Billion Dollar Batman

by Bruce Scivally

Released eight months earlier, the much-anticipated Superman Returns, which the studio expected to be a tremendous hit, had turned out to be something of a dud. The film grossed just barely more than $200 million in the U.S., less than its $209 million budget; worldwide, the total take was $391 million. Along with the mixed critical response, the disappointing box-office returns meant the chances for a Superman sequel were slim to none. But delaying the sequel meant the loss of a big tentpole feature for the summer of 2009, unless Justice League could fill the slot.

  Both Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale expressed reservations about the Justice League film. To mitigate their concerns, Warner Bros. considered doing it as either an animated feature or with motion capture, but those notions were quickly dropped.24 But getting the film launched was complicated by the number of roles to be filled and the large amount of special effects required by the script.25

  In September 2007, the studio hired Mad Max director George Miller to shepherd Justice League to the screen. With the threat of a writer’s strike looming, they needed to move quickly, so as the script took shape, they immediately began casting. Neither Christian Bale nor Brandon Routh were expected to be in the Justice League film, which meant the roles of Batman and Superman would be played by other actors.26 On September 25, the studio released the first bit of casting news, with the announcement that Jessica Biel was in talks to play Wonder Woman.27 She eventually dropped out, with Megan Gale signing for the role. Adam Brody was cast as the Flash, rapper Common as the Green Lantern, and 6’5” Armie Hammer Jr. signed to play Batman.28

  The Writer’s Guild went on strike on November 5, 2007. As the shutdown dragged into the new year, Warner Bros. decided to let the options lapse on all the cast members Miller had assembled for the film. The studio had set January 15 as the greenlight deadline for the film, but on the 16th, they announced that the production was on indefinite hold. The cast members were informed that their options would not be exercised, but they were assured that the studio intended to make the film with them, perhaps in the late summer or fall of 2008 at the earliest.29 The studio said the film was sidelined because they had not received the official response they needed regarding tax breaks for filming in Australia, and also because they felt the script could use a little more work, which wasn’t possible due to the writer’s strike.30

  When the strike was resolved on February 12, 2008, Warner Bros. again put Justice League on the production fast-track, hoping to have it ready for a 2009 premiere. Although they had let the options on the cast expire, the actors were advised to stay in training for their superhero roles. Writers Kieran and Michele Mulroney went back to work on the script, and director George Miller returned to pre-production in Australia.31 But the project eventually ran out of steam, and the actors moved on. Armie Hammer, who was to have played Batman, took on another iconic role when he starred in Billy: The Early Years (2008), a biopic about the Rev. Billy Graham. Avoiding typecasting, he next appeared as the devil’s son in the short-lived WB series Reaper before gaining accolades playing both Winklevoss twins in The Social Network (2010).32

  In the summer of 2008, Justice League of Americawent back into development. This time, the studio worried not only what effect that film would have on its existing Batman and Superman franchises, but also whether the script was faithful to the way the characters were portrayed in the larger DC Comics universe. As Marc Graser in Weekly Variety succinctly put it, “The studio doesn’t want to piss off the Comic-Con contingent.”33

  “These are big, iconic characters,” said DC Comics senior vice president of creative affairs Gregory Noveck. “So when you make them into a movie, you’d better be shooting for a pretty high standard. You’re not always going to reach it, but you have to be shooting for it. We’re going to make a Justice League movie, whether it’s now or 10 years from now. But we’re not going to do it and Warners is not going to do it until we know it’s right.”34

  BATMAN BEGINS, AGAIN

  While Robinov put Justice League, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Flash and a Superman sequel into development, Christopher Nolan gathered his creative team for the new Batman film, to be called The Dark Knight. He followed the same process that had worked so well with Batman Begins, working out of a garage that had been converted into an office at his Los Angeles home. Naturally, the team included his wife and producer Emma Thomas, as well as cinematographer Wally Pfister, a fellow Chicago native who had photographed all of Nolan’s films beginning with Memento.35 Production designer Nathan Crowley, a part of Nolan’s team since 2002’s Insomnia, was back, and so was Lindy Hemming, returning for her second film with Nolan, having taken time to outfit James Bond for Casino Royale after working on Batman Begins. The production team began brainstorming while Nolan and his brother Jonathan finalized the script.36

  Very early on in the script’s development came the first official casting notice. On February 7, 2006, The New York Times reported that Jake Gyllenhaal might “cop a role as the district attorney in the next Batman movie.” The paper said that Gyllenhaal had once been in the running to play The Green Hornet, and had been set to replace Toby Maguire in Spider-Man 3 until Maguire decided to return to the role.37 Gyllenhaal ultimately moved on, but both his sister Maggie and his Brokeback Mountain co-star, Heath Ledger, ended up in The Dark Knight.

  The moment Ledger found out that the Joker was going to be the next Batman villain, he had his agent contact Christopher Nolan to tell him that he had some ideas about how to play the part.38 “I met Heath several times over the years,” said Nolan, “and early on he told me that one of the things he was concerned about was not being thrust into the spotlight as a movie star before he’d shown what he could do as a serious actor. I’ve heard that from a lot of young actors but of all the people I’d heard it from, he was the only one I paid $10 to go and see deliver a crack performance. That was Brokeback Mountain. It’s a performance of consummate skill. I think everyone recognizes the great acting in it but what I think is easy to miss is the boldness of what Heath does with that film, because he plays an introverted character, a lonely character. He plays it with no thought of vanity, and he takes risks doing that. He’s really throwing the net away.”39 Nolan wasn’t the only one who noticed Ledger’s skill in Brokeback Mountain; the role won the actor an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.

  Nolan recalled that when he met Ledger to discuss playing the Joker, long before the script was finalized, “We talked about how we saw this character and we both had exactly the same concept—that the Joker was about the threat of anarchy and revels in creating chaos and fear on a grand scale. Heath seemed to instinctively understand how to make this character different from anything that had ever been done before.”40

  Named after a character in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff Andrew Ledger was born April 4, 1979, in Perth, Australia.41 After appearing in films and television in his native country, he gained notice in the United States as the star of the romantic comedy 10 Things I Hate About You (1999). A year later, he played Mel Gibson’s son in The Patriot (2000). In 2005, while playing gay cowboy Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain, he met Michelle Williams, who portrayed his on-screen wife. They later became engaged, and their daughter, Matilda, was born in October 2005. The couple never wed, and separated in September 2007.42

  Ledger saw the Joker as a “psychopathic, mass murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy.” To prepare for the role, he spent a month alone in a hotel room working on the character, the voice and the hyena-like laugh. His inspirations included Alex, the violent delinquent played by Malcolm McDowell in director Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film A Clockwork Orange, and Pete Doherty, a British musician, writer and actor who was frontman of the band The Libertines and was as famous for his heroin addiction as for his music.43

  Warner Bros. announced Ledger’s casting on August 1, 2006.44 In a statement released by the studio, Christopher Nolan said, “Our challenge in casting the Joker was to find an actor who is
not just extraordinarily talented but fearless. Watching Heath Ledger’s interpretation of this iconic character taking on Christian Bale’s Batman is going to be incredible.”45

  Cast members from Batman Begins returned to reprise their roles in The Dark Knight, including Michael Caine as Alfred, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox and Gary Oldman as Lieutenant Jim Gordon. To play the crucial role of Harvey Dent, Nolan chose Aaron Eckhart. It was not Eckhart’s first brush with Nolan or with Batman. Nolan had considered Eckhart some years earlier for the lead role in Momento, and Eckhart was reportedly Darren Aronofsky’s choice to play James Gordon in the aborted Batman: Year One project.

  “We were looking for somebody who could embody that all-American charm because you have to invest in him as a very attractive, heroic figure at the beginning of the movie,” said Nolan. “But he also had to have an edge; he had to suggest this undercurrent of anger and darkness that Harvey Dent needed to have, so where he goes in the story is believable. You can’t present a character like this as simply a heroic figure with no flaws, no dark side.”46

  “Harvey has charged himself with tackling organized crime and cleaning up the streets,” said Eckhart. “He is the shining new hope of Gotham City, the ‘White Knight,’ as he is called. He starts out full of optimism and enthusiasm...where he ends up is somewhere completely different. It’s a great role and I’m a big fan of Chris Nolan’s, so when he approached me about doing the film, it was a no-brainer.”47

  Katie Holmes was expected to return as assistant district attorney Rachel Dawes, but on January 26, 2007, Daily Variety noted that the actress had dropped out of the film.48 Six weeks later came the announcement that Maggie Gyllenhaal was in final talks to take over the role.49 “When I was approached about this movie I wasn’t looking to work at all,” said Gyllenhaal. “I had a three month old. I wasn’t reading scripts so I wasn’t in the career-minded frame of mind at all. I was a fan of Chris [Nolan] and I knew who was in the movie, like Gary Oldman and Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman and Heath and Christian and Aaron Eckhart. It was a hard thing not to take seriously. But I think what made me do it at that time was really a couple of conversations I had with Chris where first of all he was so thoughtful and smart, honest and also he gave me the script to read after our first meeting and he said, ‘She’s not quite finished in this draft.’ I read it and I had some ideas and most of them were about making sure that she would be a fully realized woman.”50

  “Maggie is just a fantastic actress,” said Nolan. “I’ve always loved her work and had wanted an opportunity to work with her, and the role of Rachel in this film seemed like the perfect match. Maggie has great intelligence and maturity and she is also very warm and, of course, lovely. You really believe her in this role. I think she beautifully conveyed the conflict in Rachel standing between these two men in her life, and you can see why both men would naturally be drawn to her.”51

  Before accepting the role, however, Gyllenhaal contacted Katie Holmes. “First of all I wanted to make sure I had her blessing in terms of doing it,” said Gyllenhaal. “When I found out I did I didn’t think it would do anyone any good for me to try to imitate her. It would have been awful. I could never have done that so I thought, you know I have to make her a new woman. I think that was the best way to honor what Katie did as well to sort of really let [Rachel] really start anew. There are some plot points and some things in the narrative that happened in the first movie that had a big effect on our movie and I paid attention to those. Most importantly at the end of the previous movie she says to Bruce Wayne, ‘I love you but I can’t be with you as Batman and I understand why you need to be Batman, but let’s see what happens.’ And then of course that plays itself out all over the place in our movie so I did have to pay attention, but I started over in some ways.”52

  To fill the other major roles, Nolan chose Eric Roberts as Maroni, a Gotham City gangster, Chin Han as Asian business mogul Lau, Nestor Carbonell as the Mayor of Gotham City, and Anthony Michael Hall as a television news reporter. Cillian Murphy returned in a brief cameo appearance as the Scarecrow.53

  Lindy Hemming looked forward to having another go at the Batsuit. Both Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale wanted a suit with more flexibility, so Hemming and her team did extensive research into the protective suits worn by motocross riders, as well as the protective armor plates used by the military.54 “Chris Nolan and I were desperate to change things as much as we could,” said Hemming. “But not just to change it. I looked at the way trainers are constructed, the mesh, the plastics and leathers. I also looked at the under-armor that people wear when they’re motor biking or indulging in extreme sports.”55

  The base layer of the suit was made of a moisture-absorbing polyester mesh material, with individually molded pieces of flexible urethane attached to form the overall armor plating. For added protection, lightweight yet incredibly strong carbon fiber panels were placed inside a select group of the urethane pieces around the legs, chest and abdomen. When it was finished, the Batsuit was comprised of 110 separate pieces.56

  “There were essentially three main components to the Batsuit in Batman Begins, and on this film there were more than 100, so it was a very complicated suit,” said costume FX supervisor Graham Churchyard. “Add to that, all of those individual pieces had to be modeled and then molded and cast. Each piece also had to be replicated dozens of times for the multiple Batsuits needed for the overall production. It was an extraordinary amount of work.”57

  Hemming’s main priority was to redesign Batman’s cowl so that Bale could finally turn his head with ease. The solution was to make the headpiece separate from the neck, yet without compromising the costume’s silhouette.58 “I don’t know about the other Batmans previously, but for Christian, because he’s very physical, he does lots of his own fight scenes,” said Hemming. “We removed the neck columns completely and changed the way it technically functioned so that he was able to compress his neck into his shoulders and move his head freely. Not completely freely, but much more freely!”59 The new Batsuit featured other modifications to help the Caped Crusader in his crime fighting. The forearm gauntlets had razor sharp fins that could be extended and fired like ninja throwing blades, and the cowl had sonar-imaging lenses which flipped down over Batman’s eyes, enabling him to see sonar images in 3D.60 But one part of the suit remained unchanged: Batman’s cape. “We spent a lot of time getting the cape right for the first film, and we didn’t want to change it,” said Hemming. However, the new outfit did have one cape modification—the cape could fold itself into a kind of backpack and then unfurl on command. That feature, however, was only able to be accomplished through digital effects.61

  Christian Bale said the new Batsuit was much more comfortable than the one he had worn in Batman Begins. “It’s a much more advanced suit than the original one,” said Bale. “There had been some requests from myself and from Chris [Nolan] to be more maneuverable. At first I was fighting against the suit to do all of the fight sequences. This one was actually compatible with the Keysi fighting method. I could move my head. It was heavier than the original, but just so much more motion. I could breathe properly inside of it. It didn’t squeeze my head like a vice throughout. So I had to act the rage and anger this time around.”62

  Besides costuming Batman, Hemming had to create clothes for his nemesis, the Joker. The task became easier once she decided that the Joker was basically Johnny Rotten.63 “We had to make him appeal to a group of younger people and give them an understanding of what he does,” said Hemming. “I was looking at all the anarchic younger people, from Pete Doherty to the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Lydon. The idea of what he looked like came really easily to me and I managed to show Chris Nolan and Heath Ledger my drawings at the first meeting. I had all sorts of tear sheets of clowns and of fat ladies whose make-up was running. I decided the reason his hair was green is because he’s bleached it out and something’s gone on it and it’s made it green, instead of painting it green in the f
irst place.”64

  Hemming also found inspiration for the Joker in more contemporary fashion icons. “One of my nods is towards people like Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen and the way they slightly extremize everything,” said Hemming. “We tailored his jacket so it had the flow of a skirt and we made sure the lining was the burnt orange color. His cuffs are always open and pointed down.”65 Hemming kept to the Joker’s traditional color palette, with a purple top coat worn over a green waistcoat, though in some scenes he wears a lighter jacket based on the Carnaby Street Mod look. His shirt was patterned after one that Hemming located at an antiques market. His shoes were from Milan, selected because they turned up at the front like a clown’s shoes.66 “His gloves actually came from Alexander McQueen, they were really expensive, then we made lots of stunt pairs. Just little things, that helped his body to have that slightly strange banana shape. It’s subtly working on someone’s silhouette to make them have more of the character they had already.”67

  The final touch was a custom tie, specially woven by Turnbull & Asser, the London-based clothier of British royalty. “Heath wanted it to be thin, so it’s a ‘60s tie but in a Turnbull & Asser fabric,” said Hemming. “I dare say it’s the weirdest tie that Turnbull & Asser has ever made. When Heath came in and we showed him all the bits and pieces of the costume, he thought it was fantastically original and just went for it.”68 Hemming saw Ledger as “a real collaborator.” “At his first fitting, he put on the prototypes of the clothes,” recalled Hemming. “He became something immediately, he had an energy where he just made things work.”69

  For Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Rachel Dawes, Hemming chose outfits that emphasized both her professionalism and her individuality. “Because she’s so tall, and because we didn’t think the character would have much money, but we thought she might be able to put things together in a slightly unusual way, I designed a wardrobe of clothes that picked details out of the Seventies and Thirties,” said Hemming. “She had an Annie Hall-ish waistcoat and we made the pants flared at the bottom.”70