The announcement of Nolan as director was the first real indication from Warner Bros. that there was going to be a totally different approach to the latest film in the "Batman" franchise. Nolan and Christian Bale were given the task of breathing life back into the franchise - and they succeeded.
Casting Christian Bale as Batman: Christian Bale was just coming off a starring role in “The Machinist” when he took on “Batman Begins.” Bale had dropped a tremendous amount of weight for his role in “The Machinist” and looked nowhere near fit enough to be Batman. Bale said he normally weighs 185 and went down to 121 for “The Machinist” and then up to 220. He eventually weighed in at 190, 195 when he was working on “Batman Begins.”
Despite the weight issues, Nolan had total faith Bale could handle the role. “We always knew that he’d be able to handle it when it came to shooting. We were worried, we were concerned that he wouldn’t be able to convince the screen test for the studio because he would still be too skinny. But he managed very, very quickly, within seven weeks from his filming and wrapping ‘The Machinist,’ he put on most of the weight.”
Nolan on Taking on a Big Budget Blockbuster: “Well I always dreamt about what that sort of film would be. But you don’t, at least I never did, think in terms of the process of it or doing it as a job or anything like that. For me it’s always been a creative fantasy.”
Nolan’s Approach to Filming “Batman Begins” as Opposed to Shooting “Memento:” “I think just by approaching things from the point of view of what best expresses the story, and thinking in terms of what shot follows this one to progress the story. There isn't really any reason why, with a different scale [of the] story, that style should necessarily be different. ...So then you’re referring to the use of flashbacks and so forth and the way you remember things and, you know, for me having found a way to represent that that I felt very comfortable with, I don’t have any reason to change that.”
Christopher Nolan on Getting the Chance to Blow Things Up: “It’s great. I mean it’s absolutely terrific. You know you get to do amazing things on a film like this. Blowing stuff up is particularly exciting. But one of the coolest things I got to do is go to Chicago, which is where half my family’s from. I lived there in the past. We got to raise four bridges on the river just to make [the movie], holding up traffic for an hour and a half.”
”Batman Begins” the Soundtrack: “Batman Begins” doesn’t have the typical comic book film score. Somehow the filmmakers managed to pull off a comic book adaptation that isn’t backed by a heavy metal score. Producer Emma Thomas said, “I mean right from the beginning we’d sort of said, Chris was very clear with them about what sort of movie this was going to be. It was going to be a [epic] in scope and sort of feel, you know, contemporary, but sort of timeless in a way. And I think that they got where Chris was coming from. They had [agreed] to make the same sort of film. We never got pushed into any sort of music [deals] like that for that very reason.”
Nolan added, “They got the tone of the film. They knew that what we were trying to make and what they needed from their end. …The truth is when you, as they had, made four films in the previous series and you know by the time you get the end of that, there is a weight of that kind of activity that you have to get away from. When you’re starting over and I think they really understood that they needed a very classy film and a very sincere film, not a marketing exercise, in order to reinvigorate the cinematic idea of Batman.”
Nolan on Why the “Batman” Franchise Stalled: “I think that when Tim Burton made his film in 1989, which was a brilliant film, visionary and extraordinarily idiosyncratic, it’s a very, very stylized movie and when you go down that road… I mean to get to four films is pretty impressive because you’re going to hit a dead end at a certain point. I mean it’s so extreme in its approach it’s bound to.”
Conceptualizing Sequels: “I’ve thought about it in loose terms but I mean in truth we tried to put everything in this film, what we wanted to see in a ‘Batman’ film. I very much enjoyed making it so I certainly wouldn’t rule out the possibility of doing further ones. But we’re really interested to see how people are going to respond to this film.”
PAGE 2: Christopher Nolan on the Look of "Batman Begins" and the Limited Use of CGI
