Original subtitles

When we first spoke about the Batmobile,

it was quite apparent that this one should be completely different.

I couldn't wait to see it.

When I showed up on set, I was like, "Where's the Batmobile?"

The basic talking points were relentless force,

raw power mounted in this frame.

I like that you can see the construction.

It's not like it's alien technology or like a repurposed,

super high-tech military technology like, it's...

He's built it himself in his basement.

We really believe that Bruce Wayne/Batman alone,

developing and building that car from scratch.

And we thought that as an idea was a cool idea.

The look of the Batmobile

hopefully reflects that he couldn't care less about his wealth

and Wayne Industries at this point,

and that he is doing it all himself.

Whoa!

We brought in this car designer named Ash Thorp,

and he apparently also had always dreamed

of being involved in the creation of a Batmobile.

And then we had all of these other designers come in.

We started sculpting.

We used a UK company

called Curvature Group to fabricate the body.

They specialize in prototypes.

Everything that you see here has been made, has been 3D printed,

been cast in aluminum, or it's been cast for real.

You've got all of these elements

that were real, and we were looking at real cars.

I wanted them to have, like the kind of

nitrous sort of turbo charge that you would get from drag racers.

I wanted it to feel like a real car.

We knew that when we're in our car chase,

we were going to be crashing into other vehicles.

So, it was important to us

that we made the front of the car as strong as possible.

The idea that its purpose was to perform,

but also to be almost like a battering ram,

and so the front of the vehicle had to be very powerful.

Lovely witness line here.

But literally, an inch or so in,

it bolts up.

We used a big block LS3 engine that had to fit under the hood.

We have effects on top of that hood.

There are louvers located on the hood,

that were used as intakes that open and close.

And, inside that,

there was a volume of design that included lighting effects.

There were additional flame effects that came out at the top of the hood.

And there's this massive Jet engine sort of intake.

And so, as the car is sort of waking up and starting to move,

we love the idea that these louvers would open,

and that these sort of gills on the interior would open.

And you'd feel it sort of start to breathe, basically.

Originally, the louvers were moving,

but we decided that we didn't want to embrace in that.

So we discarded that,

and that's where we put our water tanks,

for the traveling rain that we did.

The rear of the car for me is sort of the genesis of the idea.

It's uniquely open.

You can look at the car and you will notice

that you can see everything, except what's under the hood.

The rear of the car is exposed,

the engine is exposed.

Many people ask what engine that's from.

This engine is bespoke to the Batmobile,

it's fictional.

Over 2,000 individual parts you're seeing here

that were all individually designed

by Joe Hiura and his team.

And then flawlessly executed by Dom,

and his team, in terms of the builds.

A gobsmacking amount of man-hours and work that came through here.

These are aluminum,

this is stainless steel.

This is printed metal, which is where our flame came out.

Which I think is quite beautiful, the way that we've embraced

all of this kind of smaller tube work that fits around this engine.

Ash started doing these iterations, that got us very excited.

You got the sense of those wings

that were almost like the Futura in the back,

and then you got this Challenger sense.

Finding a way of letting Bruce

reveal his character, and sort of the intimidation factor

of sort of recognizing, like, "Oh, my God, that's Batman."

As you can see, this car at the moment has been painted for the film.

We wanted to always have the car to have this kind of grungy look about it,

this used look, we didn't want a perfectly polished black car,

we wanted it to look like it'd been used.

So the construction department, the paint department,

put a very nice finish on there

that we've actually embraced.

There was a day when they drove the car

and put it on the backlot, which was under the "L",

which is outside of the Iceberg Lounge.

And it was the first time I saw it and I got to sit in it

and sitting inside that Batmobile was a dream.

All wheel drive, shift and shifter,

and then, this is the thruster that controls the jets.

And then, obviously, his control panel up here.

You know, the aesthetic,

I just love, you know, it's like leather wrap,

leather dash, and then traditional sort of muscle car gauges.

So, right here you're seeing

this is all control for the jet components,

big fuel tanks, and cylinders for the various gases

and things required to drive the jet engine.

You are not using a donor car to make the Batmobile,

you are building a unique one-off.

And in our case, we built four vehicles.

We had a ram car that we could use just to ram and destroy stuff.

We had a light-weight car that could perform jumps and other difficult tasks.

We also had a pod car that a stunt driver could drive

from a mounted roll cage from the top of the car's roof.

Our hero car was an electric car.

It's quiet

and it can move around without making noise.

This was like engineering an entire other car.

You had to modify a roll cage,

you had to accommodate for electric motors.

You're not just adding an electric motor,

you're actually adding

an entire electric control system that has to fit under the hood.

We built one electric car, then we built three petrol cars.

The trick is, is that they all look the same.

Well, I wish everyone could hear the combustion engine, you know?

I mean, there's nothing like hearing that V8 roar.

The petrol car's got the 700-brake horsepower V8 engines in it.

Sounds unbelievable.

It sounds like I'm driving a plane.

It's also a four-wheel drive,

and we made our own bespoke transfer box inhouse

that's based around what they use in a rally car.

It has to be, like, a monster.

I want this thing to feel elemental.

You can transfer all the power to either the front wheels

or the rear wheels, or both wheels, all at the push of a button.

And that's something that we've used in the past.

And from previous experiences,

we know the stunt drivers love that,

because what they can do is they can set the car up,

and then they've got immediate power where they want it.

Anytime you build something bespoke, you need as much testing as you can.

You find all the weaknesses,

you find all the strengths.

And part of that testing

is that we get to a situation where the stunt department

can actually find some really cool stuff that they can do.

And by testing, we can say,

"Well, can we add that into the sequence?”

Starting to push the Batmobile

to its limits, so we can see where the limits are.

Well, this is why we are here

testing to do, to iron out all these problems.

Get the suspension right, get all the mounts right.

We've had a few things bend, which is what things are designed to do.

But if we can do as much as we can for real, that's what we're aiming for.

We always knew the car needed to jump.

That was part of our design remit.

When we designed the rear suspension of the car,

we knew that we needed a lot of suspension travel,

so what we did is we put it in two modes.

So we had, like, the general driving mode

and then we had the jump mode.

We designated one vehicle for the jump.

That vehicle had longer suspension on If,

it had different tires.

So the one joy of building the Batmobile

is you get a chance to drive it away.

At the end of the day, you want to be inside a Batmobile.

And I wanted the audience to have that experience.

Like the Batsuit, I wanted you to feel it was totally real.

The workmanship that's gone into building this car

is one of real high standards.

The intensity of both man and car are just paired together perfectly.

They both have this, sort of, real revved up vengeance vibe.

This is one of the finest builds ever in feature film history.

I mean, the car performs so beautifully.

It's been a huge privilege

to be a part of that through line of history.