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Christian Bale on The Dark Knight
By Fred Topel | Image property of Warner Bros
The Dark Knight explores themes heroism, anarchy, vigilante justice and the law. It's also a Batman movie. Christian Bale likes the real world applications of the subject, but he still loves those wonderful toys too.
Christian Bale is Batman
"Yeah, any day I had free I was like, ‘I need to go and practice in that Lamborghini,’ or ‘I got to get on that bike again,’" said Bale.
The heavily insured actor tried to get on the Bat Pod through some circumvention of the rules, but he missed his window. "I don’t give a damn about insurance. They were going to make sure I wasn’t able to get anywhere near it for insurance purposes. That’s their thing. [Stuntman] Jean-Pierre [Goy] and I arranged a day where I was going to be able to go up and down on the runway and test the whole thing out and finally be able to fall off it and blah blah blah. He is so in demand though that he literally flew in, spent two hours roaring up and down on the Bat-Pod, jumped back on the plane, headed back to France, did an exhibition, flew back, did another two hours on set, and was meant to spend a few hours with me just riding up and down on the Bat-Pod but somebody else needed him back in France for popping wheelies and doing all these incredible things he does. I never got a chance to train on it with him so its embarrassing to admit that I never was in control of the Bat-Pod. There’s still time."
Much of the acclaim towards The Dark Knight is going to Heath Ledger's portrayal of The Joker. Bale is happy to let his costar take the spotlight. "Our first scene was the interrogation room scene between myself and him and it’s a good intense scene. I saw that he is a hell of an actor whose completely committed to it and he totally gets the tone that Chris [Nolan] is trying to create with this, that we’re not going for actors sort of revealing their enjoyment of playing a wacky caricature character. This is, ‘Hey, we’re treating this as serious, as drama. That you go into character and you stay in the character. I love that. I find that so ridiculous that I love it and I take that very seriously."
The Dark Knight
Having such a performer to work with also helped Bale explore the dramatic themes of the film. "Heath was definitely embracing that character. When he was in the make-up and the garb he was in character the whole time and when he took it off, he was absolutely fantastic company to be around. As the Joker, as you see in the movie, Batman starts beating him and realizes that this is not your ordinary foe because the more I beat him the more he enjoys it, the more I’m giving him satisfaction. Heath was behaving in a very similar fashion. He was kind of egging me on, and I was saying to Heath, ’You know what, I really don’t need to actually hit you, its going to look just as good if I don’t . . .’ And he’s going, ’Go on, go on, go on.’ But he was slamming himself around, and there were tiled walls inside of that set which were cracked and dented from him hurling himself into them. His commitment was total."
In the philosophical sense of the film, Batman and The Joker are kind of the same. "Right. Neither will compromise. One thing you can say for The Joker is that he’s not a hypocrite. He stands by his word and will die for that. That’s what he despises about society so much, that they’ll quit their beliefs so easily, they’ll run from heroes. They’re cowards, fuelled by fear, and in Batman he finds an equally uncompromising character. Although Batman has a weakness, morality. He won’t kill. The Joker says that he’s got a really worthy opponent, and he must bring his full intellect and cunning into trying and break Batman’s code of ethics. He wants to prove that everyone has a price and will sell out."
The Dark Knight opens to theaters on July 18th.
For the trailers, posters, stills and more movie info, go to The
Dark Knight Movie Page.
Fred Topel
Sources: Image property of Warner Bros
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