"We are starting off with our own different characters and our own laws and everything, looking at Bruce Wayne and how he came to be the person that he was and how he comes to be this man that jumps around in the Bat suit"
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Bale is selling a superhero movie by insisting it has the grammar of a character study. The phrase "starting off" does quiet but crucial work: it signals a reboot mentality, a refusal of inherited myth. Instead of treating Batman as a fixed icon, he frames him as a constructed person with "different characters" and "our own laws" - a little manifesto for a new cinematic universe before that language hardened into brand strategy.
The repeated, slightly clunky "and" chains feel like an actor thinking aloud, but the subtext is precise. He wants permission for realism. "Our own laws" is a promise that the film will obey internal logic rather than comic-book convenience; it preemptively justifies choices that might otherwise seem dour or overly grounded. In the mid-2000s context, that mattered. The memory of camp Batman was still close enough to be a punchline, and audiences needed reassurance that a man in a bat costume could be taken seriously.
Then he punctures his own seriousness: "this man that jumps around in the Bat suit". It's an intentionally deflating image, almost a wink at the absurdity baked into the premise. Bale acknowledges the inherent silliness without surrendering to it. That balance is the pitch: take the trauma, the psychology, the machinery of vigilantism seriously while never forgetting the central weird fact of Batman's existence. It's also actorly self-protection - a way to say, yes, I know how ridiculous this looks, which buys credibility for asking you to care about Bruce Wayne anyway.
The repeated, slightly clunky "and" chains feel like an actor thinking aloud, but the subtext is precise. He wants permission for realism. "Our own laws" is a promise that the film will obey internal logic rather than comic-book convenience; it preemptively justifies choices that might otherwise seem dour or overly grounded. In the mid-2000s context, that mattered. The memory of camp Batman was still close enough to be a punchline, and audiences needed reassurance that a man in a bat costume could be taken seriously.
Then he punctures his own seriousness: "this man that jumps around in the Bat suit". It's an intentionally deflating image, almost a wink at the absurdity baked into the premise. Bale acknowledges the inherent silliness without surrendering to it. That balance is the pitch: take the trauma, the psychology, the machinery of vigilantism seriously while never forgetting the central weird fact of Batman's existence. It's also actorly self-protection - a way to say, yes, I know how ridiculous this looks, which buys credibility for asking you to care about Bruce Wayne anyway.
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