30. Although Christian Bale performed many of his own stunts, he wasn’t allowed anywhere near the Batmobile.
29. Christian Bale’s active dislike of his uncomfortable Batman outfit helped his performance as the Dark Knight as he was perpetually in a foul mood when wearing it.
28. Christian Bale revealed in interviews in 2009 that in his first scene with Sir Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman (one involving Bale waking up in bed to find them waiting there), he fell asleep after getting ready for the scene. Bale described waking up to find Sir Michael Caine poking him in the ribs, saying “Look at that! He’s bloody fallen asleep.”
27. While shooting on the streets of Chicago, a person accidentally crashed into the Batmobile. The driver was apparently drunk, and said he hit the car in a state of panic, believing the Dark Knight’s vehicle to be an invading alien spacecraft.
26. Writer and director Christopher Nolan is reputed to have been so fascinated with Cillian Murphy’s bright blue eyes that he kept trying to find reasons and ways to have Crane remove his glasses.
25. Writer and director Christopher Nolan decided that there would be no second unit, and so for the whole 129 shooting days, Nolan oversaw every shot of the movie personally.
24. In an interview with Moviefone, Christian Bale said that he became interested in playing Batman after a friend of his loaned him the graphic novel “Arkham Asylum” (by Grant Morrison and Dave McKean) in 2000. After he read it, he told his agent that if anyone was making another Batman movie, he wanted in.
23. Christian Bale lost his voice three times during filming, after altering his voice while playing Batman.
22. Much of Batman’s gear and apparel, including his cape and suit, is based on real-life military technology.
21. The language used by Ken Watanabe is neither Japanese nor Tibetan, nor in fact any known language at all. It’s supposedly some gibberish he says he made up himself for the role, though the subtitles list it as Urdu.
20. An unforeseen problem with the ninja training academy was that Liam Neeson towered over the rest of the men. This was swiftly solved by putting most of the ninjas on wooden blocks.
19. The cape was made with a technique called electrostatic flocking, taught to the crew by the British Ministry of Defense and normally used to decrease the night-vision visibility of objects. Nylon parachute fabric was brushed with glue and covered with fine hair-like material. An electrostatic current was then passed under the material, creating a dark sheen while maintaining the billowing appearance.
18. Heath Ledger was considered for the role of Bruce Wayne/Batman during this movie’s early development before Ledger and Nolan agreed he was not right for the role. Years later, he was cast as the Joker in The Dark Knight (2008), a role that won him a posthumous Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
17. None of the big name cast members were initially told that this movie was a Batman movie, as the script they were sent was titled “The Intimidation Game”. Sir Michael Caine commented that when he first saw the title, he assumed the script was some kind of gangster movie.
16. First live-action appearance by Scarecrow, a villain dating back to Batman’s earliest comic stories. While considered for the 1960s television series, he was never used. He was also meant to be the main villain in the fifth Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher movie that was shelved.
15. Since Alfred’s sense of duty and loyalty towards Bruce Wayne reminded him of military comradeship, Sir Michael Caine based his character’s voice on that of a Colonel he knew when he was in the Army as an eighteen-year-old.
14. Hans Zimmer named the tracks in the soundtrack after types of Bats. The first letters of tracks 4-9 in the soundtrack, spell “BATMAN”. (“Barbastella”, “Artibeus”, “Tadarida”, “Macrotus”, “Antrozous” and “Nycteris”)
13. Gary Oldman agreed to play Jim Gordon without even reading the script. He was the last actor cast, and he learned his lines on the flight to his first location.
12. Writer and director Christopher Nolan generally filmed the fight scenes with the actors doing as many of the stunts as physically possible (in the case of Christian Bale and Liam Neeson, that was pretty much all of them). He would then shoot the same fight sequences with the stuntmen for coverage.
11. Screenwriter David S. Goyer mentioned in an interview that his favorite pre-audition choice for Batman was Jake Gyllenhaal, but that he was won over by Christian Bale after seeing his test. Jake’s sister, Maggie Gyllenhaal was later cast in The Dark Knight (2008).
10. Only a few days before the role of Batman was cast, eight actors were asked to audition for the part. They were Christian Bale, Joshua Jackson, Eion Bailey, Hugh Dancy, Billy Crudup, Cillian Murphy, Henry Cavill, and Jake Gyllenhaal. David Duchovny was once again considered to play the part of Bruce Wayne/Batman since he was considered for the latest movie which was Batman & Robin (1997). While Bale won the part, Christopher Nolan liked Murphy’s audition so much, he cast him as Dr. Jonathan Crane a.k.a. Scarecrow. Part of the audition process involved the actors wearing a Batman suit (minus the cape which has been missing for some time) used by Val Kilmer in Batman Forever (1995), which was brought out of storage for this purpose.
9. The house which served as the setting of “Wayne Manor” in this movie was Mentmore Towers, the former Rothschild estate located in Buckinghamshire, England. The mansion served as the O’Connells’ house in The Mummy Returns (2001), and has also been featured in such other movies as Brazil (1985), Slipstream (1989), Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Quills (2000), Ali G Indahouse (2002), and Johnny English (2003).
8. Instances with just one or two bats in the shot (such as the single bat gone astray inside Wayne’s mansion), uses real bats, but each scene with a flock of bats had to be done using CGI bats, since it was decided to be too difficult to control that many bats at once.
7. During interviews with Christian Bale while promoting this movie, he continued using the American accent he’d adopted to play Bruce Wayne/Batman. He explained that he didn’t want potential moviegoers to be confused about why Batman, an American institution, was being played by a Welshman. However, this may not be the whole truth, as Bale rarely gives an interview in his native Welsh accent. It is believed that this is because Bale is always using whichever accent is required for his next role, which reflects his commitment as a method actor.
6. Christian Bale had read some of the graphic novels long before he played Batman. He said that in 2000, a friend lent him a copy of the graphic novel “Arkham Asylum,” which he thoroughly enjoyed, and made him wonder why that version of Batman hadn’t been portrayed on-screen. In preparing for the role, Bale said he made a conscious effort to avoid watching the performances of previous Batman actors, so he could approach the character from a fresh perspective.
5. Contrary to the previous Batman movies, in which the Batcave was realized as a combination of a live set and matte paintings (done either by hand or computer), no visual effects were used in this movie to show the Batcave. The entire Batcave is instead a massive full-scale set.
4. Due to his part in The Machinist (2004), Christian Bale was vastly underweight (about one hundred twenty pounds on his six foot frame) when he was under consideration for the part. After being cast, he was told to become as “big as you could be” by Christopher Nolan. Bale underwent a six month dietary and exercise regimen, and ending up weighing about two hundred twenty pounds (about forty pounds above his normal weight). It was decided that Bale had become too large (friends of his on this movie’s crew dubbed him “Fatman”) and he quickly shed about twenty pounds to have leaner, more muscular frame. Bale described the experience as an unbearable physical ordeal.
3. Before shooting began, writer and director Christopher Nolan invited the whole movie crew to a private screening of Blade Runner (1982). After the movie, he said to the whole crew, “This is how we’re going to make ‘Batman’.” In addition, Rutger Hauer, the actor who plays Mr. Earle in this film also starred in Blade Runner (1982), portraying the main antagonist Roy.
2. Christian Bale decided early on in the audition process that he didn’t want to play Batman straight, but to play him as a rage-filled monster, figuring that it might polarize writer and director Christopher Nolan. To his delight, Nolan was thrilled with his off-kilter interpretation.
and the #1 thing you never noticed in Batman Begins is…
(at around 17 mins) When Christian Bale and Liam Neeson were fighting on the frozen lake, they could hear the ice cracking beneath their feet. The next day, the lake had completely melted.
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