In 2005's Batman Begins, Christian Bale breathed new life into the Caped Crusader after the much-panned Batman & Robin forced the character into an 8-year hiatus from the big screen. This summer, Bale returns as Gotham City's defender in the much anticipated The Dark Knight. Our reporter sat down with Bale to ask him how Batman's alter-ego Bruce Wayne has changed since Batman Begins and the unique challenge posed by his latest nemesis.

Q: Fill the viewers in on where [Bruce Wayne] is, how it’s differing from the last film where it takes off.

A: Well it’s not an origin story about Batman anymore. Obviously we’ve seen him go through his feeling of complete powerlessness as Bruce Wayne, the pain that he has gone through that has created this creature.  The angry young man, he was aspiring to be able to do something good, to follow in the footsteps of his father who was very altruistic but is also having to deal with many demons that he has inside of him in terms of revenge that he wishes, in terms of violence that he feels a need for. 

And now in this movie we have a slightly more mature Bruce Wayne who has now the burden of the responsibility that the city has come to depend upon him, and so the questions that arise from actually having power rather than attempting to attain power.  Somebody who is looking to get out, you know, he never saw this as being an endless endeavor for himself.  And he sees in that Harvey Dent, the character played by Aaron Eckhart, who will be his future, who will be Gotham’s future and will be the reason why Batman will cease to be needed. 

But then we get arriving on the scene the incredible freak of the Joker [played by Heath Ledger in his final role]. People partly blame Batman for this kind of rise in the quality of crime and these freaks who are arriving and descending upon Gotham, and the Joker is here to manipulate and play games and hold up a mirror to society and show its hypocrisy to itself and to prove that everybody has a price, that nobody is absolutely uncompromising, and he finds in Batman that ain’t the case.  He is uncompromising, so we get a great battle between the two. However the Joker is somebody who has no rules whatsoever, and so he is an opponent who is impossible to leverage, and Batman does have a rule, he will not kill, and therefore that’s a weakness that the Joker is able to use against him and tempt him to break that rule.

Q: That’s one of the strong points of the movie, in fact. One of the things that is so effective is you can’t get to the Joker, he has nothing to lose.

A: Yeah, you know, I mean, Batman is there with the Mob. Well, you know they’re businessmen. They are after money. They can be leveraged in that case.  The Joker is not after money. He’s not after anything. 

He’s living in the moment, and his moment is he loves destruction, and that’s it. And self destruction doesn’t scare him either, so what do you do with somebody that when you hit them they smile, they love it? You know he’s a masochist. He’s sadistic, he’s masochistic. It’s impossible to plan any kind of method of taking somebody like that down.

Q: And you and he did a fabulous job on this film. Great jobs both of you.

A: Thank you very much.