How The Batman‘s production designer “evolved the map of Gotham”
Turns out the way to design a new world for a new Bruce Wayne is simple: figure out what his Batmobile looks like
Film Features The Batman
Talk about a double-edged Batarang: When production designer James Chinlund got the call from his friend, filmmaker Matt Reeves—the two had previously collaborated on Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes and War For The Planet Of The Apes—with an offer to join him on designing the world of the Robert Pattinson-starring The Batman, everything from the cityscape of Gotham to a brand-new Batmobile, the pros and cons were immediately and abundantly apparent.
On the one hand, Chinlund—whose two-decade-plus résumé includes everything from avant-garde art house fare like Requiem For A Dream to superheroic spectacle like The Avengers—would have the unenviable task of envisioning a world distinct from the many previous film and TV iterations of the Dark Knight’s environs and arsenal, yet still familiar to generations of die-hard and casual fans of the 83-year-old comic book icon. On the other hand, as just such a fan—The Batman! Gotham City! The Batmobile!—Chinlund couldn’t resist taking the leap.
With The Batman available on 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray beginning May 24, Chinlund’s imaginative, intensely thought-through take on the Caped Crusader’s world is now freeze-frameable for delirious inspection. Chinlund joined The A.V. Club for a peak inside his creative inspiration.
The A.V. Club: There’s so much possibility with a Batman movie, so many different places to look for inspiration and directions to move in. How did you wrap your head around what you wanted to zero in on?
James Chinlund: Yes. It’s a funny thing, really: I think there are two ways of looking at it. You can take all the Gothams and you can take all the Batmobiles and lay them out on the wall. And I think for me, the key in was really the car… Because I think it’s very overwhelming, obviously, going in and saying, “Could we do that? Or could we do that?” But when you actually see the designs of the cars that came before us and what they said about their films and their Batman, I think Matt and I realized early on that our car was going to explain Bruce’s ethos.
And so as we started to unpack the design of the car, I think the design of the film and the world around it fell into place in the same way, just step by step. What are the choices that would lead us into the world? Where does Bruce live? What does that say about Bruce? Where is the Batcave? What kind of cave would this be? What does that say about Bruce? And then I think as you start making those designs, it’s like shining a light into the darkness, things start to reveal themselves. And that’s the path that we took.
AVC: What turned out to be unexpectedly challenging on this film, and what turned out to be a real unexpected joy?
JC: Well, I think making a film in COVID was absolutely the worst, you know? We had big crowd sequences and things that really were impacted, and it was a scary, scary time. So I think there was a moment coming back from COVID when the teaser dropped and we felt the fans’ reactions. And that was just such an exciting and exhilarating moment for us, it carried us through this long dark second half of the making of the film. Just knowing that the fans were out there and so excited about what we were doing, it really carried us through.
And I think in terms of what was rewarding and fun, I think for me, just working with the amazing teams in the U.K., in terms of the construction and design of the film. We built a huge backlot for the Iceberg Lounge, and the puzzle of that whole world, bringing that together, seeing those sets come together was just… It was a dream come true! The level of the craft and craftsmanship over there is just unbelievable.
AVC: As a Batman fan yourself, what was one of your giddiest moments, seeing a fully realized version of what you’d dreamed up for the film?
JC: Well, seeing the car come out for the first time and go through its paces. [Dominic] Tuohy and his special effects team…one day, he brought me his iPhone and showed me a jump test where they had actually jumped the car quite a bit. And to see it take this jump and land and survive—I mean, for me, the design of the car is one thing, but to build a car that can actually do what we asked of it, that was the fulfillment of a three-year journey for me. So it was so exciting to see it do its thing, and that really was one of the highlights.
AVC: You’ve worked on pretty major, huge-scale films. Where does this one fit in terms of the personal challenge that you faced, and the personal satisfaction that you had when it was all said and done?
JC: The hard part about The Batman going in was that it had been done so many times before. So I think it really was not like “I’m coming in and crafting a world.” It was like there were sort of pitfalls and walls around me. And it was like, “How do we find new space and create something that felt fresh?” And so for me, in terms of a level of achievement, I think I’m just super proud of what we did as a team, just in terms of the fact that, in spite of all that, I feel like the fans are looking at this world and saying, “I’ve found something new,” and we’re in this new iteration. And it feels like home a lot: It’s Gotham, and I know it. And it’s not challenging my idea of Gotham, but it’s just expanding my take and making a richer and more vivid iteration of it. And so in that sense, I’m really just so proud of our achievement there.
AVC: With eight decades of comic book source material to sift through, what caught your eye that you hadn’t seen in film or on TV before, that you thought, “I can run with that concept”?
JC: I think the Batcave for me, and Wayne Tower, were really the core thread. It felt to me like, how do we create a cave that the fans will dig, but also that felt connected and part of our overall ethos that things needed to be grounded and have some basis in logic? And so I felt like that was an exciting solve.
AVC: There’s obviously more film adventures for The Batman ahead. Are you interested in building out this world that you’ve laid this environmental template down for? Is it something that you think you’re going to continue to expand upon?
JC: I’m so lucky to be a part of this team and to be playing in this world, so I would be thrilled to continue to evolve the map of Gotham. I love imagining this map in the imagination of the fans and thinking of all the beautiful sets and locations from the films before and seeing how they all puzzled together in this one big soup.
And so for example, the Tricorner Bridge and the area where the Riddler and the Iceberg Lounge are, I feel like we’ve really fleshed out this little piece of the map. And I look forward to expanding on that and building more and more pieces. It’d be a dream come true.
AVC: Is there an iconic item in Batman’s mythic arsenal that you’re dying to design?
JC: Gosh, I haven’t really…I don’t know! I mean, I think it’s interesting to see where that’s going to go. I think vehicle-wise, there’s lots to play with and evolve. And so we’ll see. We’ll see where it goes.
39 Comments
I watched this the other week on HBO and it was totally forgettable. Like it was ok and not terrible, but I have no interest in any sequel or franchise. I will say that it was better than Old, the Shyamalan flick. Now that was a terrible movie.
Yeah it wasn’t bad or great. Things I remember most about it: It’s dark, rainy, everyone whispers, Riddler’s plan doesn’t make much sense and Turturro wasn’t great casting for Falcone. 3 hours of that.
Both movies rule actually
They don’t, but sure, you do you.
I mean, this is the first Batman movie to deliver coherent fight scenes. Calling it forgettable seems like a stretch.
Does it though? In like a year, or two years or three years, are you gonna recall the fight scenes in this movie and go, “man, those were some really coherent fight scenes.”Again, I don’t dislike the movie, I just didn’t find anything in it that sticks out. No memorable scenes or quotes. No “why so serious” or “get to the choppa.” I can’t look back and picture any particular scene in the movie. Hell, even BvS has “why’d you say that name?”
Considering the Batman franchise has a reputation for crappy fight scenes, yeah, it’s going to be easy to remember.There’s also other things I like about the movie as well. It’s easily better than the first and third Bale Batmans IMO, and I’m saying that as someone who really likes Rises.
Agreed on the fight scenes being memorable in the Batman context. (For me its the fact that he could actually move well, it made him seem like an actual threat).Not really relevant, but also agree on rankings – I’m also one of the rare ones that liked Rises, but that movie was essentially a series of good moments strung together a bit haphazardly. This felt like a more coherent movie to me.
As someone who adores Begins, I disagree.
Not even “thumb…drive”?I thought there were some great visuals (and an overall visual tone) we haven’t previously gotten in Batman movies – we’ve had a Bat who has been larger than life, ridiculous, impressive etc., but this is the first Batman movie that has convinced me people could come across a man dressed in a bat costume and see something almost inhuman. (I’m thinking primarily the shots where the Bat is this immovable entity surrounded by normal people, like the crime scenes or the club.)More generally, my guess is that people’s enjoyment of the movie largely turned on whether the viewer is interpreting the overwrought emo-ness as so on-the-nose-intentional that it passes through emo/noir and becomes fun again. I did, and I loved it.
The part where he was fighting the guys on top of the scoreboard in the arena will stick in my mind but only because that whole setup is nonsense.
The chase is pretty incoherent. Weirdly so, considering it’s basically a race down a straight stretch of highway.
The car chase was one of the most incoherent action scenes put to film. It’s impossible to tell where anyone is in relation to each other, and there’s no sense of place other than “small stretch of generic highway with mysteriously empty lane.” Somehow, this jet engine muscle car can barely keep up with Penguin’s sedan, despite the fact that Penguin keeps getting slowed down by cars in front of him. Once every car and truck starts crashing, we see Batman ramp over them, but we cut to Penguin, and somehow literally 13 seconds elapse before Batman emerges, teleports 2 feet behind Penguin and flips him. (That’s not even getting into how even Batfleck would blush at the level of carnage caused just to get a Spanish lesson from Penguin.)Sad part was that was the one exciting action scene in the movie.
Also at least a dozen people had to have been killed in that wreck, good job Batman.
I mean, Penguin was the one who actually caused the pile-up if we’re pointing fingers.
And yet they didn’t even bother to arrest him. He shot at a bunch of cops and got into a massive car chase that ended up with multiple crashes and a few explosions and then Jim Gordon just walks away.
I love that I keep meeting people who haven’t seen Ballistic: Ecks Vs Sever. You lucky dog, you.
Hey, some people are afraid of getting – old.
My problem with it was that it relied too much on prior familiarity. If this was the first Batman movie you’d ever seen it almost wouldn’t make sense, at least in terms of the character relationships. You’d feel like you were dropped into the middle of a story, not the beginning of one. It was well-done in many respects and I actually look forward to sequels that tell better stories within the very cool atmosphere they created. But I definitely see how this first one as a standalone story is just kinda mushy.
My problem with it was that it relied too much on prior familiarity. If this was the first Batman movie you’d ever seen it almost wouldn’t make senseNot trying to be dismissive or anything, but that has to be a pretty small percentage of the likely audience at this point. There’s been, like, at least four Batman or Batman-adjacent movies in the last ten years alone, and even outside of that he remains a massive cultural juggernaut. I find it hard to believe there’s too many people in the audience who were pulling their hair out because they couldn’t figure out who these people were, how they related together and what was going on. I dunno, this one just seems like a bit of a “can’t win for trying” complaint, since if they’d done a full-on reintroduction I’d bet all the money in my pockets that there’d be a sizeable percentage of people in comment threads like this making the exact opposite complaint about how they were just reinventing the wheel and telling us stuff we already know.
Yeah, I mean, I don’t expect another Martha-and-Thomas-get-shot-in-alley scene and I’m glad they didn’t do an origin story. And I don’t mind a movie that relies to some extent on referencing the past. Hell, I liked No Time To Die. It just felt like a little too much given that it’s the beginning of a reboot. Yeah, you’re right, people know who these characters are and the movie relies on that, but as a story it still has to have its own integrity. To be clear, I like a lot of things about the movie and I think sequels will create a bit more character depth just by existing, so I’m excited to see what they do.
It really loses itself like 3/4 of the way through.
At least the Bond movies go places. Batman movies are the anti-travelogue. Stay in your dark city and whisper. Yeah let’s make more of these.
It was decent. I felt like it was a freshish take on Batman but I wish it were like 45 minutes shorter and that the detective stuff actually felt satisfying. Instead it was a lot of walking slowly and piecing things together that didn’t really seem to fit together. I liked it better than Dark Knight Rises, Joker, and everything involving Batfleck.
I absolutely loved the Gotham City of this movie and excellent job from all involved. It was weird as while it was really dark, it had a life to it.
What was weird about it?
I didn’t mean it as a negative, but rather that despite being so dark, it still managed to feel so vivid a city.
Oh no, from your overall tone I assumed that you meant it as a positive. I just didn’t think there was anything particularly weird about this Gotham. It felt like a modern city with some old-school architecture. No where near as stylized as Anton Furst’s Gotham City in the Nolan Batman movies, or even the Narrows in Batman Begins. I’ve seen a lot of people express that they liked that it didn’t “just” feel like Chicago the way Gotham does in The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, but everything is so damn dark in the movie. I’m not knocking it! I just feel like I’m looking at one of those 3D puzzles and everyone is seeing something special about this Gotham, and I don’t particularly get it.
It felt different, but that was mostly because they shot it in the UK, instead of the typical Chicago or New York. But it also feels really small, like it’s a set rather than a city. It doesn’t help that there’s so few locations in a 3 hour movie. We go to the Iceberg Lounge like four times.
I think that applies to the movie as a whole, as well – for being so ‘noir’ it had an underlying sense of fun, like everyone was enjoying coming up with as many ways as they could to turn the noir-dial up to 11.
There are things to like and dislike about this Batman, but one thing I did really enjoy was the commitment to making a film noir Batman, as far as a film noir aesthetic is achievable within the constraints of a studio superhero mega-joint. And I do appreciate some old-time ‘Murkin vehicular violence.
There’s a shot inside Falcone’s headquarters in this film where you can see traffic driving on a bridge that seems to be driving straight through the building, and it put me in mind of all those external shots of Gotham in cartoons and the Burton movies and what have you where they have skyscrapers that are so massive that they have bridges linking them, and it kind of hit me that that must be the kind of view you’d expect to see if you lived in one of those buildings.I think that’s one of the things I really like about this movie; it manages to somehow make Gotham this kind of fantastical otherworldly comic-book city while at the same time making it seem really lived in, like the kind of place that people actually inhabit and live and work and drive and shop around in.
It’s uncanny how much Pattinson resembles Affleck when the mask is on.
Finally watched this the other day and I thought it was very cool. Not in an ironic way, or a “compare to other Batmans” way, just…cool. Like when the Batmobile appears and sounds like a fucking BEAST. Or when Batman does [redacted], it’s like if you were witnessing it in real life you’d ask people around you “Are you seeing this?” as if you can’t believe something so mental is happening in front of you. It had serious Dick Tracy energy at points, for better and worse.
The Dick Tracy analogy is right on!Finally watched this on HBO and it worked.
I enjoyed the film greatly. Much of it was filmed in Chicago, Glasgow and Liverpool. But once you’ve seen a Merseytravel bus stop outside Gotham City Hall…… you can’t unsee it.
This Batman was boring and hard to see. It had some funny moments which they should have really leaned into. A comic movie should not take itself so seriously, which is why Marvel does well. Also, the 1940s lingo was off-putting.
All they had to do was take notes from Year One (2011) and do that. But nooo.
I like how they took the part from horror movies where the killer is walking yet the victims can’t get away and applied it to Batman. He is always walking like he’s Jason from Halloween. Makes him so much more menacing.
A couple nights ago a buddy of mine and I went to see “Men” (which was FANTASTIC). He noticed they were selling full cut outs of Robert Pattinson as Batman at the theatre. My buddy bought one. On our walk afterward a car of dudes pulled over and shouted “I am vengeance” at us. That is all.