WHAT WENT WRONG - The Dark Knight

Episode Date: July 20, 2026

It took Christopher Nolan mere minutes to sell Warner Brothers on his vision of Batman. And while he began to change the face of superhero movies with Batman Begins he altered it forever with The Dark Knight. This week Chris and Lizzie break down which element of The Joker made the studio very nervous, why Hong Kong proved incredibly difficult to film in, and how the hell they flipped that 18 wheeler in the middle of downtown Chicago. Find out how a stunt gone wrong resulted in the on-set death of a veteran stunt technician, how Heath Ledger got his iconic role and how it impacted him, and why Harvey Weinstein may be to blame for blocking the film out of the Best Picture category at the Oscars. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

another episode of your favorite podcast, we'll stop. That just so happens to be upon movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone a great man. We need to protect at the expense of the public's trust and an adherence to moral order or any sense of justice, as always.

Oh, my God. That's so hard to do, Christian. An incredible actor. As always, I am one of your host, Chris Winterbauer, are joined by my co-host, the Intrepid Lizzie Bassett here to walk us through the all-gas, no-break superhero adaptation of 2008. I'm so excited. Lizzie, what do you have for us? Hi. It's one of my favorite line readings that I wrote down.

My favorite line in the entire movie. Hi. We have the Dark Night, and I could not be more excited to talk about this movie with you. We have a lot, a lot, a lot to cover in today's episode. Just a heads up, the way that this is going to work, I am going to touch on Batman begins because it's necessary to understand the Dark Night. You might be wondering, why didn't we give Batman Begins its own episode? There's not really enough to do that. Maybe we'll do it later. It's just like, it's pretty good. It's great. It's totally fine. It's not the Dark Night. And also, there is so much that did go wrong and, of course, right behind the scenes on the Dark Night that this really merits its own full episode. So that's how this is going to work. A little bit on Batman

begins into the Dark Night. And of course, if you didn't already, please go back just for and listen to Friday's bonus episode about 10 Things I Hate About You for a little bit more on Heath Ledger, because he was just a delight. So, Chris, what was your experience with The Dark Night prior to this rewatch and how did you feel upon rewatching it for the podcast? So this movie came out in between,

the summer after our freshman year of college, Lizzie and I are, we were in the same grade. That's why we're friends. We're all the same touch points. But, no, it came out. I was home, and I'm so glad that I was home. You know, God bless all of them. The nerds I went to college with were not into movies in the way that I was, especially not big popcorn.

Undergrad. Undergrad. Undergrad. Yes, I did eventually go to home school. So I was home. I believe I saw this with David. I know Kevin Graver, shout out. Our friend was there.

We went opening night, Factoria Cinemas, which was the lower end, but better secretly theater near my house. And I was so excited. I thought Batman Begins was good. I liked it. I liked the changes that they made, although I kind of still preferred the Tim Burton 89 one with Keaton, probably. They're very different, but yeah.

They're very different, but I loved the Keaton tone and the Burton aesthetic, but it really seemed based on the trailers like this movie was going to take things to the next level, and boy did it. And I went in, and my 19-year-old brain was melted and set piece after set piece.

It's that Vince McMahon, Jiff, or meme where he just gets more and more excited across the meme until there's lasers coming out of his eyes. That was basically my reaction watching this movie in theaters. I absolutely loved it. I just thought, oh, God, it's just, they did it, they did it, they did it, blah, blah, blah. Fast forward, I watched this when I'm in film school, and I'm an idiot. And I am thinking, somebody would have reacted to that bus

pulling out of that bank at the beginning of this film. Oh, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't know. I became such a wet blanket about this movie in one watch, you know, and I kind of thought, maybe it wasn't, you know, I had this lingering thought of maybe it wasn't all that in a bag of chips. And then I put it on last night and I sat down and I just had a big old smile on my face the whole time.

This movie rocks. It makes some interesting choices we can talk about from a broader geopolitical sense or philosophical sense. But just broadly speaking, what an accomplishment, amazing set pieces, fantastic stunts, practical effects, great performances across the board. The cinematography is masterful. I love the use of real aerial photography with helicopters,

and you can see the jitter in the camera as it's going. Yeah, something drones has stolen from us. Yes, absolutely. Unless it's David Fincher, I don't want my movies to be too smooth, is what I've realized, and this movie is not too smooth, and I love it. And also just Heath Ledger giving this movie the humor that Batman Begins was missing. Totally.

And this movie is so funny. Hi. That is one of the best ones. Or also, did you really think we'd let you take our money, blah, blah, blah? Yes. And so he just had so many good, great deadpan reactions. It's one of the best villain portrayals that we're going to get. And Christian Bale remains great in this series.

And I liked Manki Jelen Hall's edition in this one, although she doesn't get a ton to do, but I think she does it very well. No, but she does it well. Yeah. So anyway, all to say, dumb film school, Chris, really glad I didn't have a podcast then because I'm all, I'm back in. for now. This movie rocks. I had a similar experience. I saw this the summer between freshman and sophomore year of college, because, again, Chris and I were gestated in the same womb. Just kidding, but we were born the same year. Yeah, you just lingered seven months longer in the year than I did?

Okay. That's right. I'm a baby. I saw this. You know, I think I saw this in Boston, which doesn't make any sense because I didn't stay in Boston the summer between. Anyway, I must have seen this before starting sophomore year of college, because I believe I saw this at the Fenway Theater, Shout out Boston. Boston, notably one of the cities, they did not look at for recreating Gotham, which makes sense because the roads are insane. I remember sitting in the theater and I remember my jaw hanging open when that 18-wheeler semi-truck flips ass over tea kettle in the middle of this movie. I had never seen anything like it. It's one of my favorite film theater-going experiences in my entire life. I have seen this movie many times since then, and unlike you, it never lost its magic for

me. In fact, the older I get, the more impressed I am by just the whole thing. I mean, yes, obviously, Heath Ledger, who we will talk about a lot in this episode, does something truly, truly remarkable with both this role and this movie. And I just don't think his performance can be overstated how good it is. Because you're right, he's so funny, which, of course, the Joker should be. He's very funny. He's very fun. He's also legitimately so scary. And there's a couple of moments in this movie where it feels like, you know, as they say, his mask slips. It's when he's doing one of the videos that he releases and he's saying, look at me.

And it's the last look at me. Warmer. Yeah, it just sends full body chills through my whole body. And you just believe him completely. It is incredible. And huge shout out to Christian Bale, who absolutely holds his own opposite what Heath Ledger is doing.

And the thing is, like, Bruce Wayne is kind of humorless. And yet he also manages, I think, to bring a little bit more fun and life to Bruce Wayne, which is hard to do in both Batman Begins and this movie, but particularly in this movie. And I love all the shots in this movie that are very reminiscent of American Psycho. You know that that's... There's a lot of American Psycho fun in this movie, for sure.

There is a lot. Also, just some of the best, you'll talk about this, I'm sure, but some of the best scale model work in a couple moments as well. Well, is it? We'll talk about that. There's a lot to talk about here. There is obviously a famous tragedy associated with this movie, which is Heath Ledger's death, but there is another one that is less talked about that we will get

into. This is the film that I think for better and in some cases for worse has come to define the modern superhero genre, particularly when it comes to DC. Of course, this is part of the DC universe. And yet, in my opinion, I don't think anything has ever come close to topping this. It is so gigantic in scale while also being extraordinarily character-driven. Let's get into it because we have a lot to talk about. So here are the details, as always. The Dark Night was released, in 2008. It was directed by Christopher Nolan with a screenplay written by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan, Story by Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer. It stars Christian Bail, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Kane, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Killian Murphy,

and so, so, so many more. And the IMDB logline is, when a menace known as the Joker wreaks havoc and chaos on the people of Gotham, Batman, James Gordon, and Harvey Dent must work together to put an end to the madness. Our main sources for today are a really fun article from Chicago Magazine called Night Moves, spelled the way you think it is. We're going on Night Moves. Yeah, Empire Magazine's making of Heath Ledgers the Joker and a very fun, hour-long featurette behind scenes from Warner Brothers that you should watch. It's really good. Let's start with the Caped Crusader himself, because I don't think we've really talked about Batman that much on the podcast yet. Burtman. Bortman. Bortman, as he was originally called.

Yeah. So in 1939, after the success of Superman, which we have, covered here. DC Comics was looking for its next big star. So editor Vince Sullivan turned to cartoonist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger to take a stab at creating a new hero. And in a six-page story called The Case of the Chemical Syndicate in Detective's Comics, number 27, Bruce Wayne, aka Batman, made his debut. And by the way, Chris, he seemed totally fine with murdering people. He pushes a criminal into an acid tank in that first installment, and he's much more street-smart, he's noir-tinged, the whole idea that Batman doesn't kill people, only dogs, according to These movies comes much later.

He kills so many dogs across this movie. Those are bad dogs, though. Okay. But no. No bad dogs. Yeah. Wasn't this very much in the vein

of the spirit and the spider early on? There were some earlier noir comic characters. Yeah, well, it makes sense. It's coming out at the tail end of the 1930s, which is peak noir season. And then, of course, it does shift as it moves into later iterations. But the comic was enough of a hit right away

to generate more stories. And then, of course, six months later, his origin story appeared in the public learned about the tragic tale of Bruce Wayne's parents. And we had to sit through that about a billion times. 100 billion, bajillion times. Although I do like the bat opera that they go see in Batman Begins. Sure. Side note, you may notice that the creation of Batman is credited toward Bob Kane in this film. That is because he took sole credit for creating the character, and it wasn't until 2015 that DC finally recognized Bill Finger as a co-creator, even though Finger had silenced.

died in 1974, which really sucks. Batman's readership was strong early on, which led to two different serialized films in the 40s, the first starring Lewis Wilson and then Robert Lowry as Bruce Wayne. And in the 50s, Batman comics started heading in a bit more of a camp direction than his pal, Superman. And, of course, in 1966, he was immortalized in the Batman TV series starring who? Adam West. Adam West. Bam, pow!

Bam, pow, Batman, Robin, we're just friends. But while Batman's on-screen persona was getting goofier and goofier, the comics were getting darker. Writer Dennis O'Neill and artist Neil Adams made an enormous effort in the 70s to bring him back to his roots and away from the way that he had been portrayed on TV. And by the 80s, the Gotham and Batman comics was looking pretty rough. It was chock full of supervillains, rampant crime, just as dark as you can get. Yeah, the world's gone to hell. The world's gone to shit in the bad pod. Giuliani needs to clean up New York.

We got to get it going. Everything's going terrible. Yeah, I mean, this was, you know, we talked about it. New York was terrifying in the 70s and 80s. It was a taxi driver. We talked about it when we were discussing V for Vendetta, and this was the era of watchmen and whatnot. But it was the gritty era, the gritty times.

It was. Well, meanwhile, Warner Brothers was hard at work developing a Batman feature film. And this would, of course, lead to Tim Burton's Batman in 1989, which you love, starring Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne, Jack Nicholson as the Joker. The movie was an enormous success, kind of against all odds.

And it kicked off the Batman franchise. of the 90s. But with each on-screen iteration from 1989 forward, the studio saw diminishing returns. Until finally, the series truly bottomed out with Joel Schumacher's 1997 Bat-Shit Batman and Robin starring George Clooney as Batman. Poor George Clooney. It's not that bad. If you guys are interested, just YouTube, Google search George Clooney Graham Norton show, Joel Schumacher for his story on how he was directed by Joel Schumacher. Yeah, it's not his fault. George! Remember your parents are to do.

Dad, over a loud speaker as he's strapped to a gurney or something. It's so funny. Oh, well, I'm glad he recovered. The movie, though, was a critical and commercial flop, and it seemed to close the door on the proverbial Batcave. I saw all those movies, 95 on, all of the, I think the Kilmer one on, I saw all of them in theaters. Oh, wow. I did not. Yeah. I didn't see them until much later. Yeah. Fun fact, I believe they used the Val Kilmer Bat suit for the screen test for Batman Begins, which you can actually see online. They're very cool. But Warner Brothers didn't give up. They simply went looking for someone new to reinvent the franchise. And in 2002, they had a somewhat surprised hit with a remake of a Norwegian film called Insomnia. And who was this directed by? Christopher Nolan.

Christopher Nolan, who has a different accent than his brother. That's true. It does make sense when you understand. It does actually make sense. He grew up more in London. Jonathan grew up more in America. Yes, Jonathan grew up more in Evanston, I believe, near Chicago. That's right. And Stephen Soderberg also really shepherded. I believe Christopher into that directing role. He was a huge fan of Memento and was a champion of that

movie and I think was really involved in that process. Insomnia is great. It's very fun. I like Insomnia quite a bit. I think it's probably, it's one of the more overlooked movies in his filmography. He's actually said that. Yeah. Yeah, it's a great one. And of course, listen to our episode on Memento for more background on Christopher Nolan. Now, thanks to the critical and actually commercial success of Insomnia, Nolan was offered a movie that Warner Brothers had been developing for a while. It was a sandbox he was all too eager to play in, Chris. He knew exactly how he wanted to tackle it, how he wanted it to look and feel. Images filled his mind, images of a Trojan horse. Oh.

Uh-huh. Yeah. The Erdice. Dirt. Well, sort of. The film that Warner Brothers offered Christopher Nolan. Was it the Iliad? Was it Troy? Troy. Oh, okay. Yes. Oh. Oh. So the Odyssey starts here, Chris. The seeds. The seeds. of the odyssees. The seeds of a plant dead.

What is he doing in the trailer? Is he dead? Is he alive? I don't know. I can't wait. But while Nolan had actually done quite a bit of work on Troy, trouble was brewing in Gotham because German director Wolfgang Peterson had originally been developing Troy for Warner Brothers.

So that's my boot. But had pivoted to Batman versus Superman, except when Warner Brothers took a look at his BVS pitch, they said, no, thank you. And Wolfgang was like, fine. then give me back Troy, and so that's exactly what they did. They yanked Troy out of Christopher Nolan's hands, and as a consolation prize, they offered him the opportunity to pitch his version of Batman. What they didn't know is that Christopher Nolan had always loved Batman, so he came in, and over the course of 10 minutes, pitched Warner Brothers on his Caved Crusader. He wanted a real crime fighter in a believable world.

Nolan said of Batman, quote, he's the most credible and realistic of the superheroes. He has the most complex human psychology. His superhero qualities come from within. He's not a magical character. So, even though it was short, his pitch was so fully formed that Warner Brothers greenlit the film immediately. And in January of 2003, Nolan was officially on board to helm Batman Begins. To be fair, though, Warner Brothers was greenlighting a lot of Batman-related pitches at this point. They had been trying to revitalize the franchise through at least four competing reinventions and spinoffs. Three of those would never get made. One of them we've covered, what is it?

Catwoman. That's right. The greatest basketball sequence of all. time, Catwoman. If you can call it basketball. I call it. Foreplay in front of children. But what? Yeah, and also there was another Batman versus Superman with McGee attached as a director.

There have been a million versions of that. Yeah, after it went from Peterson, then it went to McGee, and then eventually it goes to Zach Snyder and it becomes Man of Steel. So, yeah, they were just saying, throw this spaghetti. Whoops, spaghetti. Throw it at the wall.

Throw those baths at the cave. Constantly. So David S. Goyer co-wrote Batman begins with Nolan. And according to production designer Nathan Crowley, their North Star for the film really was just what if Batman were real. I think they do a great job of that in this.

I rewatch Batman Begins before this episode as well. And while it's not what the Dark Night is, it definitely is a reinvention of the superhero movie, for sure. Now, while many other stars at the time, including Ian Bailey, Killian Murphy, Henry Cavill, Josh Hartnett, Jake Gyllenhaal, and others were considered for and screen tested for the role of Batman. According to Nolan, Christian Bale was the only one

who could convincingly play both Bruce Wayne and Batman. I've seen Killian's Bruce Wayne like footage online and it's good. I mean, he's a great Bruce Wayne, you know? Yes, Ian Bailey's good too. You can watch a lot of these.

Also, they screen tested opposite Amy Adams, who did it as a favor to Christopher Nolan. Oh. It's pretty cool. Interesting. Yeah. Bale was the first one Nolan met with

for the part and he could just never really get him out of his head. He's so good. And he'd done American Psycho, which obviously Bruce Wayne is, in a way, Bruce Wayne, especially once he becomes Batman, and Bruce Wayne becomes an American Psychoesque performance.

Totally. He's performing as Patrick Bateman, basically, when he comes into these scenes. I think that was a big reason why they cast him was because that part was such a good indicator of what he could do with the asshole version of Bruce Wayne. Also, the fact that he came to the screen test with the Batman voice.

That was his idea, which of course makes sense. You would have to disguise your voice in some way, even if it's a little bit silly. It bothers some people. It doesn't bother me. No. You know what bothers me is he has one of the most distinctive mouths in the world. He does.

me that his friends don't know. That's Christian Bale's upper lip. Nice try. When they said, I thought it could be Harvey Dent. I said, no, sir. Not at all. Mr. Constant 5 o'clock shadow giant square jaw. That is not Christian Bale's lower mouth. No way. Not at all. But it is important to remember that this was kind of a risk. In 2012, Christian Bale told GQ, before we were involved, the Batman franchise had gone to pot. Everyone knows that. And to be honest, when we took it on, it was a big gamble. An awful lot of people thought we were destined for failure. He also put on 100 pounds of muscle for this part, which I know sounds insane,

but you have to remember he was coming off of the machinist, where he was basically skin and bones. And also, have you seen Batman begins. He is a huge. But I would question that it's 100 pounds of muscle. Sure. He may have put on 100 pounds. Yes. And a lot of it was muscle.

Yes. Obviously. It also looks, it looks real. Oh, no. He looks like he just went like. It doesn't look like PEDs to me. No, it doesn't. I mean, we don't know, but... And bail across his career has changed his body so many times.

Yes, yeah. I hope his insides are okay. So that's why I always say I'm built at Christian Bale, but then I just never say which movie. Yeah. You never know. Could be the machinist, could be Batman Biggins. Could be Vice. We don't know. This is true. Now, before Batman McGeons ever came out, David S. Goyer wrote two treatments for possible sequels, one featuring The Joker and one featuring Harvey Dent. But Nolan has always said he had no intention of making a series.

let alone turning this into a trilogy. Of course, at the end of Batman Begins, you do see Gordon Hand Batman the Joker card. But that could easily have been the studio saying, you know, you have to do this, something, whatever. It does sound like Nolan was very uncertain about whether he wanted to keep pursuing this. But in June of 2005, Batman Begins was released and absolutely raked in the dollar-redues, 375 million worldwide. It was also a critical success, which is something the franchise hadn't seen in decades. And Catwoman bombed. It bombed, big time. And so, this was a high point relative to that movie for sure. Yes. And David S. Goyer said it really wasn't until maybe three months after Batman Begins came out that Chris sat down with me for lunch and said,

okay, let's talk about a sequel. Nolan himself was surprised to find that he wanted to return. He said, I didn't have any intention of making a sequel to Batman Begins. I just got caught up in the process of imagining how you would see a character like the Joker through the prism of what we did in the first film. Warner Brothers, on the other hand, was like, how fast can we get this into theaters, please? Fans were also champing at the bit to find out what was coming next. So the studio used the fake working title Rory's First Kiss to cover the work being done on the sequel. And they worked fast. It seems like right away, Christopher and his brother Jonathan Nolan, who co-wrote the screenplay,

knew they wanted the primary villain to be the Joker, which makes sense. It's teed up at the end of the first movie. And I do wonder if they then combined Goyer's treatments to also include Harvey Dent. That would make sense. Goyer has a story by credit on this. I was surprised. I forgot how much this is about Harvey Dent. Yes.

And then they off him at the end, which is, I think. totally a bold move because Harry Neckhardt is so good in this, too. With the success of Batman begins, Nolan also had the freedom to push the sequel farther in the direction of his original pitch. So writing the screenplay, the Nolan's are drawing on the darker Batman comics, Alan Moore's The Killing Joke, Jeff Loeb's The Long Halloween, and one movie in particular that we have covered on this podcast, Chris, what classic crime drama that featured a former bat do you think directly influenced the Dark Night? Heat. Yes, Michael Mann's Heat.

You can see it throughout... In every shot. So much of this movie, especially when they're in downtown Chicago, in particular. Exactly. In particular, of course, it's the choice to film The Dark Night in a real city. And this was a big prerequisite for Christopher Nolan.

He said Heat was very much an influence because man is a fanatic for architecture. He understands the grandeur of a city and how it can become kind of an epic playground. So Batman begins. I don't know if you've seen it recently. It's filmed kind of all over the world. Yeah.

It feels more like at the time traditional superhero. movie. Totally. Dark Night does. And that's actually what I'd like least about it. The weird giant monorail for our villain showdown at the end. The way Arkham Island, I like the way they executed, but it's just, it all feels a little hodgepodge at the end of the day. It doesn't feel like a real city like you're saying in the way that the Dark Night does. No. Exteriors were shot in Chicago, New York, and London. Of course, a lot was shot on soundstages. To your point, there's a lot of it that is clearly computer generated like the monorail. This time, Nolan wanted it to feel familiar, and he wanted Gotham to really, really exist. So let's put a pin in that. He also knew that he wanted

his villain to be real as well. The Nolens and Goyer knew they wanted their Joker to be scary, and they knew something else right away. Their Joker would not have any backstory. But when Warner Brothers read the screenplay and discovered that easily the franchise's most beloved villain would not be getting any origin story, they panicked. According to Goyer, quote, people were worried. That was considered a very controversial thing. They pushed back quite hard on this, but Goyer and the Nolan brothers would not budge on it. Had they already done the misdirect, like the three stories he tells, or the, at least two, right, where he gives the false accounts?

Yeah, yeah. Because I was wondering if that was a response to the studio saying, we want a backstory. And they're like, great, here's three. No, I believe that was all in there. I think that it was very, they wanted to make it clear to the audience, we are not giving you this. No, and I like the subversion of him saying, like, I'm going to fuck with you in these different scenes, right, where he's just making these stories up. It also kept reminding me of American Psycho, which, of course, we've covered on the

podcast where the thing that everyone kept pushing Mary Haren to do was saying, you know, you have to give some kind of explanation for why Patrick Bateman is the way he is. And she and Christian Bale were like, no, he's just an American psycho. And that's very much what they do with The Joker here, which I think is brilliant. And then, of course, as we know, Todd Phillips made your least favorite movie, The Joker, which is entirely a bad origin story. A, it did very well. Oh, sorry.

I fell asleep as it played inside of my mind. Massive respect to everybody who worked on everything. every department in that movie. It looks and sounds amazing. I just don't like it. So. I didn't hate it as much as you did, but I get it. Nolan made another controversial decision right away. He had no interest in hiring the man most synonymous with playing the Joker at that point, which was Jack Nicholson. He wanted the Joker to be genuinely scary, and that would come from him feeling real. And he just, I think, fairly did not think that it would make any sense to bring Jack Nicholson in for that. It would also connect it to like the older franchise.

Right. It doesn't make a lot of sense. You also, you want to read a lot of sense. You also, you want to invent him for a younger audience. Yes. Nicholson is old. Well, into its, what, 60s by this point? At least, yeah. Yeah. Now, Sir Michael Kane, excuse me, Sir Michael Kine, thought this was risky.

He found a ruby, a sorts of a tent tree. In his words, quote, when Chris called me about the Dark Knight, I asked who's the villain. He said, the Joker. I thought, oh, Jack Nicholson, who's going to top that? I thought for a moment, we're in trouble here. That's not a great decision. You don't try and top Jack. Nolan disagreed.

He said, quote, I had no reservations about following Jack. Nicholson's Joker, and that was very important to us deciding to do it. The Nolan's went back to the earliest iterations of the Joker before he became a goofy trickster, which I think happened somewhere around the 40s, and prior to that, he was a full-blown homicidal maniac, and that's the direction that they were headed. Now, I thought going into this episode that they must have had to hunt far and wide to find the right actor for the Joker, but I was wrong. Nolan knew who we wanted before the script was even finished, because I buried the lead earlier. Heath Ledger was an early front-runner for Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins.

Nolan had actually loved him for the role. They had met and talked about it, but Ledger had said, no, thank you. According to Nolan, he was quite gracious, but he said I would never take part in a superhero film. Interesting. So I actually don't think he screen tested for it. Yeah. I mean, he would have been young. Very young.

Killion Murphy is also, I think, a little younger than Christian Bale. But Ledger would have been very. It would have been 23, 24 when they were prepping that movie. He was born in 1980. They would have been prepping it around 2004, so, yeah, about 24. Yeah. But Ledger changed his tune after seeing Batman begins. He called Nolan personally and expressed his interest in the sequel and in particular in The Joker. What if he called him and said, I'm ready to play Batman in the sequel? Step aside, Christian. He was not worried about taking on the role at all. He said, I was a huge fan of Jack Nicholson's Joker,

but having seen Chris's first film, I knew there was a big difference between a Chris Nolan film and a Tim Burton film. And so therefore, there was enough room for a fresh portrayal. According to Nolan, he said, I talked with him about the anarchic elements that I saw as being the more realistic Joker, the guy who would actually frighten an audience, and he'd already come up with a lot of that on his own. Ledger said we had identical images within our minds. And a little bit on Heath Ledger up to this point. He was born in Perth, Australia. He started out in Australian soap operas before moving to Hollywood in pursuit of a girlfriend. Her relationship didn't last. He did, of course, break out opposite Julia Stiles and 10 Things I Hate About You. Again, listen to our featurette about

that on Friday. Very fun little movie. And then he starred in a brief live television series. Then he really kicks off an absolutely insane run with Knight's Tale, Monsters Ball, so many more. Oh, yeah, Monsters Ball. Yeah, he's really good in that. He is, and it's also such a tragic role and tragic movie. It's brutal. Yeah, it is. It's not a fun watch, but it is good. And Ledger has said that at first, he wasn't really, like, didn't care too much about acting. He said, quote, I was more concerned with having a good time than when focusing on work. But then, quote, I started to look at the work and think, oh, God, maybe I should be taking this seriously because people are going to see this. All I saw were mistakes, a lack of care, a lack of attention to detail. And again, he's really young.

And this is kind of where the pivot in his career happens. He stars in Brokeback Mountain in 2005, for which he earned an Oscar nomination, Golden Globe, BAFTA, SAG nominations, and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor. So Ledger was cast, as we said, before the script was even finalized, which means he had tons of time to work on the character. There were, by the way, this is allegedly, a few other actors waiting in the wings in the event that Ledger's deal didn't close. You have any other guesses as to who might have been considered for the Joker? At this time, are they big names? Yes. Yes. They're definitely big names now. I think that they were medium to big names then.

Medium to big names then, opposite Christian Bale. I mean, the one who makes a lot of sense to me, but he's not, I don't think he was big enough then or now, is Michael Shannon, who I actually think Keith Ledger has shades of Michael Shannon in his performance a little bit. Yeah. But no, just tell me, I'm not going to be able to guess. So Sam Rockwell. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, he'd done... Charlie's Angels.

His villain turn in Charlie's Angels is... Which he's very fun in. Yeah, not too far off. Adrian Brody, that one does not feel right to me. That feels closer to Jared Lido in Suicide Squad. Yeah. And then this one is actually my favorite, Paul Bettney. Sure.

Could be interesting. Yeah. I'm programmed to see him as much more reserved now through some of his more recent performances, but I'm sure he could do it. He's great actor. He is. Well, just remember Chaucer in a Knight's Tale.

Mm-hmm. But, of course, Ledger's deal did close. and he was the Joker. So Nolan had an actor who he saw eye to eye with on the character. They both wanted to work with each other. He's just been Oscar nominated. This seems like a home run, right? But on July 31st, 2006, Warner Brothers announced that the film would be called The Dark Night,

which, by the way, it's the first Batman movie without Batman in the title. And the official press release said Christian Bill will resume his role as Bruce Wayne an Academy Award nominee Heath Ledger has been cast as The Joker. Chris, do you remember the reaction to this announcement? No. Uh, maybe. now that you mention it? It was not good.

It was not good. Yeah. Maybe it was like when people saw the trailer, they thought, oh, wait, we were wrong. Correct. This could be really good. Yes. So according to Jonathan Nolan, quote, I didn't get it. The studio didn't get it.

And the fan community, we were fucking pilloried for it. People called it the worst casting decision ever made. But Chris Nolan stuck to his guns, giving fans in Jonathan's words, not what they were asking for, but what they want. Now, geek tyrant compiled a bunch of internet reaction. to Ledger's casting decision, including, I am not seeing this movie if he is in it. There are over a million better choices. And Heath Ledger, a Joker.

There are literally over one million better choices. Heath Ledger, a Joker? I don't think so. And now begins the second downfall of the Batman series. The film after this will probably introduce Robin, then Batgirl. It's good to know the Internet's always been as bad as it is. It's always been bad. The takes have never been good.

Well, this is my favorite. Yeah, great. Jokeback Mountain. It doesn't even make sense, but I do like it. They tried. He tried. Meanwhile, Heath Ledger buckled down and got to work. He said, quote, I sat around in a hotel room in London for about a month, and I just locked myself away and formed a little diary and experimented with voices. I ended up landing more within the realm of like a psychopath, someone with no empathy, very little to no conscience towards his acts, which is fun because there's no real limit to the boundaries to what he'd say or how you would say something or what he would do. He, of course, studied all the Batman comics and really dedicated himself to the part. Now, Chris, what do you think

was one of the biggest challenges facing Nolan and Ledger in terms of creating the Joker? I was going to guess makeup and wardrobe. Exactly. That was really hard for them to tackle because he has such an iconic and very cartoonish look to him. Yeah. So I want to show you some of the inspiration that Nolan showed Ledger. These are Francis Bacon paintings and we will put them on our Instagram. Oh, yeah. Horrifying. It's like a, Terrapied man with a melting face Between two haunches of slashed cow leg Hanging from the ceiling

There's that one. There's the one where the guy's face is just sort of like streaming bleeding upwards. There's a lot of, you know, smushed face makeup. You can definitely see exactly what they were pulling from with these. It's pretty cool.

So at first, they really pulled back on the entire Joker look, removing the iconic green and purple outfit altogether, but then they realized it'd gone too far. They needed to carry some indicators of who he was So they slowly added back some of the Joker sauce. They also wanted to show that the Joker didn't look after himself. His clothes had to be grubby.

Hair looks like he would never wash it. But they wanted him to look like somebody who really dressed that way, not a costume. So costume designer Lindy Hemming looked through a lot of images of real people. Vivian Westwood, Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious, Pete Doherty. Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious, that makes a lot of sense. You've seen Pete Doherty, the hair. Yeah. The hair's got a Pete Doherty edge to it.

Iggy Pop, Keith Richards. Iggy Pop. Yeah. Yeah, with the suits and everything, especially. Mm-hmm. According to prosthetics supervisor, Connor O'Sullivan, also the facial scars were based on a very real inspiration. He said, quote, the terminology for this type of wound is a Glasgow or Chelsea smile. My references had to be real.

A delivery of fruit machines was made to the estate near my workshop, and the man delivering them had a Chelsea smile. I plucked up the courage to ask him for a photo, and he told me the story of how he had got his scars while being involved with a dog fight. needless to say, I didn't pursue the matter, but the photos proved to be very useful. Yikes. We're clearly in the zeitgeist because Diomel de Totooro, we just discussed Pans Labyrinth, uses that wound or at least half of it on Captain Vidal in Pans Labyrinth. Yes. These prosthetics, by the way, are really incredible.

I didn't realize this, but Ledger's entire bottom lip is fake. It's one piece that extends across, and that whole front piece is not his mouth. Wow. Yeah, I would have just assumed it was just the cheeks. No, so O'Sullivan worked with his partner Rob Trenton for three years, and they cost them 25,000 pounds to develop a carrier system that allowed you to keep prosthetics in a more whole sculptural piece. It also preserved the blended edges that meant that the scars looked more real, looked incredible, and also it reduced the time of putting the makeup on. Yeah, it's one application as opposed to three or two.

It only took like an hour or an hour and a half to do his makeup, which is crazy. And by the way, this is a little fun fact. The lip licking in the movie was actually functional. It kept the lower lip prosthetic from falling off because it would re-wet the glue and restick it. So he was doing it originally to keep it on, and then he just added it into the character so he could keep doing it throughout.

Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, and Michael Kane, of course, reprised their roles from the first film. And Katie Holmes was famously recast with Maggie Gyllenhaal. By the way, this was not a creative choice. Nolan has been very adamant that he wanted Katie Holmes to return, and she actually chose to walk away. If you consider the timeline, that makes sense. I had heard that she'd walked away.

I didn't know why, but I'd heard that at some point. You know, I mean, we talked about this on War of the Worlds, but she married Tom Cruise in 2006. They'd been the center of an absolute media firestorm for at least a year at this point. She also had her daughter shortly thereafter. And... Yeah, right.

I think she may have just wanted a break. Like, who could blame her? Rumors were also the studio was fine with this because of the sort of disaster of the press for War of the War of the War of the War. worlds. And Katie Holmes was very complimentary of Christopher Nolan and Maggie Gillenhall and also Maggie Gillen Hall is a total class act. She called Katie Holmes personally and asked for permission before accepting the role, which Holmes gladly gave her. So there was no hard feelings there. And then, of course,

there was Harvey Dent. The studio reportedly approached both Matt Damon and Hugh Jackman for the role. Both turned it down. Matt Damon, I believe due to Invictus, Hugh Jackman, I think, turned a lot of roles down probably because of Wolverine. It might be difficult to exist in two worlds. Although, think he could have done this. No, he's done roles not dissimilar to this. What's the political movie he did? I'm forget the frontrunner. And then Damon makes a lot of sense. And obviously then, well, Nolan's working with him now, but he has a great villainous heel turn and interstellar. I was going to say, Matt Damon is an excellent villain. He can be a good villain. He doesn't do it enough. Yeah, never forget the talented Mr. Ripley. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's a great, his American psycho.

Truly. Somehow scarier than Patrick Bateman, I would argue. Yes. Leav Schreiber screen tested, as did Josh Lucas, Ryan Philippi, and Mark Ruffalo, all great choices. But of course, it was Aaron Eckhart who won the part. And he was coming in hot off of Thank You for Smoking. He also just looks so perfect for this. There's never been a blonder man. Yeah, you know, he, if they're trying to cast the white knight who could shine brighter than Bale in these scenes, maybe it's the way they photograph him.

He seems a little bigger than Bale. His jaw is even larger. And, you know, you could crack a rock on it. He really has that all-American look that really sells the role. And he's a great actor and he's so menacing, you know, by the end of this. And Nolan had considered him, or at least they got an incoming for him for the lead in Memento to play Leonard Shelby in that film. Oh, interesting.

Yeah. That makes sense, too. Also, I think the two-face effect on him still looks so, so good. Yeah, the architecture of his face enables it, I think, in particular. Yeah, he has such strong bone structure and prominent bone structure. But you can actually watch some behind the scenes of this. Obviously, they're doing it via motion capture, so he does have mocap dots on his face.

But they also did put half a bald cap, and they do prosthetics on him so that his co-stars had something to act opposite. Well, and also then the VFX artists have lighting reference on the prosthetics that they can try to match when they're doing their artistry later. Yeah. Now, the script and casting had moved.

decently quickly for this size of a superhero movie, so Warner Brothers arranged for the bulk of soundstage filming to happen just outside London, because England was offering muchotax incentives to film productions. But Christopher Nolan was insistent that the main chase sequence in the film featuring Helicopters, Batmobile, a Bat-Pod, a goddamn semi-truck flipping on its ass, must take place in a real goddamn American city.

His rationale was that Gotham is in America, even if it's not real. So Nolan was like, I'm not doing this in London. First of all, the London streets would not have looked right. They're also not wide enough. Also, London had pretty draconian restrictions on what could be filmed inside the city, so that was not going to work. So Nolan and his production designer Nathan Crowley started looking for Gotham. New York City was eliminated pretty quickly because the helicopter chase sequence would have required massive portions of the city to be shut down in a way that was not possible in Manhattan. So they scoured Los Angeles, Baltimore, could have been

interesting, and even Jacksonville, Florida, before they realized they'd already been to Gotham, Chris and Batman begins because Gotham was Chicago. Yeah. A little bit of additional context about the movie business in Chicago. Chicago had been kind of a key player in the early days of movie making. But then, of course, we know the business moved west in the 20s. And then for about the next 50 years, Chicago gets totally forgotten until what movie that I'm covering next, Chris, in 1980, put it back on the map.

Get ready. It's somehow more insane than the dark night in some ways. Blues Brothers? Yes, the Blues Brothers. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right. Yes, the Blues Brothers came back and to quote Richard Moskell, director of the Chicago Film Office, Hollywood saw that and said, wow, they let you do almost anything in Chicago. And they really did. So in the 80s, Chicago's film production picked up significantly, of course, you get John Hughes, setting everything in Chicago, Breakfast Club, 16 candles, all the Home Alone movies, Ferris Bueller's Day off. I was going to say Home Alone, yeah.

But in the 90s, that ends up tapering off because Hollywood, would seize Canada and says, ah, it's cheaper there. And then in 2002, Chicago, the movie came out. And despite that being its title, it was basically not filmed in Chicago, except for a couple of exteriors. It was filmed in Canada, which made people in Chicago realize, we're losing all of our money to those Canadians. So in 2004, they start offering a modest tax credit. In 2006, they bumped that up big time. They would award tax credits equal to 20% of a production's in-state spending. So that was an enormous incentive for Warner Brothers to say yes to Chicago. No one had spent a decent amount of time in Chicago. As we said, he actually grew up partially there. And Nathan Crowley had just

shot the lakehouse there. So they were both familiar with the city. That tax credit's going to be huge. The lake house. Yeah, the lake house. Kianu and Sandra? It's Sandy B. Sandy B and Kianu. Different times. Same lake house. That's right. But Chris, what sealed the deal was lower Wacker Drive. Lower Wacker Drive is an underground roadway sealed off from the streets above in a part of town that clears out at night, usually. It's got multiple lanes, ramps that go up to Upper Wacker, exits across steel bridges, and crucially, because it was underground, you could close the entrances quite easily. So, the Dark Night was ready for Chicago, but was Chicago ready for the Dark Night? Because Batman Begins had filmed in the city for three weeks. The Dark Night was set

to film for three months, and Warner Brothers was getting a little nervous. could the city really handle what they had in mind for this production? So in April 2007, Nolan, his wife, producer Emma Thomas, and producers Charles Rovin and Lisa Rawlins, met with Chicago Mayor Daly, Richard Moskell, of course, the head of the film office, and Chicago City's chief emergency officer to lay out their plans, which included a massive chase sequence, which they're like, listen, this could take a month to film, it's going to require nightly street closures, aerial work with helicopters that would be at least as extensive as Batman begins. Non-stop stunts and pyrotechnics, including we'd like to blow up a real building.

Yeah. Do you have a hospital we can just detonate? Yeah. Just a bomb. Yeah. Something around 500 crew members, support vehicles, trucks, also batmobiles and batpods. According to Chicago magazine, quote, the level of logistical support and coordination of public safety efforts would place a heavy burden on city departments. the film office, police, fire, streets, and sanitation, traffic, and emergency management. The executives wanted to hear it from the top that Chicago was prepared for the onslaught. So after Nolan explained that he basically wanted to blow up their city, Mayor Daly reportedly turned to Richard Moskull and said, you're going to take care of this, right? Cool.

Moskull's just like dripping and sweat. The Chicago way. Yeah. You're going to take care of this, right? The bulls are kind of a mess. The bears are kind of a mess. The cubs are kind of a mess. We need something to bring people to Chicago.

Is this the movie that's going to bring people to Chicago? I don't know. So on April 18, 2007, they kicked off filming with the opening bank robbery sequence at the old Chicago main post office, which is just one of the greatest opening sequences in film history. Fickner with his machine gun, Fickner and things up. No, no. Fickner has a saw-off shotgun.

Sorry, it's a shotgun. Yes, you're right. I apologize. Then he just busts out from under his... A little desk there. Well, it's got them. His little weird fascist cubicle where he looks over everybody through a class window. And I do love just William Fickner. We can call it the inaugural overqualified character actor award is what I think we should call it. Which is every small part in this movie. Yes, absolutely. But Fickner, I always love Fickner. He's great in this opening scene. So good. And it's a bunker. You guys are dead. Yeah. You know who you rob it from. Now, this was not technically principal photography since they were shooting this sequence in, I. IMAX. Nolan had been adamant that for the dark night, they would shoot the film on 65mm. So it was literally all shot for IMAX instead of being filmed on 35 millimeter and blown up,

which is what was done before this. And Warner Brothers is like, that's going to cost approximately a bazillion dollars. And also the IMAX cameras are the size of refrigerators and sound like monster trucks. So they compromised on filming only four action sequences in 65 millimeter. And that is this, the bank heist, the car chase with the bat pod flipping, Batman's raid to extract Lowe and then the Joker leaving the hospital. The rest would be 35mm, reformatted digitally for IMAX screenings. Absolutely enormous shout out to Wally Fister for managing these competing aspect ratios and making a final result that was seamless in both IMAX and regular theatrical formats. It took so much work to make sure that every single shot worked for both. It is a crazy

accomplishment. I wish I could see this at IMAX again because it was amazing. And finally, actual principal photography kicked off on June 8th, 2007. And Chicago held its first ever press conference to announce the arrival of a film cast and crew with Nolan, Bale, and Mayor Daly in attendance. So what he was really saying was like, I want to take some pictures with Christian. You're going to make this work. I don't know why I'm giving this weird accent. You're doing him like Buffalo Bill now. Yeah.

It puts the lotion in the basket. It puts the Christian Bail next to me on stage. The first scene that Bail had led your film together was the interrogation. scene. And Christian Bale was immediately pretty blown away by Heath Ledger. He told the Hollywood reporter, as you see in the movie, Batman starts beating the Joker and realizes this is not your ordinary foe. Because the more I beat him, the more he enjoys it, the more I'm giving him satisfaction. Heath was behaving in a very similar fashion. He was kind of egging me on. I was saying, you know, I don't actually need to hit you. It's going to look just as good if I don't. And he's going,

go on, go on, go on. He was slamming himself around. There were tiled walls inside that set, which were cracked and dented from him hurling himself into them, his commitment was total. And it seems like pretty much everyone was very taken by Ledger, who remained in character almost all the time. Here's Aaron Eckhart on Larry King talking about the only scene he shares with Ledger, which is in the hospital. Eckhart basically didn't have any lines in that scene and was wondering what the hell he was going to do that whole time, when Ledger arrived and started circling his hospital bed. So he would come around and, you know, be talking to himself in the corner, like this. and then he would come up.

I was laying there, and I was watching him the whole time. And he came up and would walk around me like this. And I would watch him, and I would watch him. He'd walk around the hospital bed like this. I'd watch him. He'd say anything for maybe an hour. He would walk around. And then he'd watch him, and then he'd start saying his lines.

And I would watch him, boom, watch him come around to bed like this. And then all of a sudden my hand would go up like this, and he caught my hand. So we just went through this organic process of developing this scene, which was really nothing. And then when we came time to shoot, we had this thing beautifully choreographed. And we never said a word to each other. Wow. Yeah. And then it was a long day.

And we walked out to our back to our trailers. And Heath was here. And I was walking. And he puts his hand on my shoulder. And he goes, that's what acting's all about. But he said it as the Joker. Yeah, I hope so. That's what acting is all about.

Now, Ledger also absolutely nailed some insane stunts in this, including that shot of him jumping off a two-story tall pile of money, sliding down and then just beaning Lau in the head with a stack of cash. He nails Lau in the face with that stack of cash. Apparently, that was the first take of them doing that. I believe it. He looks like he knows what he's doing. But he also doesn't, which is so fun about that. It's so, like, wild and loose.

Well, that's the point, yeah. But he is not Tom Cruise throwing a baseball in War of the Worlds. Wow, you're never going to let that go. Never, never. But Chris, that stunt was nothing compared to what the train professionals were doing on the actual streets of Chicago. In particular, of course, the 18-wheeler flip, which happened for real on LaSalle Street, which is insane. According to Moscow, there's some pretty valuable property on either side of the street. Northern Trust is right there.

The LaSalle Bank building is on the east side. Those are landmark buildings, pillars of finance. It's irreplaceable stuff. And it's not like you can 100% guarantee that an 18-wheeler isn't going to veer slightly off course when you flip it upside down. It's long enough. Yeah. So they did their best. They tested the flip in a safe space before bringing the truck to LaSalle Street.

And then city engineers used the results from the test runs to designate a spot on the pavement where a piston could be fired down from the back of the truck onto the pavement, hard enough to flip it end over end. If there are any physicists in our audience who can send us what the force would be, force needed. Yeah, I mean, it had to be insane. The downward force required to rifle the back of that truck up like that. Just please send us your napkin mask. Please. I would love to know. Please. And also, as these physicists, I'm sure can tell us, they had to hit that spot exactly to make sure the truck didn't smash into a building and to make sure the pavement underneath was strong enough to take the hit. Right. Because there were pipes, wires, sewer lines running underneath the street. And yes, Chris, this all means that there had to be a real live person driving that truck during the

stunt who would fire the piston. That was a legendary stuntman, Jim Wilkie. He really did it. It's crazy. And fortunately, it all worked, and they didn't smush the surrounding buildings. In fact, the majority of the stunts in this movie are practical. According to special effects supervisor Chris Corbald, Nolan's stance was essentially no CGI unless something is physically impossible in reality. Both the Batpod and the Batmobile were fully functional vehicles, which is just so crazy. According to editor Lee Smith, quote, you'll never get anything to look real, unless you get a real guy to fly through the air or ride on the bat pod. Those shots are real and very dangerous, but very well choreographed and very well thought out.

Now, it should be mentioned. There is a part of that sequence on Lower Wacker Drive that is one-third miniatures. It's the Tumblr, the Batmobile, opposite the garbage truck. Those are miniatures. And they look absolutely incredible. But again, that matches what Nolan's asking for, which is, you know, if something is not physically possible, then they were going to recreate it. Yeah.

I mean, the only other thing I can really think of in that whole sequence is just after the helicopter hits the wires, right? There's the moment of it spinning. Oh, yeah. Well, that's, of course, not. But then there's a takeover by a real flaming helicopter on the ground. You know what I mean? After it crashes, it's clearly Nolan said, well, once it's on the ground, it's got to be a real helicopter. Light it on fire. Light it on fire. Yes. But doing things for real meant a lot of disruption for the city of Chicago. Over the course of that summer, Chicago City officials had to constantly remind people

that the helicopters on fire, trucks flipping, traffic jams, actual explosions were not a terrorist attack, but were in fact, Batman. That explosion at Gotham General Hospital, as you mentioned, yes, it is 100% real. They blew up a real building, or rather a real candy factory. That is the administrative building of the old Brax candy factory. Now, there is a persistent rumor that the moment of the Joker fiddling with the detonator outside was improv on the part of Heath Ledger. I heard that at some point, yeah. It's not true at all.

The special effects team were very meticulous with this sequence. They rehearsed it more than 10 times. The whole thing was timed out. The reason they did that was to give him a. and the camera crew enough time to get away from the building before that massive explosion would happen. Also, it's really funny. It's really funny. It's great. It's a great moment.

And, of course, it's a testament to Ledger's acting ability that people thought it was improvised. But just to be very clear, it's not. Now, there is one stunt in this film, Chris, one Batman stunt that is not, quote, unquote, real. Do you know which one it is? One Batman stunt that's not quote unquote real. They did not do it for real. Is it the Skyhook? Well, it's Batman flying over the city of Hong Kong.

It's when he first enters. the building. Got it. So the crazy thing is they tested doing this stunt for real with a stunt man in Chicago. In what? Like a wingsuit? I'm going to show you. So he jumps from the roof of a building. He does a swan dive on a cable attached to a helicopter, which then catches him and swings him on a pendulum, carries him off into the sunset. Would you like to see this test footage? Yeah. Okay, look at this shit. It looked like the stunt double did jump off the building to start. Hold that thought. They do. It's one of the craziest things I've ever seen. It's up there with the damn bungee jump in GoldenEye.

Look at that. It's crazy. I mean, it's an amazing stunt. The only reason I don't know if this is why they didn't do it, but the reason to me it doesn't work is there's no way to control your body from rotating off axis while it's happening. That's not why. Okay. That's not why.

They just wouldn't let them do it in Hong Kong? That's correct. Okay. Hong Kong someone said no. It's crazy that Chicago said yes. And that Hong Kong said no. Chicago was like totally fine with Christopher Nolan throwing people off of buildings and flying them through the air attached to helicopters. Hong Kong was not. They were very restrictive about what the film could do in the city, particularly when it came to the helicopters, which meant that the special effects team did have to use CGI for those shots.

But to your point earlier, they still used green screen footage of a stuntman doing an actual dive, not off of a building. It's entirely green screen. But they dove like over 100 feet for that shot. It looks like it. It looks great. Well, it also is actually Christian Bale, standing. on the edge of that building at the beginning of the shot. Apparently, it was his idea. Take that. Tom Cruise. I know. Well, Christian Bale's smart enough not to jump off. But he'll stand there. Absolutely could not be me. A brief aside on Hong Kong, it actually proved their most difficult location.

Even though city officials seemed on board with the production, locals were not. They were pretty pissed that a foreign film was being granted all the rights to film there when local filmmakers faced much more difficult restrictions, both financial and physical. Nolan's Hong Kong production company actually asked the businesses and residents in a specific area to keep their lights on when they were filming overnight because Nolan loved the glittering skyline and instead over 80% of the businesses

turned their lights off in protest, making it a very dark night. They cited the environmental effect of wasting so much energy when Nolan could simply recreate the lights imposed but I think they were pissed. Well, also, we should mention this movie is very weirdly specifically anti-China

which maybe was really consistent for the time but even just Aaron Eckhart saying, you know, cheap Chinese knockoff, get your guns in America. I know. He's going to get shot in the courtroom. Maybe you should buy American, which is one of the funniest lines in the whole thing.

Yeah, actually, I mean, that is the reason that they did not release this in mainland China. Oh, interesting. Yeah, because the government was not too happy about it. I mean, and the villain is like, it's just this very vague Chinese company that's laundering all of these mafiosas money. The South China Morning Post also reported

that a scene where Batman jumps into the harbor had to be scrapped when a water sample came back heavily polluted, but Nolan denied this. saying, that was my decision, nothing to do with pollution, it was simply a script decision. Once you see the finished film, you'll understand why. As far as the pollution goes, I honestly have no problem dumping movie stars in it. It's amazing.

Frank Darabont with human giant Tim Robbins. Yes, in Shawshank. The sewer scene in Shawshank, yeah. Well, Wally Fister put things even more bluntly saying, quote, the Chinese government was a nightmare in terms of filming stuff. I believe it. Oh, yeah. All right.

Well, that's our aside on Hong Kong. take it back to Chicago. Finally, in late August of 2007, the Dark Night stopped terrorizing Chicago and moved on to London. And unfortunately, it was outside of Chertsey, Surrey, that tragedy struck the production. On September 24th, 2007, the stunt team was performing a test run for a scene where the Batmobile is blown up. Special effects technician Conway Wycliffe was riding in the back of a Nissan Navarra 4x4 leaning out the window and operating a camera to film a stunt police car that was running parallel to them. The vehicle, which was being driven by another stunt technician, Bruce Monroe Armstrong, failed to make a 90-degree turn and instead slammed into a tree at 20 miles per hour.

The rest of the crew on the ground thought the stunt had gone to plan until they saw Bruce come running around the corner and they knew that something had gone horribly wrong. Conway Wycliffe was pronounced dead at the scene of the crash, having suffered catastrophic injuries. The investigator who was assigned to the case believed that the police car had launched a little bit ahead of the Nissan and that the stunt driver accelerated to 34 miles per hour to try and keep up. While that might not seem like that big a difference, in a moment like this, it was enough to kill someone because it meant the Nissan was going too fast to make the turn. I believe this is the shot where the police car ends up going up a ramp and then flipping over, so I wonder if the Nissan needed to turn when the

police car hit the ramp, but I don't know exactly. Special Effects supervisor Christopher Corbold was charged and tried for Wycliffe's death and failing to ensure his safety. He was, however, unanimously found not guilty at trial. It seems it all hinged on one unfortunate fact. Wycliffe was not wearing a seatbelt. When questioned about this at trial, Corbold said, Bruce and Conway are both middle-aged, responsible, competent technicians, who both have a driving license and a duty of care to themselves, which included putting a seatbelt on to protect themselves. That is my expectation. Conway Wickliff was an extremely experienced stunt technician who had worked on Batman Begins, Casino Royale, die another day, children of men,

and many more. He left behind a wife and two children. You know, it's just a reminder that this stuff is inherently dangerous and it is serious. And I believe that this team was taking the utmost care in terms of these stunts. It's just that the tiniest thing can make it go catastrophically wrong. And it did. In November of 2007, principal photography wrapped. And Jack Nicholson chose this opportunity to say he had no plans to watch the film. claiming that after Tim Burton's film, they kind of drove the franchise into the ground.

Thanks, Jack. As the film went into post-production, Nolan kept the cut very close to his chest. According to Christian Bale, quote, Chris is a very private director, and there's certainly no way he'd be letting me into the editing suite. I tried once, and I got a very polite fuck off. Frequent Nolan collaborator, Lee Smith, edited the film, and they had an absolute beast of a project when it came to cutting together the IMAX and 35-millimeter footage. One scene gave them a ton of trouble.

They couldn't make the cut down to 35mm work, but in a stroke of luck, that one scene had also been shot in 35, so they were able to use that. As Nolan and Smith worked on the edit, an interview with Heath Ledger was published in the New York Times. He'd given it while he was in London filming and fully immersed in the Joker.

His interviewer, Sarah Lyle, wrote, It is a physically and mentally draining role. His Joker is a psychopathic, mass-murtering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy, he said cheerfully. And as often happens when he throws himself into a part, he's not sleeping much. Heath Ledger told her, last week I probably slept

an average of two hours a night. He said, I couldn't stop thinking. My body was exhausted and my mind was still going. One night he took an Ambien, which failed to work. He took a second one and fell into a stupor

only to wake up an hour later, his mind still racing. She described a scene where Ledger had stepped outside to smoke a cigarette and seemed unable to stay still. He took his hair tie out, put it back in, took it out,

put on a hat, took the hat off, had another cigarette. She caught a glimpse of a book sitting on his kitchen table. It was the diary he'd kept as the Joker, and she wrote

that Mr. Ledger seemed almost embarrassed that the book had been spotted, as if he'd been caught trying to get extra credit in school. At 1 p.m. on January 22nd, 2008, Heath Ledger's housekeeper, Teresa Solomon, came to his apartment and let herself in with her key. She went into his room to change a light bulb and saw that Heath was asleep on the bed and snoring, so she left thinking nothing was wrong. At 2.45 p.m., his massage therapist arrived for her appointment, but he didn't answer when she knocked on the door, so she tried calling his cell phone, and again got no response. At this point, she went into the bedroom, set up her massage table, then went over to wake him up, but he was cold to the touch.

Diana Wallazin, the massage therapist, assumed he was unconscious, but instead of calling the police, she made three calls to Mary Kate Olson. The two had been casually dating for a few months at that point. Reportedly, Wallazin was afraid that this would be a media circus. I'm sure she thought she was protecting ledger. It seems like she thought, who knows, it seems like she thought that this was not as urgent as it was. Olson said she would send her private security guards. At some point, after that, though, not all that quickly, Wallisand realized that Heath Ledger was not just unconscious, but may, in fact, be dead, at which point she called 911, but it was too late. Paramedics arrived at the same time as Mary Kate Olson's security guards. It's all very weird. I do want to be clear, though,

Mary Kate Olson was like 21 years old. She got absolutely ripped to shreds and blamed for Heath Ledger's death. According to medical examiner's office, led to her to her. Ledger took, quote, prescribed therapeutic doses or less of each medication he ingested, however, the medications were not meant to be taken together. The cumulative effect was that the actor's brainstem function that controls breathing was impaired, and Heath Ledger fell asleep and never woke up. So as far as we know, she did not procure drugs for him. She denied that. She was never charged. His father, Kim Ledger said, while no medications were taken in excess, we learned today the combination of Dr. prescribed drugs proved lethal for our boy. Heath's accidental death serves as a caution

to the hidden dangers of combining prescription medication, even at low dosage. He added families rarely experienced the uplifting warm and massive outpouring of grief and support, as have we, from every corner of the planet. This has deeply and profoundly touched our hearts and lives. We are eternally grateful. By pretty much all accounts at this point, it seems clear the death was entirely accidental. He did not know not to take those medications at the same time, potentially because he'd received prescriptions from two different doctors who were not communicating.

Unfortunately, it's not an uncommon situation, but it is a cautionary tale, and it's very sad. He left behind a two-year-old daughter with his former fiancé, Michelle Williams. He had been in the midst of filming the imaginarium of Dr. Parnassas, directed by Terry Gilliam. His friends Colin Farrell, Jude Law, and Johnny Depp all came on board to play different physical forms of Heath Ledger's character, and all three donated their salaries to his daughter. Rumors have always swirled that it was the Joker that did him in, that the role had exhausted him so completely. I think that New York Times piece that I read some quotes from is very much to blame for that. But based on his own account of his time on set,

as well as his co-stars, that does not seem to be true. His family also denies this. Christian Bale told GQ in 2012, yes, he immersed himself into the film completely, but at the same time, he was so easygoing. Heath was infectious. His death makes me angry because I know our friendship would have blossomed had he not died. He's done a real defining characterization of the Joker that both audiences and the industry will no doubt praise and then acknowledge in time. And here is Michael J. White on Collider Live. And he plays Gamble. You talk about him having so much fun with it, but also being so deep into it.

And obviously there's been a lot of talk about after he did pass away how much effect this character had on him. What do you think about that? That drives me up a wall because people want to write the story that this dark character consumed him. It drives me up a wall. That's people's imagination. That's the story they want to. No. You didn't see that.

You just saw a dude having fun. This dude had fun. Like, you know, and cut. So anyway, it was just like that. And you could see his playful character. Because that thing with the, when he comes out of the examination room and he does the hand sanitizer, you know he's playing. You know, he just did that for a goof. Or the thing when he's.

Yeah, I was going to say, even when he couldn't start the detonator. You know, he's having a ball. He's modulating his voice. He's even asking us, us, the guys who are day players and everything else, you know, what do you think? He would do a, he would do a voice modulation. And one of the times when we were face-to-face, he does this really, you know, growly one. It's kind of Tom Waits-ish. Yeah.

And I'm like, dude, I like that. He asked me, what do I think. And I'm like, man, I like when you do that kind of. That's cool. that one. And he's like, you really think so? I'm like, yeah. I'm like, my God, this dude's asking me. I mean, that doesn't usually happen. That seems to be the general consensus from pretty much everyone who was actually on the set. And Heath Ledger himself said, it's the most fun I've had playing a role. I'm really surprised Chris knew that I could do it. And I don't know how he came to cast me,

but yeah, it is the bomb. It's definitely the most fun I've had and the most freedom I've had. As for the film, they actually weren't missing anything from Ledger's performance. There was no ADR needed. because Nolan had pushed to capture almost all of what he needed on set in terms of sound. They'd captured a few wild lines after some of the IMAX takes because the cameras were so loud, and they were able to use those to cover any gaps. Really quickly, Wild Lines, if anybody's not familiar. So with the IMAX cameras, right, they're very loud. Right, you can't hear anything.

The dialogue's going to be usable. And they've gotten a lot quieter over time. But Wild Lines is the sound recordist. Boom operator will sit with the actor, sometimes the director too, and just capture a few run-throughs of the dialogue. Roughly performed to the same extent that it was just done in the scene. And what's funny is human vocal patterns are so consistent that you often can cut these wild lines in

to the visual performance that was captured minutes earlier. And it totally matches. You can also use alt-takes is a huge thing where you can take the delivery from a different take that you like the inflection of, and you can shove it in the visual performance of a different take that you like the visuals of, and it lines up so effectively.

We have specific ways that we say things individually, and it's really hard for us to move away from those timing. So it would just amaze people, I think, how much swapping in of dialogue there really is in movies. Yeah, absolutely. Now, the film's marketing had put the Joker front and center prior to Ledger's death, and according to Warner Brothers' head of marketing, Sue Kroll,

it became very clear when the family and others started to see some of Heath's bravado performance and what a centerpiece it was to the movie, that there was no thought of marketing the film without him. Many did point out that the campaign did seem to shift some focus to Harvey Dent after his death, I think, understandably, but they didn't shy away from keeping the Joker very present. And on July 18, 2008, the Dark Night was released and became the fourth film ever to cross one billion dollars worldwide. It was nominated for eight Academy Awards, Cinematography, editing, art direction, makeup, sound mixing,

sound editing, visual effects, and best supporting actor for Heath Ledger. It would, of course, win for sound editing and Heath Ledger's performance, I think very deservedly. But Chris, it was not nominated for Best Picture. Do you know what Eternal Troll is responsible for that? Harvey Weinstein somehow? Harvey Weinstein somehow, yes. Even though the Dark Knight had been seen as an early frontrunner, and I think absolutely deserved to be nominated, if not win, frankly, based on what was up that year, Weinstein had done what he did best and jammed the reader down everyone's throats. I didn't see the raider. That's right. I went to the theater and I stood in line. I didn't see the raider. Go watch the 2009. Pew Jackman gives the greatest opening number performance.

Incredible. But I wonder if that was a bit of an inside joke about this because he had really jammed that movie into this race. That movie's fine. It's not the dark night. I like the reader too. But we may cover it at some point because the behind the scenes of that featured an all-out war between Weinstein and Scott Ruden. But, Chris, these were the other nominees in the Best Picture category. Slumdog Millionaire, which won? The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost Nixon, Milk, and The Reader. I'm kicking some of those out of there for The Dark Night for sure.

Yeah, well, I'm not going to name names, but there are a couple. There's a couple I would pull out, yeah. That have aged like milk. Not milk. I actually like milk, but I had to make that joke. But yeah, no, I would put the Dark Night in. And this was right before we started opening things up, I think. to movies like The Dark Night.

So this is actually the reason... That's what I thought. One of the main reasons for the expansion of the Best Picture category to 10 nominees. And James Cameron was like, yes, Avatar is coming. Oh, God. Please stop.

People were pissed that this didn't get nominated. And I agree. I think you could absolutely kick, frankly, several of those out of that category. I don't know if you needed to expand it to 10. I think you could have just gotten a couple of those out. I think Lizzie would have kicked all five out and just put the Dark Night in it.

Honestly, no, leave Frost Nixon in. Oh, Frost Nixon is the one you're keeping. I think it's a good movie. It is a good movie. It's a good movie. I didn't see the reader. Also, Sam Rockwell. He showed up in that one.

That's right. I'm a Michael Sheen stand until the end. Don't ever take him out of... Michael Sheen making vampires watchable in every form somehow with both Twilight and Underworld. Yeah. I mean, amazing. He, I think, was the most fun celebrity I ever got to interview at IMDB. He was so fun.

The only person who I would imagine could also be fun, maybe not in the same way. Matthew Reese is so charming. Oh, my God. Yes, I love him too. I would die. I know. Please, Michael, if you want to come back, Matthew, if you want to come on, please, please. We love you both.

All right. Well, that wraps up our coverage of The Dark Night. Chris, what went right? I'll leave you, Heath Ledger. Okay. I am going to give it to the entire SFX team, the special effects team. Yes.

They would be responsible for working in conjunction with the stunt team, the piston driving that semi-truck in the air, doing the scale model work in a lot of these scenes or working with them, all the pyrotechnics that this film features, blowing up an actual building. Obviously, there was an onset tragedy here, and like you said, we always need to remember how dangerous these things are.

And this goes to show you, actually, that they did all of the big things right, I think, in this movie. Yeah. But again, it's like you can't, even the smallest slip up or omission or oversight can result in something deadly, which should never happen on a movie. I'll set that aside for a moment because that was a little unusual and specific. And it seems like everything else that they did was safely done and effectively done and pretty amazing. I agree. I think the special effects work in this movie, the stunt work, I don't know if it's been topped.

I know Tom Cruise is jumping on. every building and plain he can. But this movie is remarkable in what they achieved. And it just looks so good, especially on the backdrop of Chicago. I just, I think it's one of the greatest movies ever made. And it just happens to be a Batman film. And from my What Went Right, you called it. Obviously, I have to give it to Heath Ledger. You know, this movie, it transcends the comic book genre. However, it does so without failing to acknowledge the comic book genre. if that makes sense. It manages to live both in a very real world while still being heightened and fun and over the top. And it's Heath Ledger's performance that really anchors all of that,

alongside Christian Bale, who again, like, what he does is not as fun, but it is just as important. We obviously lost an enormous talent with Heath Ledger. It is a real tragedy that we lost him as early as we did. It's so sad. And, you know, I hope everyone goes out and rewind. watches the Dark Night and appreciates this performance anew because it is transcendent. So that's why what went right. And that ends our coverage of the Dark Night. A couple of other thoughts I had. Loiter as a little mode for the Batmobile. Oh yes. Very funny. Intimidate. The Diah Hero line, Christopher Nolan, has said that that is the line that gets quoted to him most often and Jonathan wrote it. Nice. So he always is embarrassed by that. It's a great line. I love Gary Oldman.

who played almost as close to a Joker character as we've ever had in The Professional, prior to this version of the Joker, playing the most anti-joker role of all time, the most mellow, chill, Gary Oldman ever. So that's actually why he took this part. They initially, for Batman Begins, they talked to him about playing Raz Al-Goole, which would, of course, go to Leon Nason, and he didn't want to play another villain. So he was like, no, thank you. And Christopher Nolan came back to him and was like, I have a different idea.

I haven't really seen you do this. What about Commissioner Gordon? And he's really good. I wondered if you ever considered Joey Pants, Joe Panelliano, for Commissioner Horton as well, because I just was rewatching Memento. Interesting. I do think this is one of the best movies about weirdly. It's one of the best movies about domestic terrorism in a lot of ways.

Yeah. I do also, though, think this movie is kind of weirdly pro-Patriot Act in some ways. 100%. 100%. He creates a surveillance device at the end. But he does destroy it. This movie has some interesting things to say on that front. And then I just, what I think this movie, what we should take from.

as we go into this new era of superhero movies and theory with, I don't know, Dr. Doom coming out this fall or winter, it knows that it doesn't need global stakes. And I really appreciate that. Yes, we have a prisoner's dilemma on fairies at the end, and vaguely we can know these people could blow up. But ultimately, this movie's very intimate, and the stakes are very intimate.

It's just, is Rachel going to live or die? Is Harvey going to rise or fall? Will Batman take off his mask or not? Right? And that totally works. And it's amazing. It's all you need. Giant world ending.

aliens. Unless your Independence Day. And then you keep those. You do need them then. Yes. Absolutely. All right, Lizzie. Thank you so much.

We are coming back next week, you guys, with something a little different, very fun. We're going to be doing a primer on spaghetti westerns. And then we're going to be hitting up. We're just going to do another trilogy out of order. We're going to be hitting up the good, the bad, and the ugly. Yes. It's the third spiritually in Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Western Dollars, trilogy, and we are so excited to bring those to you guys next week. Lizzie, if folks are enjoying

this show, how can they support it? You can leave us a rating or review on whatever podcatcher you're listening to this on. You can tell a friend or family member, what went wrong? It's pretty good. Member the Dark Night? Pretty good, too. Listen to an episode about it. You can subscribe in both Apple and Spotify now. For bonus episodes, we do at least one every month this month. Of course, because it is Christopher Nolan Month and Anne Hathaway Summer. We are covering The Odyssey. We usually do more than one though so there's a lot of content you can get there and if you want an ad-free feed as well you can join us on patreon where for five dollars you get everything that i have just mentioned plus the ad-free episodes and for fifty dollars a month you can get a shout out from the batman just like one of these

sometimes the truth isn't good enough adrian pang korea angeline rene cook ben shindleman blaze ambrose brian Donna Hugh, Brittany Morris, Brooke, Cameron Smith, sometimes people deserve more. C. Grace B. Chris Galaher. Chris Leal, David Friskillante, Darren and Dale Conkling. Oh, Jesus. Don Shibble, hem Zodia, Evan Downey, Felicia G. I have one rule. Film it yourself. Frankenstein. Galen and Miguel, the Broken Glass Kids,

the cast and crew of Wintertrip to Browntown. You're gonna love me. Half Greyhound. I have the biggest man crush on Chris Winterbauer. James McAvoy. Jason Frankl. J.J. Rapido. John D. Wilcher.

God, how did he do this for a whole movie? Jory Hill Piper. Jose Emelano Salto del Giorgio. Karina Kanan. I don't need help. Kate Elrington. Kathleen Olson. Amy L.geslager McCoy. Lena L.J.

Lousy Susan. Livia Howes. Mark Bertha. Mariposa's humans. Matthew Jacobson. Michael McGrath. Nate Ashley. Nate the Knife.

Rosemary Southward. Rurlger. Sadie. Just Sadie. Scott O'Shita. I'm not wearing hockey pads. Salman Chynani. Steve Winterbauer.

Our Suzanne Johnson, the Provost family, the O's sound like O's. I'm Batman. Rachel! Wow. Why didn't Nolan call me? It's like he's in the room with me, but I can't see him. Because he slammed your head into the table, yeah. I was wondering, is that a false hand when he punches his hand on the table?

I don't think so. Just hit me, Daddy. Hit me. All right, Lizzie. Well, we'll see you guys next week as we head back. to a more morally ambiguous landscape, not shot in the United States. All right. See you in Italy. Bye. What went wrong is a Sad Boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer.

Post-production and music by David Bowman. This episode was researched by Laura Woods and edited by Karen Krupsaw.