Batman Moto
Bat Pod
As if there weren't enough hype and
heartbreak hovering over The Dark Knight, director Chris Nolan had one
more headache facing him, right there in his garage, for his latest
Batman film: how to top the Tumbler—a two-and-a-half ton, bulletproof
Batmobile that leapt 60 ft. and did a sub-five zero to 60 in Batman
Begins. His solution? Ditch the spoiler-and-fin sports car mod of
Batmobile lore. Hell, ditch the sports car altogether. After all,
Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne already has a Lambo in The Dark Knight,
which opens tomorrow.
Enter the Bat-Pod, a motorcycle-ATV hybrid that lands eye-popping stunts sans CGI, a hand-built bike that fires grappling hooks—while shape-shifting.
After picking through junkyards, a local Home Depot and that surprisingly hands-on garage, Nolan and production designer Nathan Crowley took a month to assemble a foam-and-plastic model for Batman's new ride—enough like the Tumbler, but with a heavy-hauling look of its own. "But to actually have a look at what we were thinking, we went down to Warner [Brothers] and got the front wheels off the Batmobile," Crowley says.
When he first laid eyes on the Bat-Pod mockup, special effects supervisor Chris Corbould wasn't sure if his director actually knew anything about motorcycles. But that's what makes The Dark Knight at once a throwback superhero movie and a green-screen-light breakthrough in digital Hollywood: It turns fantasy into reality. And building a concept vehicle without a team of automotive engineers was one of its biggest challenges. "The gauntlet had been thrown down," Corbould says.
While the filmmakers and Warner Brothers have been tight-lipped about any vehicle specs in the movie, Corbould clearly had to reinvent how a motorcycle's systems make it run. Nolan and Crowley's original sketches had no tailpipe, but anything with a motor needs an outlet for exhaust. Weaving around the bike's carbon-fiber and Kevlar body and steel chassis, the design team built the exhaust system into the frame, ducting it through the hollow steel/aluminum/magnesium tubing. Two months later, the high-performance, water-cooled, single-cylinder engine—geared toward the lower end for faster acceleration—was ready to power the Pod. Only there was another headache: Who in the world could drive this thing?
Enter the Bat-Pod, a motorcycle-ATV hybrid that lands eye-popping stunts sans CGI, a hand-built bike that fires grappling hooks—while shape-shifting.
After picking through junkyards, a local Home Depot and that surprisingly hands-on garage, Nolan and production designer Nathan Crowley took a month to assemble a foam-and-plastic model for Batman's new ride—enough like the Tumbler, but with a heavy-hauling look of its own. "But to actually have a look at what we were thinking, we went down to Warner [Brothers] and got the front wheels off the Batmobile," Crowley says.
When he first laid eyes on the Bat-Pod mockup, special effects supervisor Chris Corbould wasn't sure if his director actually knew anything about motorcycles. But that's what makes The Dark Knight at once a throwback superhero movie and a green-screen-light breakthrough in digital Hollywood: It turns fantasy into reality. And building a concept vehicle without a team of automotive engineers was one of its biggest challenges. "The gauntlet had been thrown down," Corbould says.
While the filmmakers and Warner Brothers have been tight-lipped about any vehicle specs in the movie, Corbould clearly had to reinvent how a motorcycle's systems make it run. Nolan and Crowley's original sketches had no tailpipe, but anything with a motor needs an outlet for exhaust. Weaving around the bike's carbon-fiber and Kevlar body and steel chassis, the design team built the exhaust system into the frame, ducting it through the hollow steel/aluminum/magnesium tubing. Two months later, the high-performance, water-cooled, single-cylinder engine—geared toward the lower end for faster acceleration—was ready to power the Pod. Only there was another headache: Who in the world could drive this thing?
TTFN Thanks for Watching.
Donnie/ Sinbad the Sailor Man
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