‘A F*cking Bootcamp’: Nightwing’s Solo Film Will Be Mostly Stuntwork, With Little CGI - Says Director Chris McKay

The best thing about the Bat family is the same thing many claim to be its biggest weakness: the group’s humanity and obvious lack of superpowered abilities. While the rest of the Justice League gets by with the help of cosmic rings, world-leveling alien superpowers, metahuman abilities, cybernetic body parts, magic, and divine pedigree, Bruce Wayne, Batgirl, and the Robins get by on human effort, luck, extraordinary diligence, willpower, observation, and mortal intuition. And so far they have performed beyond expectations. Not just performed, even led their own teams — from the Teen #Titans to the Justice League. Richard Grayson — otherwise known as the first Robin, Bruce’s temporary stand-in, and Blüdhaven’s resident Nightwing — is no different.

LEGO Batman’s Chris McKay who is slated to direct Grayson’s first solo outing in the #DCEU as Nightwing, understands this quite well, based on a recent interview with Collider. He states:

“Whoever gets cast as Nightwing, and any of the other actors around, are gonna go through a fucking boot camp experience because it’s gonna be a lot. I’m not gonna do a lot of CG. It’s gonna be all real shit. It’s gonna be real stuntwork, and they’re gonna need to do all of the stuff on camera and do it credibly. For the cast and the crew, it’s gonna be a visceral experience, and for the audience. It’s not gonna be like a lot of these movies where there’s a lot of CG and flying, and things like that. Everything he does is gonna have to be real.”

Most superhero movies nowadays are filmed against a green screen with CG effects, but McKay, who understands what Nightwing the human epitomizes, doesn’t want anything to do with that. And for good reason. I quote:

“[Nightwing’s] superpower is being really fucking good, as a human being, at fighting and gymnastics and shit like that, so you’re gonna see that on screen.”

The Bat family (#DickGrayson included) symbolizes the peak of the human condition, the best in all of us. With that said, bombarding the Nightwing film with mostly CG effects would be doing the character a great disservice, because that’s not what Grayson is. Dick Grayson did not become a hero thanks to special effects, or superpowered hardware; he became a hero because he has a good heart, and because he worked his butt off (literally) to the best of his (purely) human abilities.

Note that Grayson was already a proficient acrobat even before he became #Robin, which is already possible in real life by pure effort and discipline alone. (Ninja Warrior, anyone?) Suffice it to say, it doesn’t take a lot of CGI to become a competent Nightwing, and McKay knows it.

This isn’t the first time McKay’s been vocal about the original Boy Wonder. A self-professed comic book nerd, Nightwing’s stalwart director had previously discussed the tenets of the character, and the lore surrounding it, in a series of impassioned tweets. Apparently, he grew up with and idolized Grayson, much like many of us 90s kids grew up with Andy from Toy Story. He elaborates:

“You always thought Robin was the dork and were like, ‘I don’t want to be like Robin. I don’t want to play with Robin. I wanna play Batman.’ But Robin was there as a window character for little kids like me to understand Batman’s world and see into Batman’s world. There’s no other character in comics that went through this real-time transition. Every other character lives in a rough version of the age that they’re in. Very few characters actually grow up in the comics and become something else, and go from being a boy to being an adult, and have their own life and become their own thing.”

Unfortunately, previous live-action #Batman directors did not share this belief — or perhaps did not identify with Grayson as McKay had over the years. He clarifies:

“[Dick Grayson] is a character that every single person in the world knows, but has never really had a lot of screentime. They make a billion Spider-Man movies and a lot of Batman movies, and they’ve tried The Hulk. When they were making the Tim Burton movies, they were always like, ‘Oh, maybe we’ll do Robin in this now. Maybe we’ll save Robin for Returns. Nope, we’ll save it for the next one.’ With Christopher Nolan, people were like, ‘Is he gonna do Robin?’ When they made Batman v Superman, they were talking about it. I’m a big fan of underdog stories, and he is one of the biggest underdog stories in comics. And he’s a character that I grew up with. I like the arc.”

Cruising It Out

Looks to me like Chris McKay is going full-on Tom Cruise for Grayson’s solo movie. (Which is funny because Dick Grayson once became a secret agent himself… kind of like Tom Cruise.) I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up including a non-CG plane scene, or at least an equivalent of it atop a building. Hera knows Nightwing’s already done that at some point.

But perhaps this is exactly what McKay’s been gunning for. Realism, simplicity, and heart. Personally I’m looking forward to it. His dedication to portraying Nightwing credibly onscreen is extraordinary, and I can’t wait to see how that pans out once the film officially premieres.

McKay ends the interview saying, “It’s gonna be a fucking badass action movie with a lot of heart and emotion. It’s gonna be a crazy, fun ride.”

Somehow I feel like it will be.