Drunk Hit Batmobile

Christian Bale, who plays the title character in the upcoming comic-book movie Batman Begins, told SCI FI Wire that a drunk driver sideswiped one of the film's stunt Batmobiles while it was being moved during a break in shooting on the streets of Chicago last year.

"There were a couple of times driving down the street in Chicago and when it was like, we can load it on the truck or just drive five minutes down there, and they just drove five minutes down there, and you see that thing just going down the street, and everybody is stopping and looking," Bale said in an interview at WonderCon in San Francisco over the weekend. "There was even this guy who crashed into it, this poor drunken guy who didn't have a license. [He] said he got so panicked when he saw the car that he thought aliens were landing, and he put the pedal to the metal." Bale wasn't in the car at the time, and no one was hurt. Bale said that several Batmobiles were built for the film, with a design unlike any from previous films or TV incarnations.

"They've done such a radically different thing with it," he said. "And what I love about it is that, aesthetically, it kicks ass. It looks f--king stunning. ... It looks nothing like any Batmobile that has come before it, and it completely has practical applications that are explained, and [are] very smart and make complete sense. And that's indicative of what we've done with everything to do with the movie, including the explanations of the suit, the cowl, all the different gadgets that he comes up with and where he comes to them." Did Bale eventually get to keep one of the stealth-black vehicles? "That was the first question," he said with a smile. "They looked at me, and they went, 'Are you f--king kidding?' I didn't." Batman Begins opens June 17.