Design on Film – The Dark Knight Legacy

This is the first installment of our new weekly series Design on Film, where we look at interior design as portrayed in some of our favorite cinematic adventures

A lot has changed in the past decade, but one thing’s still certain: people love Batman. The 1995 production Batman Forever was hot…when it came out.

A recent look at Bruce Wayne’s (Val Kilmer) Oliver’s People glasses and power ties sent me running back to Christian Bale and The Dark Knight. But not everything is dated; set director Elise ‘Cricket’ Rowland kept Bruce’s office spacious and sleek. Neutral color palettes are the smartest choice for an office, but all the gold shades were a little too glitzy for me. I think the light shades of Bruce’s office and corporate life were meant to contrast with the dark, cavernous bat world. This contrast in interior designs is subtle but important in setting the mood. It’s a little more obvious in the disparity between the ritzy, uptown sections of Gotham and the rundown back alleys: Wayne Enterprises’ ball versus Robin’s joyride and street brawl mishap. All the neon lighting used in the city, especially the glow stick creations that the city-people wore, reinforced the contrast between the uptown corporate and downtown worlds.

In Dark Night they made Gotham look more like normal Chicago, but the design inside Wayne’s inner sanctum had this wonderful minimalist-industrial look that I can’t resist (well done Peter Lando). Batman’s underground equipment room, where all the gadgets came to life, was simply an empty, fluorescent swathed garage. Usually, movie “equipment rooms” are plastered with clutter and animated thingamabobs (think Back to the Future or James Bond films) so the use of empty space in Dark Night was surprisingly effective.

Wayne interiors have this wonderful dark and sophisticated edge. To bad the outside view of Gotham looked so boring.

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