Transcription
Preparing Batman Begins, I had wanted to redesign the technology of the suit completely, but we really didn't have time to be able to completely rethink the way in which the suit would be made. So, in coming into the sequel, I really wanted to get Lenny to follow through with that idea of, you know, building it from the ground up in a completely different way. We're using completely different technology. We just set about redesigning the suit as a much more modern, much more subtle piece of equipment, like a suit of armor instead of a rubber suit.
A lot of their ideas are based on high-tech sportswear or motorcycle protection, being one of the key things. Chris wanted to bring in this flexibility, so we developed armored plates that would allow a crumple zone between those armored plates and allow him more movement. Bruce is a highly evolved guy, he's made himself so, and he's constantly looking for innovative things and learning from his experiences as the Batman. He's evolved and realized that he needs to make some modifications and continually upgrade the suit. It had tremendous bulk and it allowed him to be able to withstand bullets and knives and sharp instruments, but it lacked flexibility.
We took the reasons we had redesigned it, the increased flexibility, the speed and maneuverability, all these things, and we put those into the story. We wanted to give, and I've been looking for the story reasons for redesigning the suit, and that it occurred to me, it's such a very simple. We just would have it be the real reason we did redesign it, which is he wants to be able to move faster and more flexibly. That's what we put into the story. My armor carrying too much weight needs to be to be fast.
Chris very much wanted to be able to see the movement of the head, which has actually never happened with any of the Batman movies. It's always been that he's had to move his shoulders to be able to see. And on this film, we've achieved it by dividing the head cowl from the neck. So the suit comes up and the neck is part of that, and the neck is now not like those great big rubber pillars that went down outside. It's actually like a human neck shape now, but just all balanced together. Protection runs around the neck so that you can compress your vertebra and turn from side to side.
Chris and Lindy, they like the sculpt of the cowl. That's exactly as it was before, although its profile is changed. And the cape remains the same because Chris always wanted it to be a very functional garment. As you know, Batman uses it to glide through the city. I mean, any number of uses. The belt remains the same, although the gadgets change. You know, he's constantly modifying his utility belt, putting things on it he thinks he might have use for.
He has The Mangler, which gives the perception that he has almost unlimited force in his hands. The sticky bomb gun, it comes out in two halves from his utility belt, and you click it in. It unravels and becomes a pump-action gun. It basically fires charges over long distances, and it folds all back down together, and he can carry it on his belt. The finned gauntlets have moved on from the idea that there were these sort of ninja blades, but now there's the two rows. Those become weapons, and that functionality is something that Chris has always strived for. Perhaps you should read the instructions first. It looks more real-world.
The thing with the foam latex molding is, however well you design the sculpt of the suit, which you're pretending the material is something else, and so if you expose it under too much light, that trick, you know, the way the suit falls, wherever that trick is given away. With this suit, it's really what you see is what you get. We are using the actual materials, the way they appear on the suit, that's the way they would appear in real life. And so you can light it more brightly, and there are scenes where we show much more about that than we did in the first film, and the suit looks absolutely beautiful like that because it looks like what it is, a real thing that you can actually wear, that's not pretending to be something else. It really is the city of armor. Everything has to be based in reality. The technology we give to Batman has to, in some form, be available. It can't be make-believe. You know, Batman doesn't have any superpowers. He sets his money so he can develop, and I think he wants, so long as it's grounded in some form of reality.