The choice of location for the Batcave in The Batman was inspired by a myth about New York City's infrastructure.
"If the Wayne [family] built this tower in the twenties, what would be below this tower that would offer an opportunity for a cave? There's an underground train station at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. The myth is that there's a train parked there all the time, and the idea is that whenever the president is in town, if there's ever an emergency and he has to get out of town, they could take him through this secret tunnel at the Waldorf and get him out of town discreetly," production designer James Chinlund said in the new book The Art of The Batman. "I always loved that idea and thought it was so romantic, so I thought about the idea that if you were the Waynes and you had created this city, you would probably have your own secret train terminal under the tower."
In The Batman, the Dark Knight's base of operations is in Wayne Tower which is located in the middle of Gotham City, doubling as both the Batcave and Bruce Wayne's home. This is a big departure for the live-action version of the Caped Crusader as Wayne Tower is typically used as the office building for Wayne Enterprises. Instead, both Bruce and his crime-fighting alter-ego usually call Wayne Manor home, which is traditionally located on the outskirts of Gotham.
This is just one of many ways that the team behind The Batman chose to make Robert Pattinson's take on the character different from those that came before. When it came to creating the character of Bruce Wayne, the director Matt Reeves chose to move away from his staged carefree attitude. "He doesn’t have a playboy persona at all, so he’s kind of a weirdo as Bruce and a weirdo as Batman," Pattinson explained. "Normally, in all the other movies, Bruce goes away, trains, and returns to Gotham believing in himself, thinking, I'm gonna change things here. But in this, it's sort of implied that he's had a bit of a breakdown."
The Batman also sticks closer to the character's 'World's Greatest Detective' nickname than previous live-action adaptations, which resulted in more dialogue for the titular hero. For Pattinson, maintaining the Bat-voice for these long scenes was a challenge. "It's really hard to get into an artificially lower register, and to do it a long time," he explained. Although he became accustomed to it during filming, when it came to post-production audio recording, Pattinson reportedly struggled to find the voice again.
The Batman is now streaming on HBO Max.
Source: The Art of The Batman, via ComicBook.com
