In everyday life, the Welsh-born Christian Bale speaks with a fairly profound brogue. But on this particular day, just a week before the release of the Batman Begins sequel, The Dark Knight -- director Christopher Nolan's continuing saga of rich, philanthropic businessman Bruce Wayne and his masked, crime-fighting alter-ego Batman -- the now 36-year-old sounds more American than any network newsman spouting out the world's daily events. So, why is the Welshman speaking to members of the press and sounding like a well-educated Midwesterner? "I haven't heard myself speak in my own voice for coming on two years," says Bale, who is currently filming The Dark Knight Rises, the final film of Bale/Nolan Batman cinematic trilogy. "Whenever I'm working on a project I maintain that voice. I've been doing a character from South Carolina for a while (Terminator Salvation). I'm playing an American now."

 
After performing the amazing, scary stunts Bale insisted on doing himself, it's surprising he's not asking for years off. Bale and Nolan left Chicago looking like a devastated war zone. "However, they did give us the key to the city," the married father says with a smile. "We were racing up and down La Salle in the business district. We had helicopters flying just a few feet above the ground. We were blowing up trucks. I was standing on the edge of the Sears Tower and jumping off of it. They gave us real freedom."

He particularly remembers standing on the top of the Sears Tower in full Batman drag. "It was fantastic," admits the recent Oscar winner for his role in The Fighter. "That was not a stunt, but that was an experience. Look, there was no way that they were going to put me up there and allow me to plummet a hundred and ten stories down to the bottom. I had a cable. I could've fallen a short way and then banged against the side and get pulled up again. When am I going to get an opportunity to stand on the Sears Tower, looking out and down on Chicago again so I wanted to take advantage of that...with my Bat-Suit on, too."
 
When asked if he plans to keep a Bat-Suit from each film, Christian confesses, "I keep the cowls. I don't have room for the whole thing." While he found the first suit claustrophobic, he found his get-up for The Dark Knight a much more comfortable and improved version. "I liked it a whole lot better, so much better," he says. "I don't like whiners and complainers. I'm playing Batman, for God's sake. I can just put up with it, but the thing is that this was so much vastly better. In the way that the story has evolved the suit should evolve as well. There's a hundred and ten parts to this suit versus three. I could take the cowl off and I could move my head. In the previous film for the fight sequences I was having to fight against the Bat-Suit because the fighting style that we used, the Bat-Suit was not conducive to it whatsoever as this one was designed to actually aid the fighting style. It was heavier, but it didn't feel that way at all. I had so much more energy and it was so much easier to breathe inside of this one than the other one."

A more menacing looking Bat-Suit, some say it was intended to show how much darker the character of Bruce Wayne is in The Dark Knight than in Batman Begins. "I don't know how much darker he's gotten, but I just think he's more mature -- it's always The Dark Knight with Batman, he's never a white knight," Bale says. "Yes, he has altruism. He wants to effect good. That's the knight, but he's not a white knight because you look at him and he looks demonic. Bats aren't associated with anything angelic. They're associated with the devil and with hell. That's his whole point. He wants to overcome his own fears and use those fears against his opponents. He has an extreme shadowed side with great capability and a great love of violence and this rage and this desire for revenge, but countered by his inherited philanthropy and altruism from his parents which he wants to uphold and be true to as well."
 
As for any clues on what Bat-fanatics can expect to see in final installment of the trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises, expect the same dark veil of secrecy that hung over the storyline of the first two films. Even Bale's director is playing possum with main star when asked about the subject matter of the third Batman. "I think that will very much just depend on Chris and it will really be his decision what it will be about," Bale says about The Dark Knight Rises plot, 18 months before the camera began rolling. "We talked about ideas for a third one, but in a very casual manner. Chris certainly needs get this one completely out of his system, so maybe he wants to go make something else. Clearly, I find that it will be a very intriguing ending and I like the idea of the challenge of the third film because there have been a number of sequels which have surpassed the original movie, but with my limited movie knowledge I can't think of many times when the third film in a trilogy has ended up being the best."
 
And what would Bale like to see Batman do as a big screen curtain call? "Chris is the mind behind what will happen," he says confidently. "I trust him implicitly on that. I trust that his answer will be leaps and bounds better than any answer I can give you."

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By: Earl Dittman

Watch The Dark Knight Sunday, May 29 at 8.00 et/pt.