If there’s one area (and actually I think there are several, but that’s rather beside the point and I promised to remain focused like a laser beam on each individual subtopic in this “Batman reboot” series of posts) where I think Tim Burton’s Bat-flicks had it all all over Christopher Nolan’s it’s in their depiction of Gotham City. Not only did Burton’s Gotham have a fantastic Metropolis-gone-gothic look thanks to the late Anton Furst, but it felt like an intrinsically different sort of place than a real city, a place where you could sort of actually believe guys might run around in bat costumes and Joker facepaint , while Nolan’s Gotham was just, essentially, New York only a little grimier (even if his first two films were shot in Chicago).
I understand the reasoning behind making Gotham less fantastic, of course, and those reasons do make sense — Nolan’s Batman was supposed to be a more “realistic” character, to the extent that a billionaire who dresses up like a bat can ever be called “realistic,” and Joel Schumacher’s CGI Gotham was such an over-the-top visual disaster that a back-to-basics approach to Bruce Wayne’s hometown was a predictable enough move to make.
Still, I think something was lost, and that Batman works a bit better with at least some level of the fantastic still involved in its primary geographic setting. To that end, I think there are basically three things any self-respecting Gotham of the potential “soft reboot” of the Bat-franchise we were talking about should have —
1. It should look at least a little bit different than a garden-variety major US city. You needn’t construct anything as elaborate as Furst’s amazing two-city-block long set, but a city that has some fairly spectacular architecture in the form of bridges, tall buildings, etc. that you can focus in on would be a definite plus, especially if they’re all a bit past their prime and have seen better days, since Gotham pretty has to be a grimy place by definition. Some constructed set pieces that could stand in as fictitious local landmarks would be a plus, as well, so to that end it would be helpful if the filming location for future Batman flicks had something of an emptied-out urban core where you could build an Arkham Asylum, or a neat-looking miniature version of Wayne tower, etc. I’m thinking an ideal sort of look would combine elements of New York as depicted in Zack Snyder’s Watchmen combined with a toned-down Gothic feel at least somewhat reminiscent of furst’s Gotham, albeit scaled way the hell back.
2. There should be some ritzy neighborhoods or suburbs where you can find adequate exterior footage for Wayne Manor and its grounds. I don’t think the next Bruce Wayne needs to live in a fucking castle like Bale’s version, but certainly a “stately manor” that exudes old-school wealth and prestige and hearkens back to the city’s more prosperous days before it became Crime Capitol, USA (which Gotham pretty much always is).
3. As alluded to in the first two points, the majority of the city should be run down, and obviously well past its prime — a city in desperate need of a champion.
Finally, for reasons that will be made more clear as I get into the nuts and bolts of the plot outline I have in mind for this whole “soft reboot” thing, I think it would be essential for the city-to-stand-in-for-Gotham to be close to some wooded and even mountainous areas, since while the focus of this flick is most assuredly not going to be on the minutiae of the Batman’s origins per se, I still think some “flashback”-style sequences that show rugged wilderness survival-type training are going to be in order.
I suppose this is all rather just moot speculation since they’ll probably just film the next flick in Vancouver and it’ll look just fine because it pretty much always does no matter what, but just for the sake of fun speculation, I have something else in mind here — a locale that combines everything we’re looking for in terms of a run-down urban core; some truly spectacular architecture of its own; essentially empty areas that might as well hang a sign up saying “will build to suit;” palatial, ultra-wealthy, “old money” suburban areas; and fairly reasonable access to densely-wooded, geographically rugged forest. Batman Begins was filmed in Iceland, the UK, and Chicago, respectively, in order to capture all these various aspects, but you can do all this in exactly one place here in the good ol’ USA, and the state government is eevn actively engaged in rolling out the red carpet to film production in recent years, seeing the economic boom it’s brought to its northerly neighbor in Toronto.
Yes, folks, I think the next principal filming location for Gotham City — the ideal place to set the geographic tone for a re-launched, re-loaded (even if it’s done “softly”) Bat-franchise — should be (drumroll please) : Detroit!
I assure you, friends, I’m not kidding. Given the kind of place I think would work best for this “sot reboot,” as outlined in my (admittedly makeshift) criteria above, I think the much-maligned Motor City would be absolutely ideal, and bringing the production there would have the added bonus of generating great publicity for the film due to the positive economic impact it would have on an area that sure could use it. A multi-million-dollar Hollywood production setting up shop in Detroit? You can bet the city fathers (and mothers) would positively roll out the red carpet for Warner Brothers, and everything you would need is literally right there at your fingertips. Honestly, this idea’s almost too damn good. But maybe you’ve got a better one, in which case, please chime in before I move on to step three, which will concentrate on the overall tone of the film itself (now that we’ve — okay, I’ve — established a great location) tomorrow!
Through the Shattered Lens 
Reblogged this on Trash Film Guru and commented:
My continuing series for Through The Shattered Lens website —
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They can brush the dust off the concept art for OmniCorp’s Delta City that towered over the more rundown areas of Detroit from Robocop. 🙂
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There ya go! I didn;t quite have the overall level of decay shown in “Robocop” in mind, but getting there!
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It is of our Opinion that whatever they come up with For Batman will be debated and redone. They Started talking rebooting the franchise before Dark Knight Rises was even out. We at iAD feel more than ever that they will remake it over and over just because they want remakes.
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I would agree with the notion that DC/WB have already begun to get the reboot rolling for Batman, but I don’t see them just constantly rebooting the franchise once a filmmaker leaves after this next reboot. Warners really want to mirror the Marvel Cinematic Universe with their own DC properties and constantly rebooting it’s main franchise would just hinder that plan.
With Disney bankrolling Marvel Studios (not to mention the 1.5 billion that The Avengers made) Warners can’t afford to constantly reboot a franchise hoping for the best even if it Batman. It’s going to be painful to watch but I have a feeling this next Batman reboot will be the last for the forseeable future (though a new one could happen sooner rather than later is the planned Justice League film bombs).
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Unless I’m very much mistaken, haven’t Warners already inked Ben Affleck to direct the Justice League flick?
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Not yet. He’s on the short-list of people they want handling the justice league film. One side of the rumor has him signed and another side already has Affleck turning down Warners’ offer.
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An offer which they may not even have made yet? Weird. In any case, I can think of about a hundred more interesting directors I’d rather see attached to the project, and frankly still wouldn’t mind seeing Goerge Miller, who was attached to it before, come back into the picture.
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Probably. And audiences seem to go for them, so they have no financial reason to stop.
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If Nolan has a fault, it is that he grounds himself in his realistic neo-noir roots too deeply. I don’t think I’ve seen a stable, realistic view of Gotham in a long time, though, especially in the recent comics, and I think Nolan made it more possible for human drama outside the titular character with his setting though.
He made a place people would live in, and actually care about, despite its faults.
Maybe it should have been a bit more of a hell-hole in places, but we saw enough of that in the first film. I want to see the results of Bruce Wayne’s hard work toward improving the city, not an incessant slag heap that remains unimproved for the sole purpose of keeping villains and thugs prosperous.
Perhaps I am missing the point.
Regardless, it’s good to see people wanting to see a proper comic world. I wish we could see it more.
If I seem disjointed, I apologize. I’m in a state.
I kind of agree and disagree with you at the same time.
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I beg your pateinece and indulgence, then! I do like your “improving the city” views, and a “Gotham renewal”-type subplot plays a heavy part if the plot outline/skeleton I have in mind for this hypothetical reboot series, so all I can say is stay tuned! As I get more into the details of the plot structure in the days and weeks ahead, you may find that my ideas mirror your own a bit more clsely than they may seem to right now. Let me know!
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Perhaps I will!
Actually, I’ve heard rumors that a reboot series is already in the work. It’s a tad soon if you ask me, but I’m always excited to see a new interpretation of the series.
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I know they don’t plan on leaving it alone for long, it’s just too big a cash cow. I think the mixed success of he “Spider-Man” reboot is showing that a new complete origin story less than a decade after the last one might be a little much, though. That’s why I think a more “soft reboot” for Batman would be in order, especially since it’s probably no more than a couple years away. I heard something about Justice League being slated for 2015, so you can bet they want Man of Steel, a rebooted Batman, and probably a solo Wnder Woman flick all done before then.
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Why Detroit? With what they do with movies these days, they can make any city look like any other (okay, so Toronto never looks like New York City, no matter how hard they try, but I digress).
I don’t see why Detroit is so special. It would constitute a Catch 22.
1. Filming a “Batman” movie in Detroit would only mean anything to people who recognise it AS Detroit (translation: 0.0001 percent of the audience).
2. Those who DO recognise it as Detroit will just sit there thinking “That’s not Gotham City, our hometown!”
Either way, you would lose by filming it in Detroit.
If you were making a film like “Blue Collar” or a documentary about the history of Motown Records, different story.
Do you know, without going to IMDB, where they filmed “Ghost Rider”?
Give up?
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
The idea was to make it look like a futuristic version of Texas or something. Except to ANYBODY who was from Melbourne, it looked alarmingly like…well, Melbourne. But to everybody else, it could’ve been anywhere in the world. Basically when you deal with “this type” of movie (superhero-fantasy type stuff), the filming location is often redundant (especially in this day and age of CGI tack-ons). They could film the next “Batman” movie (whenever that may be) in Reykjavik–who’d care?
The benevolent side of me (which is pretty damn big) tells me perhaps they SHOULD film “Batman” movies in Reykjavik, since Iceland might benefit from the tourism and extra dollars that having a huge film crew in town for several months would inject into the domestic economy. Also, they have that whole 24 hours of sunlight thing in summer, so they could shoot daytime sequences throughout the entire evening if need be. Then let Bjork compose the soundtrack and give her a role in the film. Remember when PRINCE did the “Batman” soundtrack? That was a rather good soundtrack, but again, I digress. I’m only saying this because Reykjavik could use the attention and the bucks. And it would be a good chance to reintroduce Mister Freeze to the series.
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Actually, Iceland’s economy isn’t in too bad a shape these from what I understand since they had the guts to do what we in the US didn’t — namely, when their economy melted down down due to massive fraud in the “securities” sector, they PROSECUTED many of the banksters and FORGAVE much of the middle class’ collective debt. So far the results have been positive. I think Detroit works as Gotham for — well, the reasons I already outlined. They’d LOVE to see a big-time movie production come to town and could frankly SERIOUSLY use the good publicity. The auto industry has been rebounding a bit of late, and something like this is not only geographically ideal for, again, the reasons I outlined, but would be a nice publicity coup both for the city and the production. I agree that these days you could almost film anything anywhere, but Detroit wouldn’t require much “retrofitting,” as it were, to have the overall look you’d want for a Gotham, and while CGI can work marvels, the point really is that you wouldn’t need much of it, and I’d prefer to see as little CGI as possible just because it’s gotten rather tiresome. But I suppose if we actually flat-out agreed on something at this point, something would be seriously wrong with one, or both, of us.
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I applaud both of you for disagreeing with and debating each other without making it into a personal vendetta sort of thing. Dissent is the spice of life, no? 🙂
That said, the next Batman film should be made in Dallas so that I can play the Catwoman and Erin can play the Maggie Gyllenhaal role.
And Batman should be played by James Franco, but I’m sure that’ll be a topic for a future installment. 🙂
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Who would Doc play?
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Doc will play Batcat. Unless, of course, he belongs to Catwoman, in which case his name will be Catcat.
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I think if you tell Doc he’ll be playing a character named CatCat he may just give you one of those “looks”. xD
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I haven’t even started to think about casting possibilities yet! I’ll keep you and your sister in mind, though!
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I’m not a huge fan of CGI either, but the fact is that you know they’ll use it one way or another. I don’t think most directors have a major objection to it.
A few decades ago, the location for a movie mattered a lot as an artistic choice as much as a financial one. These days, it matters less as an artistic choice, much more of “how much money can we save?” from the perspective of the studio. This explains why so many huge blockbusters are filmed in Australia (a lot of the “Star Wars” stuff in the prequels was done in Oz, hence actors such as Jack Thompson and numerous other Aussies and Kiwis (New Zealanders)appearing in small roles. Apparently, it’s dirt cheap to make feature films (as well as concert DVDs) here in Australia.
If I were directing a “Batman” film, I’d make the first “Batman” musical. It would be a lead pipe cinch to pull off. The whole premise of “Batman” is a surreal one, anyway. Have Catwoman moonlighting in a “Cabaret” style nightclub (you could even give it the same name: the Kit Kat Club). One could also have the Joker and the Riddler outline their plans for world domination in comical song-and-dance numbers early in the film–“Sweeney Todd” worked as a musical and the audiences bought it, so I don’t see why “Batman” wouldn’t work as a musical (in hindsight, Tim Burton could’ve EASILY went in this direction). And here’s the kicker: set the entire movie in a bygone era! The 1960s would work, but also, why not the 1930s? And with all this in mind, you’d finally be able to get “Batman” onto Broadway (and onto stages all over the planet).
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There’s currently a Batman musical stage show touring the US. In fact, it’s coming to our area (Minneapolis/St. Paul) in a few weeks. Well, it;s not song-and-dance numbers, but it’s live-action stuff with an orchestra. Probably as close to what you’re talking about as you’re likely to find. As far as the economics of filming you mention, this is why Vancouver and Toronto are so popular, even with the exchange rate essentially even at this point, local tax incentives and unions more willing to work off-hours etc. have made these popular locations, and the state of Michigan is doing the same type of thing to try to attract film production. Apparently actor Jeff Daniels, who’s starring in some big new HBO series, recently chose Detroit to be the new permanent home of his theatrical company, and there are huge sections of Detroit that are essentially completely empty and a film production company could move right in and find derelict buildings, factories, etc. all ready to go, any and all of which would be quite —errrmmm — Gothamesque.The idea of setting the Bat-series in the past has actually been explored before, Darren Aronofsky’s aborted “Year One” project, which was scrapped in favor of “Batman Returns,” was going to take place in the 70s. Again, not exactly what you had in mind, but probably as close as the studios were ever going to come.
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