The Batman: How an NYC Urban Legend Influenced New Batcave

In the opening act of The Batman, Robert Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne retreats back to his homestead after a night of crime busting. Driving his motorcycle through the empty streets and inside abandoned subway stations until he finally returns home to the lower levels of Wayne Tower, his base of operations. It’s a wholly new idea for the character whose Wayne Manor and Bat Cave have previously been on the outskirts of town, and the roots of this version come from an urban legend about New York City. Revealing in the recently published The Art of The Batman, Production designer James Chinlund explains:

“If the Wayne [family] built this tower in the twenties, what would be below this tower that would offer an opportunity for a cave? There’s an underground train station at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, The myth is that there’s a train parked there all the time, and the idea is that whenever the president is in town, if there’s ever an emergency and he has to get out of town, they could take him through this secret tunnel at the Waldorf and get him out of town discreetly. I always loved that idea and thought it was so romantic, so I thought about the idea that if you were the Waynes and you had created this city, you would probably have your own secret train terminal under the tower.”

Director Matt Reeves also opened up about his feeling son the design for Wayne Tower in the film and its basis in being something built by Bruce’s old money ancestors, liking it to “a place the Rockefellers or Vanderbilts could have lived in.” Said Reeves, “Wayne Tower, in the movies, is usually the business hub of Wayne Enterprises,” Reeves said in the book. “But we wanted to take this gothic tower and turn it into Bruce’s home. It would be an old skyscraper, long past its glory days like you might see at the base of Central Park or some grand old building in Chicago.”

Reeves added that another inspiration for him and the look of Wayne Tower was the  Maysles brothers’ documentary Grey Gardens, the 1975 film about a mother and daughter that live in a derelict mansion in New York. He added: “The idea of getting the decay to show through so that you can see what once was but is no longer—and that sense of the beauty of decay, and how that was reflective of Bruce, of his character was key. He doesn’t care about any of the traditional family history anymore. He’s so into his obsessive mission, it’s like a drug for him—he’s addicted to being Batman. So when you look closely at the inside of Wayne Manor, it looks like somebody has just let everything fall apart.”

The Batman is now streaming on HBO Max and The Art of The Batman is now available.