The Batmobile Page #3

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...and that's how we got that color.

The trouble is it was very sensitive

if you scraped it.

If you've seen the film, you'll see

Kim Basinger taking her shoes off.

Let's go.

ACKLAND-SNOW:

Why did she take them off?

Because every time she used

to get out of the car, she used to scrape it.

And the details involved with the car

are unbelievable.

What we wanted to do is

get brutal violence into it...

...and all the intimidation

that comes out of its image.

What I really liked about that Batmobile

was the torpedo sense of it.

It's just this relentless attacking machine...

...and cleverness of what they did

for its handling serious turns...

...by kicking out cables

to make it spin around.

This is a Batman that had to be

taken immensely seriously...

...because of the weaponry

that was presented for the Batmobile.

It's everything that a young boy

would just love to drive.

[ENGINE SPUTTERING]

I need a new car.

A little bit later on,

after our '89 Batman movie...

...Batman:
The Animated Series began...

...and they introduced their own version

of the Batmobile...

...which for purposes of animation,

couldn't be so detailed and complex.

MURAKAMI:
Everything about

Batman:
The Animated Series...

...was a reflection of 40 years' worth

of Batman to kind of look at.

We were able to take those 40 years

and sort of distill it all down into one thing.

And I think the Batmobile reflects that.

It was sort of lightning in a bottle.

For a long time, that too became

a lot of people's true image...

...of what the Batmobile would be.

My favorite Batmobile

would have to be the Val Kilmer one.

The first Batmobile was beautiful.

And so I thought our job was to sort of

refine it and make it our Batmobile.

The Batmobile Schumacher

designed for Batman Forever...

...reflected a certainly more colorful Batman,

and it all was an integrated look and feel.

It was a radical rethinking

of what Tim Burton had done.

To tell you the truth, it actually

started as five separate designs...

...that we built five models of...

...and they all represented

sort of different aspects of design.

Joel decided,

"This isn't the direction I wanna go.

I wanna do something more organic

and something more animalistic."

My first thought was Giger...

...because of the sensuality and anatomy...

...of every machine that he designs.

So I got to talk to Mr. Giger...

...and I asked him to design a Batmobile,

which he did.

It was an incredible design.

Almost a tarantula with not as many legs.

Just four legs.

Or four wheels, I should say.

And I really didn't know how

we could incorporate that into the movie...

...or how it would quite function.

LING:
You would have had to probably

just do them as CGI...

...and we wanted

to get a real visceral sense...

...so that you're not just doing everything

in CGI.

We wanted this to drive on streets

and feel that you could come around a corner.

[TIRES SQUEALING]

Out of the design process,

what became interesting...

...was the idea that there's something

underneath this car.

It's like a breathing machine.

We wanted this to feel sexy and mean

at the same time.

I didn't look at cars for influence as far

as design goes. I looked at a lot of animals.

And a lot of microbiology as well.

Jellyfish and creatures

that live deep in the ocean...

...some of them look like spaceships.

And just their forms and how fluid they are,

are so perfect.

If you look at a bat's intrastructure,

the wings...

...you can see kind of their little bodies

through their bat wing.

So investigation of the wing

kind of started playing with...

...ideas of wrapped enclosures...

...where you had an engine

that you then took wrappings around...

...so that you could see the engine

but you couldn't really see the engine.

So it is a Gigeresque feeling.

When I saw the sketch, it's like, it's not a car.

It was an animal.

How am I gonna build that?

FLATTERY:
I would do a three view,

a front view, side view, rear view...

...to execute a scale model.

We didn't know how to go about this.

Nothing like this had been sculpted

or built before.

And we had to sculpt it in layers.

You do the underlayer

and then pull that off...

...and you sculpt the rib cage,

and then you tool that.

So it all had to be done separately.

We also had to figure out

how to pull molds off of clay...

...without the clay being destroyed.

And we had to trust

that it was gonna go together.

When you're building a car like that,

you can't fit it on a normal car chassis.

It was a scratch-built chassis.

It was built by Tommy Fisher's effects guys,

and we did the body.

They ultimately come together

and they're assembled...

...and they become the vehicle.

FLATTERY:
Charley Zurian did most of the car

in carbon fiber.

Carbon fiber is used mainly

on race cars and jet fighters.

FLATTERY:
We needed the strength of what

carbon fiber could give us for the parts...

...and it reduces weight by a ton.

We built two, a stunt vehicle and a hero.

Where you can close the canopy.

He has room for his ears.

LING:
Its fin would split

when it went to supersonic...

...so the idea of that

is to keep the single fin...

...and then as he's hitting, like, top speed,

you see this split open.

FLATTERY:
One of the distinctive features is

the bat symbol on the wheels.

They devised a Sid gear

that goes about 6000 RPM in there...

...to keep that symbol vertical.

It was a really cool environment

inside the shop...

...with a bunch of guys that,

like, build stuff, right?

So you can imagine

what was going on in there.

There was this one guy who built a go-cart

and he was driving it in the shop.

ZURIAN:
That's what you need are those kind

of guys, all with the same passion I have.

When you can just take anything,

a vision you have, and actually go and build it.

FLATTERY:

We rolled some tube stock and...

You know, a tube inside of a tube,

welded a mini-bike to it...

...and built this vehicle

that is a hoop that you ride in.

That was fun.

We used a hot-air balloon motor

for the flame.

In order to get the flame to extend,

we used propane with nitrous oxide.

FLATTERY:
The first time that got tested

was in the shop on a bench top...

...and it was propped up

at a 30-degree angle...

...and we lit that thing up and it set off

the whole sprinkler system in the building...

...because the flame shot out so far.

We dialed that back a little bit.

ZURIAN:

Half the body is behind the rear axle.

So when you turn the corner,

you gotta think twice.

The front's going to the right,

the rear's going to the left.

Joel still doesn't know this to this day,

but I that car up...

...two days before we were shooting it.

I was the first one to test drive it.

I took it out on the street

in front of the shop...

...and tested the braking system to make sure

we could get it to spin.

If you look at the pedals,

there's three pedals.

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