This actually isn’t a diversion from where we were in the plot of our hypothetical Batman I  film. Well, okay, not too much of a diversion.

If you’ll recall, when we last left things the other day, Vincent Lucchesi, Gotham City crime “boss of all bosses,” was headed out to oversee an important shipment coming into town that his guys had neglected to find replacement “security” for once the cop-on-the-take they’d hired to fill that role, the always-crooked Lieutenant Flass, had been sent upriver by Harvey Dent and Jim Gordon. All of which means it’s time to cut to some semi-momentous shit that we’ve all been waiting for (assuming there’s a “we” out there still reading this interminably long series), namely our first scene of the Batman in costume, followed in short order by the debut of this new bat-trilogy’s version of the Batmobile.

So shouldn’t I be doing a post on the Bat-costume first, and then get to the car? Yeah, I suppose that would make sense, but bear with me while I explain how this whole little scene plays out in my mind —

We’ll cut from Lucchesi storming out of his plush penthouse office to Bruce Wayne attentively analyzing a series of shipping manifest numbers on the giant screen of his Bat-computer deep in his cave. Alfred is standing by, attentive as ever, while Bruce says something along the lines of “so if the pattern of Lucchesi’s shipments holds, his next one should be coming in tonight.”

“You intend to be there to meet it, sir?”

“That’s the plan, Alfred. Getting an entire crate of whatever it is he’s shipping in is out of the question, but if I can just get enough to fill up this vial, I’ll transmit an image through to you for analysis.”

“I shall be at the ready then, sir.”

“And speaking of ready — it’s time I got that way myself.”

At this point Wayne will press a button on a keypad control and a plexiglass case containing a Batsuit will rise up from the floor, but I’m thinking for now we should see it only from behind, and that his “dressing” scene should amount to shots of him suiting up in his kevlar under-suit, maybe snapping some gauntlets on his hands, etc. — no full view of him in costume yet, just hints of the overall picture, if you will. This will be followed up by an obscured shot of him breezing by Alfred and mouthing the word “car” into his cowl-mic, at which point a stone dais will rise from the deeper recesses of the cave revealing, in all its glory, the new Batmobile!

Now, when it comes to exactly which Batmobile we’re talking about here, I admit I hunted high and low through various online image archives to find what I felt would be the perfect model. I’m not interested in a repeat of Christopher Nolan’s “Tumbler,” nor did I want a carbon-copy version of Tim Burton’s more classically-inspired ride, although something more akin to the Burton version, based as it was on an amalgamation of several of the better comic book designs, was what I had in mind. Still, the picture-perfect model well and truly escaped me, until —

I found that image reproduced at the top of this post. It’s a conceptual CG mock-up by a guy named Danny Gardner done for the Batman : Arkham City video game. Never having played the game myself I can’t say for certain whether or not it’s the car — or, hell, one of the cars — Batman uses in it, but I think for the overall tone of this new imaginary Bat-trilogy of ours, it’s pretty well goddamn perfect. I’m sure whatever Hollywood designers were working on this film if it ever came to pas would want to tweak it here and there, obviously, but as far as a “this is the kind of thing we’re going for” blueprint goes, I think it’s great. It’s sleek, it’s modern, it’s bad-ass, and yet it’s got something of a timeless quality to it that I think would ensure it ages well along with the film itself. It would also blend into the night pretty seamlessly. What say you, dear readers?

And now, with the car out of the way, tomorrow we can finally get to the business of a “full reveal,” as the saying goes, of the Bat-costume itself!