A/N; Guys, bonus chap = top 30 (vote!) and enjoy reading! Suggestions are always welcome!
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The Renner Studio conference hall was filled with almost every important member for Ian’s next big hit, Batman Begins. Everyone including Martin was present.
“Hello everyone, and good morning. This is going to be a hell of a long day due to all the discussions I have in mind. Let’s start off with the movie name, Batman Begins. As everyone might have already guessed, yes it will be a somewhat fictional movie, but it has a realistic setting, I want to focus more on the ideological struggles that Bruce Wayne faces, to become Batman, than all our action.”
All the pairs of eyes were focused on Ian and everyone was focused on listening to his every word. On the whiteboard that was behind him, he drew a quick sketch of the basic plans of Batman Begins.
The projector started and showed a picture of Chicago.
“Okay, so, this is how I’m envisioning Gotham city to be,” Ian said and someone chirped in to ask a question.
“Uhm, but why is it different from the previous live-action version?”
“I’m going with a modern version of the story where the city looks rich, but is actually corrupt to the core if you get what I mean?” Ian asked and some nodded, while some noted stuff down.
“I want to make a trilogy from Batman,” Ian continued. “This honestly is not even a superhero movie. It's just that it's very realistic at its core, taking ideologies instead of characters who can kill at a glance… The trilogy will be for later, we just need to focus on the movie for now,”
“Can we know a bit more about the movie, we've only seen the script, so…” A newbie girl, with grey highlights in her hair, asked in curiosity.
Ian knew most of the crew. Right after the discussion that day with Mason, he hired a new crew so his work would be much easier. The new crew would help Mason and Moses with Green Book.
“Sure, so first of all what drew me to Batman in the first place was Bruce Wayne’s story and that he’s a real character whose story begins in childhood. He’s not a fully formed character, so what we’re doing is we’re following the journey of this guy from a child who goes through this horrible experience to becoming this extraordinary character, if that makes sense to you, we need a character and a persona like that. Someone who can actually show such feelings,” Ian said.
“So overall, with the character what I want to do is make the audience believe in the reality of Batman. How he struggled in his childhood and then became who he is, and if we consider superheroes overall, Batman is unique among superheroes in presenting that opportunity. He really is just a guy that does a lot of push-ups, do you get what I mean?”
They all were listening silently.
“Excuse me, this is urgent,” A tall guy who was dressed in a suit said and ran out of the office with his phone in hand. Ian just nodded and gave him permission before he left.
“So, where were we?”
The questions they asked were all valid and important. While answering their questions, Ian did not forget to state facts the original director had revealed in some media interviews. Because, Batman from his previous world, had a special spot in his heart, and he was a huge DC fan.
“Yes, your question,”
“Do you have any intentions of making other superhero movies?” The short girl with spectacles asked Ian and he shook his head.
“Not yet. I want everyone to know that I won’t be going with superheroes like Superman. At least not yet, but if this turns out as I expect, the space is vast for so much more. I love superheroes, superhero comics, their stories in general. If this does well, we will do as many superhero movies as well can.”
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“And on to the movie, I will start by giving pointers here and there, then later on we'll go through them one by one. Before anything, about the locations, Marcus, we will need to send a team to travel to Europe because a lot of starting scenes will be filmed in London. Like, the Wayne Manor's part of the movie will be filmed in London, can you note it down and make arrangements?”
“Oh yes, sure sir,” Marcus replied and started jotting down it immediately.
“Don’t worry, Murphy and I will include all these in the respective files and hand it over in no time, but this is all part of the meeting too. And then, we will need to hire martial artists to film the training montage, and set up a monastery, sort of,”
“Oh okay, sure,” James confirmed Ian’s words.
“Yes, and we'll need to hire an entire team of engineers to build 3 sets of 3 tumblers. So, in total nine Batmobiles. Keep in mind that they should actually work. They need to be able to do everything the Batmobile will do in the movie, Well except for shoot guns,”
“U-uh, excuse me, sir, back to the story, please. I’m a huge Batman fan, as a fan of the comics, even in the comics there was no explanation of how Bruce Wayne became Batman, right?”
“Yes. While thinking it out to the script, it actually took me one hell of a time. But we already knew how his parents were gunned down in an alley by a small-time criminal called Joe, and this incident was certainly a defining moment in his life, which made him move towards the life of a nocturnal crime fighter. But with Batman Begins I wanted to explore the mental and physical processes that resulted in his transformation through the reboot,” Ian said.
“Oh, but won’t it be a risk?”
Ian laughed under his breath at the question, because it *was* a risk before. In the original movie, the directors and the writers had taken a huge risk, and he knew it more than anyone. “Of course, The film is a huge risk, and as we all are aware, Batman is one of the most famous superheroes in the world, and in the film, I tried to reduce him to an object of derision, the thing is to make a complete reinvention of the character is a huge risk. Like a MASSIVE one, but right now… All I can say is, that it has to work,” He said with a smile.
“Sir, do you have any idea how hard it will be to coordinate all the practical effects in the movie?”
Ian smiled silently listening to the question. He remembered how Nolan had answered that exact question in an interview.
“How hard was it to do the practical effects in Batman Begins?” An interviewer had questioned.
The director, who made Batman Begins had answered the question based on his own experiences on the set and he looked all proud and content with his direction by his words,
“The challenge wasn't really on me, it was on the stunt coordinator and the physical effects guy. And they rose to the challenge admirably. In a day and age when so much is done with computers, they rose to the opportunity. They really enjoyed the opportunity which is performing amazing feats and building amazing things that could actually work in the real world.-” He continued on by saying,
“-To me, once I set that all in motion it was really just a question of filming it and trying to be disciplined about listening to the little voices in my ear that said, "Well, you can do this with visual effects. You could leave this for now." And not be effective. I'm very glad we held to that discipline because it meant in post-production when we did get into our visual effects components we had all the right materials to make that stuff look great and not have to do too much of it. And we had the time to do what we did do. We had the time to perfect it because we weren't doing four to five times the number of shots we said we were going to do which is what happens with a lot of these films.”
Ian had his own answer to give to the girl who asked the question.
[...] “Does that answer your question?”
“Yes, sir,”
“Okay, back to Gotham City. As I said, this is one of the main things in the movie overall. I want it to be dark and gloomy. I actually want something that reflects the reality of a large modern city which can have a tremendous variety of architecture. A huge variety of periods in which things were built. I want there to be history to the place as well as a contemporary feel. So, in a way, Gotham can be taken as an exaggeration of New York, an exaggeration of a modern American city that has interesting geographical features of the cities of the world. To be specific, a lot from New York, some from Chicago, a lot from Tokyo because of elevated freeways and monorails. From Hong Kong, we can take the walled city of Kalhoon which is like the basis for the narrows which is this kind of walled slum. And finally, see this slide,” Ian showed a picture that he created which looked like Gotham city.
“Putting together the elements that let anyone exaggerate all the socio-economic factors that feed into Gotham as an exaggeration of the modern American city destination and so forth, so, as you can see this should be our final idea of Gotham city,”
[...] Talking about every little detail, the meeting extended for 10 hours with only a few short breaks.