how does that even begin? Always, the first thing for me is
you have to sit down with the director and get a sense of what movie he's making. So I had a quick talk with Zack. And then I went out and
started to do a bunch of little doodles, like this one. So that's your first sketch. -Which I'm keeping really safely.
-(McCARTHY LAUGHS) MASEKELA: Yeah, I think this might be
worth money one day. 'Cause it looks a lot like
what I'm seeing behind me. -I love that it's on a napkin.
-TATOPOULOS: Yeah. Were you in a restaurant or something? I was at a coffee shop. -MASEKELA: No way.
-Yes. I mean, it's important to
get somewhere very quickly. The director looks at this and says,
"You know, I get it. That's coo|." Basically, my role in this was
to take Patrick's original vision and the original sketch, and bring it to a realization. I think, first and foremost, with any car,
is to establish the stance, which Patrick did from day one. You could see how the rear end
is really much higher than the front end. And this gives it the aggressive
and intimidating first impression. HIURA: What I was able to do
was extract Ed's 3D model and bring it into my software. And then start checking
for any problems that might occur. With some math and some science,
you could actually predict how it's going to work, somewhat. Yeah. You could do
a full compression on the shocks and then turn the wheel and recognize that there's gonna be an issue with the hood. We actually took a little trip
to the Warner Bros. Museum to see the other Batmobiles, just to see how ours would differ. -We can do that.
-Yeah, exactly. McCARTHY: Some of the key
elements are obviously power. We want to have a bunch of horsepower.
So there's about 550. Placement was a big factor with this car. You look at it, there's no room
for an engine in the front. You can't have
the motor hanging out the back. So the motor's actually behind
the driver's compartment, -mounted backwards.
-The motor's flipped around? Motor's flipped around, exactly. We used what's basically
a monster truck transfer case, a gigantic, four-gear hunk of aluminum that sits right behind the passenger seat that redirects the power
back to the rear end, which is another task because the ring gear
has to rotate different directions. So there's a lot involved in
putting that thing together. RISLEY: Mainly, we're just looking
at how it handles, how the shocks work,
how the tires react to bumps. One of the first things we learned
watching with our suspension cam, that it had some wheel hop. MASEKELA: How do you figure out
what's causing the wheel hop? RISLEY: Well, it was a combination
of things. One, we had to add more valve
into the shock. There is some external adjustment
to the shock that we could do right there at the test. There's basically bypass tubes
where you can limit the oil flow. That helped, so we knew
that we were on the right path. Then the other thing
that was really fighting us was just the sheer weight of these tires. <i>This is before
we actually cut rubber off of 'em.</i> To give me some perspective,
what do these tires weigh -before you cut the rubber off?
-About 500 pounds a corner? MASEKELA: Five hundred pounds...
RISLEY: Wheel and tire, yeah. MASEKELA: ...a tire.
RISLEY: Very heavy. And it's unsprung weight, so... McCARTHY: Yeah, it's massive amounts
of unsprung weight. I mean, the wheels
are quarter-inch thick steel. So when you cut that rubber off... Yeah, we dropped 150 pounds or so
from one of the rear tires. And that made a huge difference.
Adding about 60% more valving to the shocks internally
fixed the problem. What did the day-two testing consist of? McCARTHY: Well, this was a pretty
big moment <i>'cause this is the primary body piece</i> that's basically
been installed on this car. So, you're starting to get a feel
for what this thing's gonna look like. HIURA: That was a big moment for me.
McCARTHY: It really was, yeah. You kinda start feeling the scale of it. McCARTHY: This was really just such a plus
for us all the way around, was to be able to have this time at the Chrysler Proving Grounds
in Detroit. This is when the car really just
starts looking so cool, I mean... This is Mike Justus behind the wheel
coming through cones. So this is basically mimicking
roads in Detroit <i>that we'd be filming on later.</i> Tim would set him up. He would time him. He'd come through those cones,
and obviously, if he hit a cone on the proving grounds, he was hitting a wall
somewhere in downtown Detroit. Tim Rigby, he recorded all the data. Every time we went out,
he would record pressure in each air bag, tire pressure, brake system pressure,
temperatures, everything. So there was a constant log. You can see in a couple of those shots,
how the car reacts, the suspension works, you can see him doing a little S-turn
and correcting. I think that's what really made the whole
project such a success. (ADVENTUROUS MUSIC PLAYING) When we talked with Zack, he said,
"The machine gun, I want it to be out." He wanted to see it all the time. So we talked about a plate
that would have been replaced. - This is a typical...
- So this is like a repairjob. And I thought that was
a great take from Zack. Now, this particular detail in the hood, it's a way of introducing the bat motif without being so literal
like the previous Batmobiles and we're using negative space
to create that. Inspired by American muscle cars. -Yeah?
-Hemi Cuda. '66 GTO. It's basically a one-off air bag
over a bypass shock system. So we can alter the ride height
on the fly while the car's in motion. The car weighs 8,500 pounds. <i>- We needed tremendous braking power.
-(TIRES SCREECHING)</i> Brembo was kind enough to step up and
build some eight-piston calipers for us, some gigantic rotors,
a ton of steering angle on the thing, so you can recover from any situation
you might get yourself into. It has about two feet
of front suspension travel. MASEKELA: Two feet of travel? McCARTHY: Two feet of travel, yeah.
They're gigantic front "A" arms. Like I said, it's all built with the same
theory that you would build a race car.
It was a badass machine a tank that can wage war & haul ass
God bless this youtube channel. This clip was part of DC FanDome part 2.
It’s like the Batman 89 Batmobile and the Batman Begins Tumbler had a baby. I love it.
I absolutely love this Batmobile. It's what I wanted the Tumbler to be.
My favourite Cinematic Batmobile.