7. The Dark Knight Tumbler Chase Happened For Real
Sure, Nolan opted to do some crazy practical effects for Inception, but there's no way he could do the same for the Dark Knight films, right? They must be full of CGI. How else would you pull of all those superheroic stunts? You couldn't, say, actually drop a plane out of the sky like they do at the start of the Dark Knight Rises. Except, erm, they totally did do that. Well, okay, but dropping a heavy object isn't that difficult. Ill-advised, but not difficult. What must be full of camera trickery, computer magic and miniatures is the epic car chase across Gotham City that appears in the Dark Knight, complete with the Joker firing a rocket launcher, multiple eighteen wheelers doing somersaults through the air, and Batman crushing traffic beneath the treads of his huge tumbler Batmobile. Well, believe it or not, that chase was the French Connection of superhero films. Sort of. They didn't do it in actual traffic, because that would be insane (you hear us, Friedkin? INSANE). But they absolutely did film the bit where the Batmobile drives under and flips up a garbage truck, and the part where the Caped Crusader uses a grappling hook to send the semi-truck the Joker was driving flying into the air to land on its roof. They did that. On an actual street. With an actual truck. No computer wizardry, just a huge steam-piston mechanism in the trailer that propelled it several feet into the air and onto its back. Which, by the way, they actually filmed in downtown Chicago. Thankfully Nolan had the good sense to actually close the street off, however.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
