Reports are coming in that Batman will have a flying machine in The Dark Knight Rises. These "reports," of course, are the result of a smartphone video of the alleged Batwing that someone shot and tossed on the Internet. This probably isn't how Christopher Nolan wanted to introduce his new Bat toy to the world, but considering the many other leaks from the set of The Dark Knight Rises, it's par for the course. One has to wonder if Nolan or the studio is having second thoughts on filming this latest Batman movie in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in favor of the seclusion and privacy of a studio back lot. One has to wonder what Nolan is going to do about all these pirates.
Make no mistake, these people with their flipcams and telephoto lenses are bootleggers in the same way that the woman who walks through the local laundromat with a bag full of "new release DVDs" is a bootlegger. The pictures and videos from The Dark Knight Rises are not approved by the director or the movie studio; the difference between people taking video of Batman and Bane fighting on the steps of a building and people taking video of a movie in the theater is minimal.
The Dark Knight Rises isn't the first film to be photographed by the paparazzo. Last summer a handful of bootleg set reports found their way to the internet from the set of Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon, but Michael Bay didn't flinch when that happened. He was going to paint CGI robots over anything he films in real life anyway, so why stress the small stuff. Christopher Nolan, on the other hand, has the audacity to use real objects that you can actually feel -- and, sadly, record. The pirates are, in essence, punishing the guy for making a more realistic franchise. Every day a new bootleg set report pops up is another day George Lucas sits in his lair in Skywalker Ranch and thinks, "This is why I make my movies on closed sets in front of a green screen!" In this age of TMZ style of reporting, we are pushing our filmmakers toward the dark side.
Do you want the Batman franchise to look like the Star Wars prequels? How about a computer generated Robin akin to Jar Jar Binks? No? Then stop making bootleg set videos of their production and leave them alone. People of Pittsburgh, it might be exciting to have a film crew in your hometown, but act like you've been there before.