The beastly Batmobile of “The Batman” is essentially a muscle car that Robert Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne has modded to suit his crime-fighting needs. In that sense, while it’s designed to intimidate and appear monstrous on-screen, the car also has a very practical basis. Designer Ash Thorpe has written about the look of the car, which aside from trying to embody key words he got from Reeves, such as “fear,” was inspired by real-world designs including “the iconic Porsche 917” due to it being “such a raw machine with one intention.”
But making Thorpe’s final design a reality proved more difficult than production designer James Chinlund had anticipated. Speaking to Nerds & Beyond in May 2022, he explained how working on such a big film in general gave him “anxiety,” adding, “it was just a lot of pressure — mostly from a place of love and respect. I just have so much love for the material that I wanted to make sure that I didn’t let the fans down.”
But it wasn’t just that Chinlund was working on such a beloved franchise that made things hard. The production designer was tasked with making a fully working version of the Batmobile — a car that Matt Reeves had envisioned as an almost otherworldly embodiment of fear and intimidation. As Chinlund put it:
“One of the things I’m most proud of in the film is that the car actually performs. So not only do we have to design a car that was exciting and sort of hit all the notes on the narrative, but it had to actually do all these stunts. I think that’s one of the greatest achievements.”
