When I was at ShoWest in Vegas last week, I learned quite a bit. Eddie Murphy’s next movie has changed titles from “Starship Dave” to “Meet Dave,” for instance, and has a disturbing poster with a tiny Eddie peeking out from big Eddie’s ear. Dustin Hoffman has a romantic film coming up called “Last Chance Harvey,” and something called “Traitor” still manages to look uninteresting despite boasting both Don Cheadle and Guy Pearce.
Other things, I didn’t need to learn. For instance, when “The Dark Knight” hits theaters in July, it’s gonna be bigger than Victor Buono as King Tut.
“In this case, literally, we were able to directly carry on and explore the idea that Gary Oldman brings up at the end of ‘Batman Begins,’ which is the idea of escalation,” explained director Chris Nolan. “We have seen the rise of Batman, we have seen his rise to power, now what are the criminals going to do? How are they going to fight that? That’s the jumping off point for this film, and we just ran with it as far as we could.”
Be sure to check out the story we just took live for more details on the film, and one of Heath Ledger’s final performances. But, as Nolan told me in a ballroom at the Paris hotel, the escalation idea doesn’t just hit the bad guys.
“Batman’s got a lot of gizmos and gadgets and things,” director Chris Nolan explained. “The Bat Pod [motorcycle] being the largest of them, the most apparent. He also has this very cool sticky bomb gun that fires mines with timers on them, that he uses to set off explosions in sequence, and it folds up in this very peculiar manner and fits on the belt.”
“The utility belt is one of the great things about Batman,” he gushed. “You just never know what is going to come out of that thing next, and that’s one of the things I loved as a kid about the character. We tried to preserve that, that sense of fun about those gadgets, in the film.”
If you had your own utility belt, which Batman gadget would you most want in there?
March 18th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
First
March 18th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
FIRST
Looking forward to TDK more than any other movie. This just got me even more excited.
March 18th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
HERE!
I’d have the Grapple Gun.
March 18th, 2008 at 11:53 pm
I’m looking forward to the clear bullet proof bat-shield that protected Adam West and Burt Ward from incoming gun fire. I hope he has a modern version in the upcoming film(s?)
March 19th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
I think he had the grapple gun in Batman Begins didn’t he. I remember Lucious Fox (Morgan Freeman’s character) talking about to Bruce. Now that I think about though I can’t remember if he used it. No wait he did. I’m sure there were other instance but he grapppled onto the train as it was speeding by. Mosty though he glided around using the cape. Anyway I would like to see Boomerang thing from the cartoon that he always used to knock the guns out of criminal’s hands. His Batgoggles were pretty cool to. They allowed him to Night Vision, Infro Red, etc. Wouldn’t be cool if he a Bat Weapon just in case he ever has to fight enemies at long distance. Why does he assume that everyone he ever fights is going to be stone’s throw away. Let’s see the 50 calibur Bat Rifle. Or the Bat M16. Or even better the Bat 12 gauge that he could use to clear out a room after he threw a flash bang in there. Oh well I guess he’s not supposed to kill huh? Besides kicking someone’s ass is alot better than shooting them. I guess all he really needs is Bat Stealth and Bat Martial Arts.
March 19th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
No guns, batman hates guns. His parents were killed by a gun. It’s gonna be cool to see what this movie actually does. There’s been so much crazy speculation that it’s almost impossible to know what’s gonna happen.
I would like to bee more “bat-a-rang action”.
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Thanx, Tommy
May 8th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Batman hasn’t always hated guns. In his very oldest comic book appearances (1939, 1940) Batman used a pistol and shot gangsters. They dropped that after a year or so, because they figured Batman shouldn’t kill; shooting people in the face was more Joker’s thing (he used ordinary guns a lot too in the early runs).