Christian Bale believes he failed to nail his turn as Batman in Christopher Nolan’s celebrated Dark Knight trilogy. Interviewed by Yahoo! Movies, the British actor said he imagined the caped crusader as a psychologically damaged creation but was unable to realise his full vision on screen. Bale also said the arrival of Heath Ledger, whose turn as the Joker in 2008’s The Dark Knight won the Australian actor a posthumous best supporting actor Oscar, made him realise there was room to up his game.
“I didn’t quite manage what I hoped I would through the trilogy,” said Bale. “Chris did, but my own sense of self is like, ‘I didn’t quite nail it.’
“Batman, he’s this very, very dark, messed-up character,” the actor added. “I found when I put on the suit I went, ‘I just feel like a bloody idiot if I don’t use this as a means to [show] his true, monstrous self that he allows to come out in that moment.’”
Bale, who is currently promoting Terrence Malick’s Knight of Cups, in which he plays an Los Angeles screenwriter undergoing a crisis after his marriage breaks down, went on to say: “Heath turned up, and just kind of completely ruined all my plans, because I went, ‘He’s so much more interesting than me and what I’m doing.’”
The Wales-born star has previously admitted to “staring into nothing for half an hour” after hearing that Ben Affleck had been cast as the new dark knight in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. But he told Yahoo! he would never go back to the role. “That’s enough. I’ve got nothing else to offer it,” he said. “We did our thing.”
Meanwhile, Batman v Superman is gearing up to open behind Nolan’s Batman movies at the US box office, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Tracking suggests Zack Snyder’s superhero smackdown will debut with $140 million (Dh514.16 million), against $158 million for The Dark Knight and $160 million for 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises. However, the new film, which opens on 25 March in the US and UK, would easily land the highest-grossing debut for a film featuring Superman. Man of Steel opened with just $114 million in the US in 2013 on its way to a disappointing $668 million total worldwide. In other Batman v Superman news, the “mystery” character set to be played by The Hunger Games’ Jena Malone in Snyder’s movie has reportedly been cut from the theatrical release. Reports had suggested Malone might be playing a female Robin, as previously seen in Frank Miller’s seminal 1986 graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns, or the equally totemic Batgirl, aka Barbara Gordon. Entertainment Weekly suggests the character will now turn up on the home video release.
