Batman Begins (2005)
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Production Design by Nathan Crowley

While Warner Brothers let the series lay fallow for eight years, digital effects technology continued to improve, which meant that when Christopher Nolan finally took the reins with "Batman Begins" in 2005, we got our first look at a Gotham City skyline created without matte paintings or miniatures. When we see Gotham from above (the shot simulates what Bruce Wayne's seeing out the window of his private plane), it has a large central island, flanked on either side by two, smaller, crescent shaped ones; squint and it almost looks like a bat itself. Nolan filmed some exteriors in Chicago and even modeled Wayne Tower after the Chicago Board of Trade Building. As befits the movie's more serious tone, the city's previous outlandishness is removed — so no more statue buttresses routinely appearing in the backgrounds of exterior shots — but there is still a fair amount of comic book trickeration to the Windy City; particularly in the depiction of an fetid slum called "The Narrows" and in the notion that the gleaming city's beautiful glass towers hide a literal criminal underground. And if you're heading to Chicago on a "Batman Begins" locations tour, don't plan on getting from one sight to the next on that wacky two-level monorail; the L is cool, but it isn't that cool.

The Dark Knight (2008)
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Production Design by Nathan Crowley

The movement away from artifice that Nolan began in "Begins" reaches new heights with "The Dark Knight," where the production design by Nathan Crowley, or the seeming lack thereof, is one of the most interesting elements. No mention is made of the imaginary Narrows, no forward-thinking elevated trains are seen (nor is an explanation given for how Gotham citizens are getting around with their public transportation demolished), and we never see a shot of the city from the air resembling the one we got in "Batman Begins." Instead Nolan's sweeping aerial tracking shots of Gotham — presented in eye-frying IMAX — play up the natural drama of Chicago's canyons, rivers, and bridges. "Begins" had some Chicago flavor, "The Dark Knight" looks like it was shot entirely in the Windy City, even the dialogue scenes have that on-location feel thanks to floor-to-ceiling windows in the offices of the mayor, Lt. Gordon, and Harvey Dent and Bruce Wayne's penthouse apartment. "The Dark Knight" is perhaps the first Batman movie that doesn't look like a comic book come to life and instead embraces an aesthetic that suggests what our own world would look like with comic book superheroes in it. Given the parallels Nolan's drawing to our own society and its reaction to terrorism, it's a stylish and apt choice.

[Photos: "Batman," Columbia Pictures, 1943; "Batman," Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation, 1966; "Batman," Warner Bros. Pictures, 1989; "Batman Forever," Warner Bros. Pictures, 1996; "Batman & Robin," Warner Bros. Pictures, 1997; "The Dark Knight," Warner Bros. Pictures, 2008]