Batman now speaks with a British accent

Short of Davy Crockett and some of the other characters in John Wayne’s oeuvre, it’s hard to think of a more obviously all-America...

Short of Davy Crockett and some of the other characters in John Wayne’s oeuvre, it’s hard to think of a more obviously all-American hero than Batman, Bruce Wayne’s caped alter ego. As for Batman’s fictional hometown, Gotham City: Has anyone ever doubted that it claimed far closer kinship with the darker corners of New York City, which sometimes shares that nickname, than with the Nottinghamshire village of Gotham?

Even so, Batman Begins, which opens in American theatres on June 17, will arrive as the product of a startlingly British alignment of talent and location, though the intended setting of the myth hasn’t changed. The film, from Warner Brothers, was shot largely in Britain by a young London-born director, Christopher Nolan. And the cast includes Christian Bale, a Welshman, as Bruce Wayne/Batman, along with British mainstays like Michael Caine, Liam Neeson (born in Northern Ireland), Gary Oldman, Tom Wilkinson and Linus Roache in supporting roles.

Some exterior scenes for Batman Begins, now in post-production, were shot in downtown Chicago, but Gotham City was re-created in the heart of the English countryside, at RAF Cardington, a former British air base some 35 miles north of London. Cardington is best known for two gigantic hangars that once housed the pre-World War II-era airships R100 and R101. The larger hangar was transformed into Gotham for Batman Begins.

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Whether audiences will actually sense Britishness in the finished movie remains far from clear. Nolan, after all, successfully cast Guy Pearce, who was born in Britain and grew up in Australia, as a memory-challenged American insurance investigator in his film, Memento.

Among the new movie’s many British actors (and Cillian Murphy, an Irish-born London resident, playing the villainous drug peddler, Dr. Jonathan Crane, aka ‘The Scarecrow’), at least one should seem a natural presence: Caine, who plays Bruce Wayne’s British butler, Alfred Pennyworth. Neeson plays Henri Ducard, Bruce’s distinctly non-British-sounding mentor and trainer; Oldman is Lt. James Gordon, a friendly Gotham City cop who helps Batman fight crime; Wilkinson plays a Mafia don, Carmine Falcone; and Roache is Bruce’s father, Dr Thomas Wayne. Indeed, Morgan Freeman, as Lucius Fox, a Wayne family friend, and Katie Holmes, as Rachel Dawes, Bruce’s childhood friend and adult love interest, are the only Americans in the 10 leading roles.

Bale, for his part, handily mastered an American accent for his portrayal of Patrick Bateman, the sociopathic Manhattanite in American Psycho, and the rest of the cast appear to have learned the same trick at one time or another.

But these fine actors are clearly in for some extra work, which perhaps speaks to the importance of Nolan. Although he has never directed an action film, he was given wide latitude by Warner Brothers in its push to revive a faltering franchise that hit the wall in 1997 when its fourth iteration, Batman & Robin, directed by Joel Schumacher, took in just $107 million at the American box office.

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In re-envisioning the franchise, Nolan decided to return to the story’s genesis, as outlined in Batman: Year One comics—as a child, Wayne saw his parents murdered and vowed to avenge all evil.

Finally, one wonders whether it even matters that British actors will dominate a classic piece of Americana. It’s certainly been done before: In Gone With the Wind, the Southern belles were played by Vivien Leigh and Olivia de Havilland. More recently, there was much harrumphing in the British media when an American was chosen to play that essentially English heroine, Bridget Jones.

But the iciness thawed when they finally saw Renee Zellweger’s portrayal. —NYT