CHICAGO — This summer marks 20 years since filmmaker Christopher Nolan altered superhero culture with his first installment of the Dark Knight trilogy, “Batman Begins.”
Batman may be a fictional DC Comics character, but for many, he’s a significant staple in their movie-going lives. The realism of the caped crusader especially appeals to Chicagoans because two of the director’s three Batman movies were filmed here.
“Batman Begins,” the trilogy’s first movie, was released in 2005, starring Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne, and was filmed in Iceland, England and Chicago in 2004.
The plan was to film in Chicago for a few days, but Nolan took such a liking to the city — a place he had spent time in his youth — that he asked the studio for additional filming time, according to a 2009 story in Chicago Magazine. He filmed for three weeks in Chicago for “Batman Begins.” One memorable scene shows a four-minute Batmobile chase along Lower Wacker Drive, a location Nolan returned to for his next in the series. With “The Dark Knight,” he forever linked Chicago to Batman lore.
In late 2006, production company Warner Bros. contacted Rich Moskal, then Chicago Film Office director, about filming the sequel in Chicago, giving a general sense of what they wanted to pull off in the city. Then-Mayor Richard M. Daley and Moskal sat down with Nolan, his production team, executives from Warner Bros. and Bale to discuss the idea.
The meeting, Moskal said, “gave all of us who were behind the scenes, trying to make it happen, a reminder: ‘Hey, this is important to the city. The mayor wants it to happen. It’s going to be a challenge. But let’s figure out a way to make it work.’”
When the decision to make a sequel was green-lit, Nolan came back to Chicago and transformed it into Gotham City.
After “Batman Begins,” Nolan said he wanted to change the scale of the film and go from a “city story” to a “crime epic,” according to “The Fire Rises,” a behind-the-scenes documentary from Warner Bros. Entertainment.
So in 2007, the cast and crew of “The Dark Knight” took the summer to fight crime and Heath Ledger’s Joker around the city. Production in Chicago took three months. Some of the movie’s most iconic scenes were filmed on the city’s streets and rooftops.
The opening sequence, the Joker’s bank robbery and escape, was filmed at the 1921-built Old Chicago Main Post Office, which has since been refurbished as a multi-use office and event space, complete with pickleball courts. At another point, Bale’s Batman stands alone atop Willis Tower, keeping an eye over Gotham City. And Nolan revisited Lower Wacker Drive, this time for a more elaborate eight-minute chase sequence, twice the length of the earlier one.
But what really makes Chicago stand out is the stunt that was pulled off on LaSalle Street.
An 18-wheeler truck is shown flipping end-over-end after being arrested by a cable from the Batmobile, rising perpendicularly and overturning with all its wheels facing the nighttime sky. (In actuality, the stunt used an air cannon in the trailer.) The average big city in America might not allow such a stunt, but Chicago did.
Later in “The Dark Knight,” Ledger’s Joker blows up the Gotham General Hospital, actually a former Brach’s candy factory building that had been slated for demolition.
“Being there was important for me,” Moskal said. “I wanted to make sure things were going well because it was the biggest production we had ever seen in the city at the time. And it still ranks as perhaps one of the biggest productions of all time in Chicago.”
Before filming “The Dark Knight,” Nolan scouted locations in New York as well as in Chicago. After all, New York had carried the Gotham nickname for over 200 years. Bill Finger, who helped create DC Comics’ Batman with Bob Kane, found the name for Bruce Wayne’s urban nightmare in the phone book, coming upon the listing for Gotham Jewelers.
“We got such extraordinary cooperation from the city of Chicago,” Nolan said in an interview for the film’s DVD release. “It’s such a beautiful city architecturally with all the levels of it and all the rest. It fits Gotham so well, making (it) a very convincing real-world American city.”
Ultimately, New York City proved too difficult for Nolan to close enough city streets for what he had planned to film “The Dark Knight,” according to the 2009 Chicago Magazine feature.
Chicago wasn’t always so eager to bring outside filmmaking into the city.
Former Mayor Richard J. Daley generally discouraged Hollywood movies being filmed in Chicago during his tenure.
The narrative switched when Jane Byrne became mayor in 1979 and pushed for movies to be filmed in Chicago. Notable movies filmed in Chicago during her tenure included “The Blues Brothers” (1980).
The younger Daley continued the trend of pushing movies to be filmed in Chicago during his mayoralty from 1989 to 2011, including both Batman films.
In 2008, the Illinois film industry generated $141 million. Last year, the figure hit $351 million. Moskal said the growth comes from more films and TV shows being filmed in the city, and much of that growth has been since Nolan came to town.
“’The Dark Knight,’” Moskal said, “wasn’t just a movie being made in Chicago, it was putting Chicago up on the huge screen, in a big way, in theaters around the world.”
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