The car chase in Chicago...
Chris, from the beginning, wanted to do something really extraordinary and fast.
We wanted to be able to use the Batmobile as a real car...
...and have a real car chase that looks back to, you know...
The French Connection and films like this...
...not the usual kind of studio-bound use of the Batmobile.
It's very rare that you drive a vehicle in a stunt sequence...
...more than 50 or 60 miles per hour, and we took this Batmobile...
...and drove at speeds up to 80, 90 miles an hour, I think.
And then on the open road, we got up to 100 miles an hour.
There's no trick photography. It's real speed.
When the car's going 100, we're going 100.
Our basic approach to tracking with the Batmobile...
...is a device called the Ultimate Arm...
...which is basically a Mercedes ML55...
...with a robotically controlled crane arm...
...that gives you shots that you can't get any other way on moving vehicles.
The first night of tracking...
...they were shouting out speeds of 86, 88 miles an hour.
I've never done speeds like that. Only on helicopter tracking shots.
But to do it from car-to-car tracking is... That's fast.
The director's in this Mercedes with the crane arm on it...
...flying along at 100 miles an hour.
The Batmobile's flying along at 100 miles an hour.
And so, really, there's no room for error.
I mean, one little thing goes wrong, and somebody's life is in danger.
In this film, George has probably done some of the best driving I've ever seen...
...in all the years I've been doing it. He was absolutely tremendous.
There was a particular shot in Chicago...
...I had to come down an exit ramp into this big bus depot...
...and they wanted the car to come in and slide sideways...
...almost do, like, a complete 360...
...and then back out and get in between two cars.
And at first I was always kind of like, “I don't know if it'll do it"...
...and the first time we did it, it did it so easily.
There was not one stunt where the car didn't drive away from it.
It always managed to drive away from it.
And we had to break this huge breakaway wall.
No matter how breakaway it is, it's never gonna be that breakaway.
And I didn't want to do it, I didn't want to put the car through it.
We did it, she got a few scratches, broke the glass...
...but apparently she's up and running again now...
...so I'll ask if I can keep it, take it home the end of the film.
This evening we're doing the final part of the car-chase sequence.
Batman loses the helicopter...
...and the police cars that are chasing him and then hits the jump...
...takes off, flies across a river and into his Batcave.
We're gonna do the takeoff...
...and we'll land the car into a box rig just to protect the car...
...and then the entry into the Batcave, we'll shoot at Shepperton on a stage...
...where we'll actually jump the car through a waterfall and land it on the stage.
Three, two, one, action.
- Are we good? - Yeah. If George is okay...
...we're good.
The landing in the Batcave we're doing for real, with our real 2-ton car.
Initially we were gonna build a long run-up outside and actually drive it in...
...but we had big limitations within the studio...
...how we could get through the door, it was very narrow...
...we only had three or four inches, each side of the car.
We actually decided in the end to stick a nitrogen cannon in it...
...and fire it off of a ramp just the other side of the waterfall.
The flipside is we had to stop it very quickly...
...because it would have gone straight out the other side of the set...
...so we had a restraining cable on it so we could stop it within eight, 10 feet.
We would like everyone to clear the set, please...
...and go to their positions they're gonna be in for the shoot.
Okay, everyone just stand by, please.
Roll camera, please.
And three, two, one, action!
Everything we did out there was done for real.
None of the car turnovers or cannons or pipe ramps, none of it was CGI...