Christopher Nolan: Damaged Goods Behind the Batman Mask

By James Mottram

After the no-budget entrapment tale Following (1998), mind-bending meta-noir Memento (2000) and the remake of Norwegian police procedural Insomnia (2002), Christopher Nolan's decision to resurrect Warner Brothers' most lucrative franchise — Batman — initially seemed to be a departure from the films with which he has made his name. The end result proves that he has done anything but succumb to the formulaic fare studios are often guilty of making. Aware that the vast playground a $100 million-plus movie offers is simply a larger canvas to paint on, Nolan — not unlike when Bryan Singer adapted Marvel Comics' X-Men for the big-screen — uses the blockbuster framework to further his own thematic obsessions. I conducted this interview with him at Pinewood Studios, two months before Batman Begins' June 2005 release.

JAMES MOTTRAM: Were you aware of Frank Miller's work — such as Batman: Year One and The Dark Knight Returns — that took the character into a much darker arena?

CHRISTOPHER NOLAN: Yeah, very much. I've always been more of a movie person, than a comic person. But at the same time I had read the Batman comics and read them a lot. In terms of tone, and in terms of the notion that you could recreate for yourself a serious interpretation of the character… [it was] like the way you felt about the character when you were 5 years old. Frank Miller was doing it for grown-ups, really. That was quite exciting really. Certainly his work was a big influence on the tone of the film.

JM: What did you make of the preceding films, notably by Tim Burton?

CN: I think the first film has its place in film history, and what Tim Burton did could certainly be considered visionary — but it didn't speak to me personally… even though I appreciated all the skill and artistry of it. I felt like there was a version of Batman that never got made in 1979 — ten years before. When Dick Donner made Superman in 1978, it seems odd that they didn't do Batman in that same way — with that same epic sensibility.

JM: The redesign of the Batmobile is your most radical re-imagining. How do you explain that?

CN: Even before we first wrote the script, we designed the Batmobile because I wanted to show that to the studio. I felt that would explain to everybody immediately the differences between approaches in the past and what we were doing. The Batmobile — even in the comics but especially in the movies…well, it got frozen in time in the 1960s, I think. The car they adapted into the Batmobile for the TV show was a cutting-edge state-of-the-art car then — all cars had fins then and it became this retro-look. So every Batmobile you've ever seen since then has had this styling of an older car. But if you look at the older comics, it was a contemporary vehicle but more extraordinary and more heightened. And that's what the Batmobile should be. It should be a contemporary vehicle. It doesn't make any sense in the real world for Batman to stick goofy fins on his car.

JM: Was that the same for the costume?

CN: Yes. Though that required far less shifting. The only big change we've made is the use of the cape, as it features in the graphic novels. We came up with special fabric to do that and blow it around. It's a nightmare to try and get it move the way it does in the comics, but we felt very strongly that we wanted it to do that. So our costume is matt black, and the cape is matt black, and it's long and it flows.

JM: Christian Bale has said the closest character he's played to Bruce Wayne is Patrick Bateman from American Psycho. Do you see that?

CN: The similarity is very interesting to me. What's darkest about Bruce Wayne is not that he's utterly enraged. Or at least it's not just that. He is driven by rage; very primal and negative impulses. But it's also that there is this hollow quality to him. He's damaged goods. You experience that trauma at the beginning. For my money, having Christian do this part…I think it relates a lot to Patrick Bateman. When Rachel touches his face at the end and says 'This is your mask', you kind of believe that. There is a hollow quality to Christian's Bruce Wayne. He manages to make him funny and charming, and there is a good sense of humour there, but you never forget what happened to him as a child. It hangs in everything he does.

JM: Do you see this as a continuation of your interest with identity and the way we perceive characters?

CN: Now that I've finished it, I look back and it relates quite strongly to things we looked at in Insomnia, in terms of ends justifying means and the conflict between pragmatism and idealism. The idea of what is okay to do, how far can you go and still be on the right side of things? That was very much what Al Pacino's character in Insomnia is wrestling with. I think it's actually the essence of Batman as a figure. He is on the edge. He's exactly on that line between right and wrong. Between being a vigilante and a vengeful figure that isn't morally correct. He stays the right side of that line. For us, the process of making the film was dealing with that discrepancy, saying 'What distinguishes him from Charles Bronson in Death Wish? What is it that makes him OK?' There isn't a simple answer to that but I think the film makes you see that.

JM: Both Bruce Wayne and Leonard, from Memento, are haunted by their pasts. Was that going through your mind when writing?

CN: Actually, I don't think it was at that stage. Now that I look at it I think they are very similar characters, with this hollow, burned-out quality very present in both characters. I was thinking more about Howard Hughes, as I had been working on a script about him. The thing about Howard Hughes as a young man that Bruce Wayne recalls, is that Hughes was orphaned as a young man and given the keys to the kingdom and billions of dollars to play with. That to me is fascinating to see where that would lead. It's something we all think we want, but when you look at a story like Hughes' or, in fictional terms, Bruce Wayne, you wouldn't want to be in their shoes.

JM: How did you find shooting big action set-pieces for the first time?

CN: I actually found it really enjoyable to be honest, with very few exceptions. We had such good special effects guys. By special effects, I mean the floor effects, the guys doing things on set as opposed to the visual effects guys in post-production. They're great too — but in relevance to the action, the special effects guys, the stunt-guys and the riggers were so good, that I was really able to work in the way I'm used to working, which was very fast and very efficiently, and getting a lot of stuff done.

JM: Was it important for you to have your regular DP Wally Pfister and your production designer Nathan Crowley, who worked with you on Insomnia, on board?

CN: It was very, very important. People who know you, and know the way you work, the ease of communication is just a huge asset, particularly when you're taking on such a big project. It was also a lot of fun for me to have guys I'd worked with who had never done a film as big as this. The first time we walked around the set, half-built, in Cardington, and saw what is I think the biggest set ever built, we were able to laugh with each other and go, 'How the hell are we going to do this?' That was a pretty extreme moment. Then once we'd been in there a couple of days, it was like any other shoot.

JM: With the scene at the end that shows us the Joker as a potential villain, are you signed on for a sequel or even interested in doing another one?

CN: I really don't know. I've tried to put everything into this film. Everything that I wanted to see Batman do, I've tried to put into this film. The truth is, in leaving it open-ended — which we always wanted to do — it wasn't about sequel-baiting. It's much more about sending the audience away with all these characters living on in their minds and spreading outwards and upwards. So that's why that's there. But that immediately does start you thinking that they are great characters. But I don't know. I would never say 'never'…

The above interview is excerpted from the introduction to Batman Begins: The Screenplay by Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer (Faber & Faber, 2005).