The Batsuit in The Dark Knight

It’s been a long road for the batsuit. Once upon a time there was Adam West in tights, before silly preening and (shudder) plastic nipples reduced it to a bit of a joke. That, like so much of the other Batman deadwood was shed with 2005’s origins tale, Batman Begins and the evolution of the caped crusader’s wardrobe continues with The Dark Knight.

“I need a new suit,” says Bruce Wayne to Wayne Enterprise’s Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman). “I’m not talking fashion, Mr Fox so much as function.” And what Bruce Wayne wants Bruce Wayne gets (that’s how things roll when you’re a billionaire) and so hey presto – a new Batsuit. But interestingly, these very words could easily have been spoken off-screen by actor Christian Bale, who on reprising his role as the superhero was keen for a change.

“You couldn’t move your head, you were bolted in,” complains Bale on life in the Begins Batsuit. “It was a vice on my skull, so I had a headache the whole damn time.” This overwhelming pressure was a combination of a heavy helmet that made Bale feel like he “was going scuba-diving” and the cowl being locked to the suit’s trunk restricting movement. The actor had to turn his head and shoulders in one movement which is jokingly referred to as “the Batmove”. “That Begins image of Batman with his head forward and that big, muscular, panther neck was great as a poster,” says Graham Churchyard, the costume effects supervisor on both Batman movies. “But that’s kind of what was stopping him from moving.”

Director Christopher Nolan was as keen as Bale for a fashion update, though many of the new changes had been discussed back on Begins – they just couldn’t afford them then. “In the first movie, we spent the money on the car, the Tumbler,” admits Nolan. “But for the second film, I was intent on spending on the costume.” This commitment to clothing earned the Batsuit a budget of hundreds of thousands of dollars, six months of design and manufacture and the labour of 40 craftsmen producing 25 suit replicas. Tumbler? What tumbler?

This shift saw the costume team, led by Oscar-winning designer Lindy Hemming, leave behind the survival wear influences of the Begins suit and look to military-issue protective armour and clothes worn by motocross riders and extreme sports enthusiasts. “We wanted the new Batsuit to be a more supple, more maneuverable, more breathable piece of equipment, like a modern suit of armor instead of a rubber suit,” says Hemming, who also dressed Pierce Brosnan in his four outings as James Bond.

“We wanted something that was real, something functional,” adds Nolan. “In the first film, it was designed to look real, but the mechanics and surfaces of it were not as they appeared. In this film, the suit is as it appears – and it works.” Churchyard elaborates: “In Begins, there’s that pre-suit that Bruce Wayne gets from Lucius Fox and sprays black. The script tells us it contains Kevlar weave and various layers. But now, it actually does. We’ve taken the pre-suit to the next stage, really.”

So what are these changes that take the Batsuit to the “nest level”? Most importantly for Bale was the re-design of the cowl, which was no longer anchored to the suit as per Begins, but was now sectioned off. Fears that this would compromise Batman’s sleek trademark silhouette or provide a literal chink in his armour were allayed by a series of seamless rings incorporated into the base.

“For the first time he [Bale] can move his neck completely up and down and side to side and his neck is made in a completely different way,” says Hemming. “What we’ve done is preserve the silhouette of the Batman and his cloak looks the same, but we’ve changed the actual detail of how the whole thing works and how it’s put together.” And this hard work, which Hemming deems “the hardest part of the suit to make,” was seriously appreciated by Batman himself. “For one thing, I could turn my neck,” enthuses the actor. “For another, I didn’t get awful headaches just from wearing it.”

The rest of the suit also received a dramatic makeover, with the number of main components on the Begins Batsuit ranking in the single digits compared to a whopping 110 on TDK. Gone was the massive chest plate (“one immovable slab”, according to Hemming), replaced by a foundation layer of polyester mesh, strengthened with individual armour plating.

The mesh, reflecting Lemmings’s research into extreme sports wear, allowed air to circulate and kept the suit feeling breathable and fresh. To form the basic level of armour moulded pieces of flexible urethane were added and carbon fibre panels finished off the look. These were attached to the abdomen, chest and legs and were articulated to respond to the actor’s movements. “I’d say it was more modern,” muses Lemming, “more conforming to the way that armoured things are made for the military and for maybe protection on motorbikes or in sport.”

Surprisingly, this shake up of the suit’s structure and materials didn’t mean a deduction in weight. “At 30 pounds, the redesigned armour actually weighed slightly more than the Begins model,” admits Churchyard, though he qualifies this by adding: “But its 110 component parts better distributed the load and let in a bit of air.”

Other suit changes include the way it captures the light on film. It hid in the shadows during Begins, partly to serve the plot and partly to hide the costume’s limitations, but now the Batsuit is more prominent in TDK. The matte look is traded for a more responsive, bolder style that adds a richer texture and provides greater depth. “A big thing we were after was giving the suit more texture,” says Hemming. “Visually, you’re getting much more information as to how it works.”

But the question every gadget fan wants to know: does the Batsuit have any new gadgets? Well, it’s a resounding yes, as the caped crusader sports razor fins on his forearms which “shoot at people,” confirms Hemming. Less showy but just as useful is a flip-down feature on the cowl which enables Batman to see 3D sonar images. Cool just doesn’t cover it.

With all these modifications, there are some aspects of the costume that have not been revised, such as the utility belt, boots and cape. “We spent a lot of time getting the cape right for the first film,” explains the costume designer, “and we didn’t want to change it.” This revelation might confuse movie-goers that have witnessed the cape perform a new trick in TDK – it can unfurl itself out of a backpack. However, that tasty effect was achieved in post production by techno whizzes, not the costume department.

So, what did Bale, the man who actually has to wear the Batsuit make of the revisions? “It was an entirely different experience,” gushes the welsh star. “It was fewer pieces and it didn’t require a team of people to get me in and out of it. It was much more comfortable and far less claustrophobic than the first suit. It was also more agile and gave me better range of motion, which helped with the action and fight sequences. But it still gave me that feeling of invincibility.”

“You can’t help but feel protected and more powerful when you put the Batsuit on. It just works.” Good to know Christian, now can you get us one?