [Nolan] to stop him if he ever says anything he shouldn’t say (laughing).

CILLIAN MURPHY: Please do. I’m not a huge comic book aficionado. I wasn’t, but DC sent me all the comics with the character in it so I just read them all and then spoke to Chris a lot about it, you know? I spoke to him about the script and fear is addressed a lot in the script and, psychologically, I think that plays a lot in the character of Batman anyway, you know, from the very beginning.

DAVID GOYER: Fear is one of the themes of the whole movie.

CILLIAN MURPHY: Yeah.

DAVID GOYER: For all the characters.

CILLIAN MURPHY: I mean, Scarecrow’s got this fear-inducing toxin that is his weapon. So we just discussed that a lot, the psychology of fear because he’s not a very physically – Jonathan Crane is not a physically imposing character so this is what he uses instead.

What does he look like?
CILLIAN MURPHY: Well the Jonathan Crane look…No actually, I can’t [say].

What did you want to do with "Batman" that hasn’t been done in films before?
DAVID GOYER: Well, first of all thank God we were doing an origin story so we were telling a story that took place well before the other films. And we were telling a story that for a large part had never been told before. There was [some] in the comics “Batman: Year One” but aside from that it was very elliptical. And there are definitely segments of our film that have never been addressed, even in the comic books, so we were sort of in uncharted territory.

It was interesting when we were meeting with DC and Paul Levitz, when we were proposing to fill in some of these gaps, I was very curious as to how they were going to react. But they embraced everything that we were proposing because it seemed to fit in with everything that had been set before. It was exciting to do an origin story because we weren’t beholden to any of the other films or to the TV series. In comic book terms, it was sort of a reboot in a way. The notion was that after our film finished, we could then go off and if Chris or Warner Bros. wanted to play with subsequent films, that they could sort of reintroduce the pantheon of villains and whatnot.

Is this a much more real world “Batman” movie?
DAVID GOYER: Definitely, definitely. It’s definitely a depiction of Batman that…I mean, it’s all filtered through Chris’ vision and he is a very naturalistic director and that was what was very exciting to me. Frankly, I don’t know that I – as much as I love “Batman” – I don’t know that I would have been interested in writing it for anyone else. I think Chris is such a great filmmaker, and that was the main appeal to me [was]that he was going to be telling the story in a way that it seems like that’s the way the story always should have been told, but for some reason no one had ever approached “Batman” that way. It seemed like a no-brainer to me. But the fact that Chris was going to do it and that Warner Bros. was actually going to let him do it, it was an amazing experience.

I remember Chris and I batting ideas around thinking there’s no way they’re going to let us do this. Not that we were breaking any great rules, but it just seemed like we were doing the sort of story that I certainly had always wanted to see. And DC and Warner Bros. were great. They just embraced it. It’s actually the best experience I’ve ever had working with a studio because they truly trusted us and just said, “You guys know what you’re doing. We’re going to let you run with it.”