Matt Reeves Explains How They Pulled Off That Awesome Hallway Scene in THE BATMAN For Real

Remember that scene in The Batman where Batman is walking through a dark hallway being shot at and beating the hell out of the bad guys? This scene was heavily featured in the trailers that were released leading up to the film’s release.

What makes the scene so visually badass is that the darkness is broken by the gun muzzle flashes. Reeves actually did this in War for the Planet of the Apes before The Batman, but he did it with a CG character. He initially planned on doing it with CG again in The Batman, but then he and his team ended up being able to pull it off for real, which is awesome! During an interview with CinemaBlend, Reeves said:

"You know that Batman can see into the night, and that he's wearing these contact lenses, and I felt, well this will be interesting. How's he going to save Selina? I thought, well what if he kills the power so the only one who can see is Batman. And how do we know that? That we'll be in this point of view, and the only way we'll know that is that they're taking shots at this guy coming like a horror figure, and the only time you can see where he is is that each time one of the muzzle flashes goes off, you'll see him getting closer and closer, and beating somebody, and then it goes black, and in and out and in and out."

Reeves went on to explain how stunt coordinator Rob Alonzo convinced him that the scene could be pulled off for real without the use of CG by breaking it into carefully-choreographed parts:

"And what was so interesting is, Rob Alonzo goes, no no no. We don't need to do that. We can do it all for real. And I said, you're kidding me, and he goes, no, we'll have to break that shot up into pieces- I had wanted to do it in one piece and just film him coming out of the elevator and getting closer and closer and closer. And he said, 'But I can do it, I think I can do this for real.' And so we did it for real. He got the guys to train, and they were really careful with those guns, and these were, like, the absolute best at what they do. And what you're actually seeing is a scene that was lit with the muzzle flashes. And I can tell you it was broken into three shots. And we broke them into these little sections. And so one thing had to go to the other, the whole thing was very carefully choreographed, and we had the whole thing planned out. And we just kept doing each piece until the piece worked, and once we had the piece work we said okay, that's piece one. And then piece two. And then piece three. And then [VFX artist] Dan Lemon took it, and did some adjustments so we can get the bullets ping off the sides of the building, and off the sides of the interior, and as they ping off of Rob's chest and all of that. But we did do it practically."

That’s so cool! I hope we get a behind-the-scenes making-of featurette that shows how they brought that scene to life! That scene turned out to be completely badass and it looked so cool on the big screen!