200711070231Think nothing can stop the Batman? Think again. During filming of The Dark Knight movie in Hong Kong, a scene where the Caped Crusader jumps into the harbor was scrapped when producers realized just how filthy the water was:

The plan was for Batman to be seen jumping into the water and then climbing up some bamboo, or something similar, onto a pier,” the South China Morning Post quoted an unnamed official with the production house as saying. “But when they checked a water sample, they found all sorts of things, salmonella and tuberculosis, so it was cancelled. Now the action will cut to inside a building.”


Hong Kong’s scenic Victoria Harbour has long been a topic of contention for its high level of pollution, including sewage and industrial run-off.

BTW, speaking of Batman, we have yet to link to this Internet classic: A Filmgoer’s Guide to Bad Sex with Christian Bale which points out that as hot as the actor may be, his characters are, well, kinda creepy most of the time.

Batman Begins: Might fake it okay, since he’s had a lot of practice for his secret identity, but you’re always going to come in second to his dead parents, his martyr complex, his secret fear that any time wasted on foreplay is time that some lunatic is out killing up Gotham City, and his pondering over whether that smear of white clay at the scene of the crime could only have come from the Murder City lime-pits, or Joe Kerr’s Pottery Outlet.

UPDATE: Oh dear, Batman is having all kinds of problems in HK, the Times reports:

Batman was in the spotlight again in Hong Kong as the movie’s producers came under fire for asking tenants along a waterfront to keep their lights on all night for a week to better show off the city’s glass and steel skyline.

Environmentalists said it was sending the wrong message at a time when the rest of the world was struggling to reduce energy consumption and Hong Kong itself was often shrouded in a hazy polluted fog.

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