The Dark Knight - will the Riddler be in Nolan's next Batman movie?

 

For all the big talk about how the big summer movies are 'character driven' pieces that stretch actors to the limit, we all know that a lot of what makes a blockbuster bust blocks is the effects that make everything go boom.We grabbed 10 minutes with Nick Davis, Visual Effects Supervisor on Dark Knight, here’s what he told us.

Before we talk CGI, in a recent interview Gary Oldman was quoted as saying about possible recasting of the Joker: “Maybe we don’t need the Joker. Because we’ll have The Riddler.” Are the rumours true?
I haven’t heard anything about it, I’ve no idea if Chris will even do another one. And there aren’t any hints in the movie about what’s coming, not like the first one. I hope they don’t recast The Joker, Heath’s performance is incredible. Enormous depth and range. I thought that before the tragedy of his death. I have amazing memories of watching him on set.

Will he outshine Christian Bale?
It’s hard being the straight guy in any movie. It’s always the bad guy who gets the fun roles but Christian gives a profound performance. It’s a character based movie, that’s the strength of it and Batman is a multi-dimensional character too.

Does Maggie Gyllenhaal kick Katie Holmes to the curb?
She’s extremely good as Rachel Dawes. There’s no loss by changing actresses. I don’t think we’ll even miss it.

I hear Christopher Nolan doesn’t dig CGI were you on the B-team?
With a movie of this ilk and style the special effects can’t all be done or made practically, not for things like flying a C130 fighter plane right next to a city, or having Batman jump from a Hong Kong skyscraper. It’s about getting a balance between the two.

How much of the movie is CGI
700 shots in the move are visual effects shots. There’s a bit more cg in this movie compared to Batman Begins and less miniature work.

That sounds a lot..
That includes every type of visual effect. It’s probably more than average.

It’s an old question but maybe you can put it to bed, is there too much CGI in movies?
It’s very movie dependent. If you know there’s only one way to achieve what the nature of the movie and audience expectations demand then you use cgi. It’s a fantastic tool that way, but it is over-relied on by some.

Name names?
Uhh..none come to mind.

How much of Chicago is there in Gotham?
It’s a real mix of things. We got loads of real footage of Chicago, then we used visual effects and models to turn it into Gotham. For this movie we photo-documented 50-80 buildings with high resolution stills to build up the library we use to create city extensions and extra skyline.

Apparently Christian Bale was upset that he didn’t get to jump off a skyscraper in Hong Kong?
Yeah, we had to do that with cgi. There are just some things you can’t do in a city.
We had a lot of sequences in the movie where we were going to have Christian or his double jump off the skyscraper or fly through the city, but it just couldn’t be done without risking lives. For the jump we put a stunt man on a big green set and recreated Hong Kong behind him. All the shots of wings opening and flying around Hong Kong are CG too.

What’s the strangest thing you had to fix in the mix?
Chris is a big lover of the oddity, strange flares or abnormal things happening with the light. He’ll say, “leave that, I love that,” When other directors might have it fixed. I He thinks that’s the beauty of film, that it can be so unexpected.