Behind the Scenes With Batman Begins

Warning: Spoilers

New shots of Batman, the Batmobile, Bruce Wayne and Liam Neeson’s mysterious mentor character from Batman Begins highlight a Newsweek behind-the-scenes look at the film.

Titled "Bat Out of Hell," the piece reveals how Warner Bros. hopes to rescue the franchise from the doldrums capped by 1997's rubber nipple fiasco perpetrated by Joel Schumacher.

Here’s some highlights:

• Star Christian Bale has a sign on his dressing room door that says "Bruce Wayne."
  
  
  
• Katie Holmes practiced one of her lines as Rachel Dodson with Bale as Wayne: "Is Sergeant Gordon (played by Gary Oldman) your friend?" Answer: "He’s very warm, very comforting. I like to be held," Bale replies dryly.
  
• Jokingly, a makeup artist asks Bale if the next film will be a musical (perhaps a reference to Schumacher’s stated intent of taking the Caped Crusader to Broadway). "Yeah, they’ll call it 'Batman!' with an exclamation point," Bale quips.
  
• "Batman is an absolutely iconic character, one of the great figures in pop culture, really," says director Chris Nolan. "But there has to be a reason for making this film as opposed to just renting Tim Burton’s version."
  
• The film promises a real world look at how Wayne goes from being hapless orphan to costumed crimefighter.
  
  
  
• The plot centers on Wayne Enterprises, a military subcontracting business, being "seized by shareholders, who’ve relegated the company’s most ambitious designs–and their inventor, Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman)–to the scrapheap," according to Newsweek. Fox helps Wayne create the Batman in time to defeat the Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy) who aims to poison Gotham City.
  
• Don’t look for the gothic fantasia of the earlier films. Instead, Nolan plans gritty urban realism.
  
• The Batmobile has four, 44-inch Humvee tires and the front is armored, "a muscle car for a tortured soul."
  
• The Batman suit is translucent at first, "a futuristic military design complete with body armor and muscle-recovery devices," the article reveals. Wayne spray paints it black. "We didn’t want to depart from the classic silhouette but we also didn’t want to go too much in the homoerotic direction," Nolan said.