THE DYNAMIC DUO

CHRISTIAN BALE RETEAMS WITH DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER NOLAN FOR THE DARK KNIGHT

With its $150 million budget, 2005’s Batman Begins was considered a huge gamble. After all, director Christopher Nolan’s biggest film to date, Insomnia, had grossed less than $70 million, while Christian Bale was an unproven indie actor whose celebrity was cult-like at best. But after providing a fresh take on the superhero genre to the tune of $400 million, the dynamic duo got Hollywood’s attention, making The Dark Knight one of this year’s most eagerly anticipated films.

“If you work well with someone you want to try to strike gold again. I think Chris is one of the best directors around. You don't worry too much if he's going to come up with the goods. It's nice to work with someone a number of times,” Bale says of Nolan, with whom he also worked on 2006’s The Prestige, “because you get a nice little shorthand between you. We also have the knowledge that everyone has confidence in what we're trying to do now, because the first one worked and people embraced it.”

It worked in large part because of Nolan’s darker, more realistic approach to the Batman mythos, which was inspired by Frank Miller’s gritty graphic novels and hewed much closer to comic book visionary Bob Kane’s original concept. When Kane first created the character back in 1939, he imagined Batman as primal, menacing and almost animalistic, and Bale admits that he’d been yearning for a chance to sink his thespian teeth into the caped crusader since reading Miller’s genre-redefining work back in 2000.

“In my mind,” Bale says, still speaking in the same American accent he used for the film, “Batman had never really been defined in any portrayal, unlike Christopher Reeves and the way he played Superman. I realized there was a great character here that had just never been portrayed in that style, and I couldn’t understand it. The Tim Burton stuff was fantastic in his approach, but Gotham was a carnival– a circus– and was never grounded in reality at all. I spoke to [Bob Kane’s] wife, and she said he was appalled at the TV series, which he said was a spoof of his creation. So a revival of his original intentions in the spirit of the Frank Miller/Jeff Logan graphic novels is what was interesting to me.”

Some pundits have posited that the timing was ripe for a Batman revival, what with its classic themes of vigilante justice and revenge–witnessing the murder of his parents is what drives orphaned millionaire Bruce Wayne to become Batman in the first place—mirroring a real-life war many think is primarily about payback. But Bale believes that the story’s central themes are timeless.

“I think it’s a continuing dilemma of becoming the beast you’re pursuing,” he muses thoughtfully. “That’s one of the fascinating elements of Batman– he has so much negative emotions, rage and guilt that he could very easily become the villains he’s trying to fight. He has this turmoil, because he has this hero worship of his father and desires to uphold his name and beliefs, but it’s blended with this almost uncontrollable need for revenge and capability as a fighter. He could kill very easily– and I believe he actually does have the desire to– but he reigns himself in constantly.”

Reigning himself in may be Bruce Wayne/Batman’s modus operandi, but it’s hardly a tendency one would ever accuse the actor currently portraying him of having. From his breakthrough performance as axe-wielding serial killer Patrick Bateman in American Psycho and dropping 65 pounds to play skeletal insomniac Trevor Reznik in The Machinist to his critically acclaimed turns as Vietnam War POW Dieter Dengler in Rescue Dawn and outlaw-wrangling rancher Dan Evans in 3:10 To Yuma, Bale is renowned for giving everything he has to every role he takes on.

The actor admits that facing his fears with a spirit of passion and intensity is part of what draws him to his craft. “I think that you should face your fears,” he insists, “because it’s an exhilarating feeling. Not only approaching a character where you’re unsure you’ll actually be able to do it sufficiently well, but there’s also an attraction to the possibility of absolute humiliation. I like that risk-taking feeling, treading that fine line between something working or going disastrously wrong, knowing that if you blow this it could really be the end of it. Because you have to immerse yourself completely in order to make it work properly. But there’s a possibility of things going disastrously wrong on any movie, because it is such a team collaboration.”

The Dark Knight will feature one of the most impressive teams of any superhero movie ever made, including indie icons Aaron Eckhart as DA Harvey Dent (a.k.a. Two-Face), Cillian Murphy as Dr. Jonathan Crane (a.k.a. The Scarecrow), Gary Oldman as Lt. James Gordon, Maggie Gyllenhaal (taking over for Katie Holmes) as Rachel Dawes and, of course, Heath Ledger in what is said to be an Oscar-caliber performance as The Joker. Though Ledger’s untimely death last December presented concerns for how to market the film, industry insiders are predicting The Dark Knight will be one of the year’s most successful blockbusters, raking in a projected $500 million at the box office and further elevating Bale’s status as one of the most respected actors in Hollywood.

And, unlike other actors who have become so inextricably identified with certain characters that audiences can’t imagine them playing anyone else, Bale has few concerns that the caped crusader will come to define him. “I did think about that ahead of time,” he acknowledges, “but it was a really good character, so I didn’t wanna get scared off by the consequences of always being seen as Batman forever after. Of course it’s something that can happen, but I trust that if I make my choices and continue to make as wide a variety of movies as I wish to, it won’t happen.”

There’s precious little chance of that, as Bale already has roles lined up in Michael Mann’s historical crime drama, Public Enemies; Joe Carnahan’s Killing Pablo, about the assassination of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar; and as the iconic John Conner in director McG’s Terminator 4, yet another attempt to reinvent a lagging film franchise. Clearly, more than 20 years after his breakthrough turn in Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun, Bale’s not planning on slowing down anytime soon.