Batman Begins: Christian Bale update

Christian Bale did an interview with IGN lately, and here are the Batman Begins related highlights:

Being convincing as Batman and not looking like a weirdo dressed up like a bat:

“I felt that I couldn’t bring myself to play him as Bruce Wayne in a Bat suit,” he says. “I felt ridiculous. I felt like a moron. I didn’t feel intimidating to anybody whatsoever, so I had to adopt this creature-like, bestial approach in order to be able to intimidate, but also to be able to disguise his identity throughout.”

Sounds good. If you think about it, that’s a tricky proposition: making him be menacing to the bad guys instead of having them fall over from laughter at a guy dressed up in a batsuit.

The context of the film as far as timeline:

“…we are literally going back to the early days to the prequel of any of the other movies. We are starting off with our own different characters and our own laws and everything, looking at Bruce Wayne and how he came to be the person that he was and how he comes to be this man that jumps around in the Bat suit.”

In other words, the other movies don’t exist here. (Insert happy sigh….)

Why he chose to play the role:

“I was very much interested in playing the character after reading [comic books like] Arkham Asylum and Year One and Dark Victory, and seeing that there was a side to that character that I had never been witness to before and thinking that could make a very good movie,” he recalls. “And then the fact that it was Chris Nolan on it; I knew that he was not just going to be doing more of the same and so I wanted to try it.”

Ohhh, now that’s good. Hopefully between him and Nolan this will carryover onto the screen.

Concerning how “commercial” the film would be:

“Sure, we’re going to make a mass-entertainment movie, but one that’s of a better quality than most,” he says. “You’ve got a good cast: Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Liam Neeson, Ken Watanabe ? there are lots of good people in it.”

In other words, it won’t be a star vehicle for the guest villain to use as overacting practice (see previous Batman films for examples).

Physical risks and hardships:

“We came up with this very good fighting method which is actually very effective and looks very good,” he reveals, “but that was very strenuous learning all of those routines, because there are multiple numbers of them. But beyond that it was all okay. I did some wire work, but that was to be honest limited, because there was an accident early in the movie so they got paranoid about sticking me up on the wires. But [even though] I like that stuff, the more I’ve done it, the more I kind of think I’ll leave it to the stunt men.”

I’ve heard about the fighting system… it’s called “Keysi” (never heard of it) and it’s apparantly a streetfighting type system using more elbows than fists. Pehaps similar to that used in the “Bourne” films? That fighting style was very cool to watch.

Wearing the batsuit:

“I found that the suit was actually pretty comfortable once you get used to it. You sweat like buckets ? that you can’t help ? and the cowl gives you these migraines beyond belief.”

We’ll have to see how it looks in action. It looks more angular/armor-like than previous suits, but in photos still kind of rubbery.

Source: IGN.com

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