Director Christopher Nolan most recently directed the critically acclaimed Insomnia for Warner Bros. Pictures, the mind bending psychological thriller starring Academy Award Winners Al Pacino, Hilary Swank and Robin Williams. Nolan’s second film Memento (My favorite besides Batman Begins), was about a man who struggles to find himself within the remnants of his hazy past, which is kind of what Bruce Wayne goes through…well not that he forgets his past but that he is tormented by guilt and anger about his past. Nolan’s Batman Begins explores the origins of the Batman legend, which was really never told in the previous Batman films, which may be one of the reasons why this film may be the best comic book movie put to the big screen. I still love Superman and funny enough so does Nolan, he was actually inspired by Superman to do this film. I had the opportunity to speak to Nolan about making the anticipated film. Here is what he tells us:

This was Batman Begins for Christopher Nolan. Is this Batman ends as well?

Christopher Nolan: “No, I’ve enjoyed making this film very much and we’ve tried to leave the film very open, with a real sense of possibilities in the audience’s minds as they leave the theater. As far as would I do more, I think that will probably mostly be defined by how people react to this one.”

Let’s say there will be sequel of some sort. Would you really want to direct it or would you want to go on to something else after spending two years of your life on Batman?

Christopher Nolan: “Well, I definitely intend to do something else first and move on to do possibly something smaller, having done such a big film.”

Do you know what that is?

Christopher Nolan: “No, not specifically. I have a couple of things that I’m looking at.”

Was there just one Batmobile?

Christopher Nolan: “There were four in Chicago and, I think, seven overall.”

Did any of them get really destroyed during filming, or are all seven available to be sold on Ebay?

Christopher Nolan: “It proved to be very robust. They jumped one of them 58 feet onto to the freeway, and it drove around to do take two.”

Did you get to open one up on the road yourself?

Christopher Nolan: “Yeah, briefly. Right at the end I had a play. I had a play before they put the body on it, when they were developing the steering mechanism on it, because the front axle is a very unique engineering feat that they put together. And then right at the end I had a quick few laps right around where we were shooting.”

What were the biggest learnings for you from other comic book movies?

Christopher Nolan: “I’m not really a big fan of comic book movies generally, because I felt like what I really wanted to see was a film that conveyed the experience of reading a comic book. That is to say, the mental process you go through when you get into the story. You’re not looking at the page as a flat surface; you’re actually in the action of it. And that’s what I was trying to do in this film. The only time I’ve really it done before, I think, is probably the 1978 “Superman.” I was a big fan of the Dick Donner film, where they really treated Superman to an epic scale film and had this amazing cast—Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman and Ned Beatty and Glen Ford and all that. I thought that was a spectacular film, and I thought Batman deserved that type of storytelling. And I think even compared to that movie we tried to be more serious about things.”

Can you talk about why you chose Ra’s Al Ghul and The Scarecrow as opposed to the other mainstream villains?

Christopher Nolan: “It really came about as a result of talking to David Goyer, my co-writer, about which villains would fit the tone and themes of what we were doing. Scarecrow, because of his use of the fear toxin, his use of fear as a weapon, I think presents a very interesting parallel to Bruce Wayne’s use of fear as a weapon in the Batman persona. Ra’s Al Ghul felt like a very appropriate villain for us—not just in his aims and his motivations, which feel contemporary and very relevant right now, but it’s also the tone of him as a fictional character. He’s based very much on the Bond villains of the 70s period that he sort of rose in the comics from. That felt like the kind of villain we needed, a memorable, interesting, frightening villain, not one who overshadows the hero.”

Your casting is like “Superman’ in ’78, makes a statement that this is a pretty serious film.

Christopher Nolan: “Yeah, definitely. We wanted to, as I say, give Batman the film that I felt he deserved, as epic as we could make it. To me, when you speak of the word epic, it’s not just the size of sets or the size of explosions. It’s about the characters and humanity on screen, getting a great together.”

Was Bale thin from “The Machinist?”

Christopher Nolan: “He managed to get the ball going in a very short space of time. Another thing you’ve got to remember is the studio, they will want the thing to be cast as big as possible, and that’s a process you have to generally have to deal with when you’re making ‘Batman Begins.’ Batman is the star, so they’re very open to allowing you, letting you cast the best actor in the role.”

So why was he the best actor?

Christopher Nolan: “Because in talking on the idea of a realistic telling of this story, I needed someone who could play Bruce Wayne—somebody whose eyes the audience could look into and believe that there is this absolute dedication, self discipline, this drive towards making himself into this extraordinary icon. He has no super powers. He’s just a human being who simply through the rage inside himself and this desire to do something with all of this emotion in him and simply dedicates himself to becoming something extraordinary, and makes himself do that. And I can’t think of anyone but Christian who has sufficient fire in his eyes, really, to present that.”

Katie Holmes is not Hilary Swank, who you last directed—not an Oscar winning actress who comes into this dark comic book movie. Why Katie Holmes?

Christopher Nolan: “I think Katie’s got a marvelous combination of this girl-next-door quality, this very beautiful, very attractive presence that can stand for the warm life, the real life that Bruce Wayne has denied himself essentially—has lost, or has been denied him, I should say. But she also has this maturity beyond her years that the character of Rachel requires because she has to serve as his conscience, really—his moral conscience. And I think Katie has all of those qualities in spades. I think she’s a tremendous actress.”

Will this real-life romance that she has now, this front page thing that’s on TV everyday, distract from the movie, do you think?

Christopher Nolan: “Sorry, what romance? [laughs] No, I don’t think so.”

It’s nothing you could have planned when you did this a year ago.

Christopher Nolan: “I think the film stands on its own. [laughs]” Batman?’

If there is a sequel, do you think The Joker is the plan to come, or is that just a little wink to fans in the movie?

Christopher Nolan: “I didn’t want to get into specifics, but the truth is he is one of the great characters.”

Gary Oldman mentioned a parallel between this film and modern times, and the press kit describes Gotham the way terrorists would describe New York. Were you thinking that?

Christopher Nolan: “Well, Ra’s al Ghul in the comics is often described as an eco-terrorist—I would put it down to an extremist. What was important to me in creating a credible and frightening villain is that everything he says is true and at some level reasonable, and makes sense. It’s the extremity with which he’s prepared to go to achieve what he believes that is very, very threatening and very frightening. And I think that extremism in our world is one of the most frightening things.”

They’re attacking Gotham because in their minds, they think they’re doing a good thing. Did you talk about this, did you see that parallel as you were writing this and putting it together?

Christopher Nolan: “Well, not really. In the sense that it’s just about writing the most threatening and frightening villain that you can, and I think that we live in the same world as everybody else, and you’re most afraid of people attacking the way you live, I suppose, in extremes. But to make any kind of conscious parallels to the contemporary world would perhaps be to trivialize these things. So these things are unconscious.”

What about working with the bats—Rabies—

Christopher Nolan: “Yeah, bats are disappointingly cute in real life. No, they are! You’d be surprised. We’d try to do a menacing close-up on a bat and they look a little too cute—there are some more sort of uglier species.”

You pulled off the humor in this without winking too much. Were you ever concerned about going over the edge with the ironic humor?

Christopher Nolan: “No, I wasn’t concerned about going over the edge with it, because I had sort of stripped it all away to begin with, and then what I had said to the studio and everybody—because everybody is always looking for a bit of lightness to balance the darkness—I said I wanted to arise naturally from the situations and the performers and the way they interpret these things. And once you cast people like Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman, you get a great level of humor and warmth from their performances. They build on the script and make it much more.”

Why did you shoot in Chicago, of all the places you could have done it?

Christopher Nolan: “I lived in Chicago as a kid and half my family’s from Chicago, so I know the geography of the place very well. And the subterranean streets, they presented exactly what we needed in terms of our idea of Gotham being this very stratified city with different castes living on different levels, and this subterranean aspect of the city. I knew the place would be perfect for us.”

Are you familiar with the Dark Knight Returns, the story of the older Batman?

Christopher Nolan: “I am familiar with it—It’s great, fantastic.”

Do think when the script review was online, it gave the film a positive buzz?

Christopher Nolan: “To be honest, we managed to keep the script secret for long enough that it was unlikely to derail our process, so we were fortunate in that regard. But we were fortunate that it was well-received and certainly I was worried. It would have been troubling for us to have the fans very concerned at that stage.”

Any deleted scenes from film that we'll see in the DVD?

Christopher Nolan: No really, we've got it all in there.