The Dark Knight was shot in my adopted home, Chicago, but so was the last Batman film, if you take the literal definition of "shot." Where Batman Begins took place in a CG world that had tiny bits of the real Chicago mixed in with it, The Dark Knight very much exists in Chicago. Chicago's buildings, streets, and even basic infrastructure are all over it. Not that anyone not fairly intimate with the city would ever notice, because the city is not treated like that at all -- the movie is not crammed with recognizable landmarks and cultural shout-outs, the way most movies shot in Chicago tend to be (The Fugitive is a good example). It doesn't pander to Chicago's famous puffy pride, and cannot even announce that it is Chicago, because of course it's Gotham. But because of this subtlety, rather than in spite of it, the movie ends up making the city look better than any movie ever has. The locations and shots are never about the individual places, but about the feel of the city, the dark canyons, brick alleys, ubiquitous commuter train tracks, and most of all the unique and pervasive mixture of architectural styles. The Art Deco lives next door to the Modern; Louis Sullivan and Mies Van der Rohe borrow sugar and visual real estate from each other; everything from the literal inception of the steel skyscraper to the unfinished Trump Tower coexist -- and not just in one place, everywhere you look. The city's architecture is visionary in its anachronisms, and because of that all the more comfortable in its visions.
I noticed in particular one man's office -- maybe you'll notice it in the movie, but probably not -- located in a building I once worked in, on the northeast corner of Michigan and Wacker. And I had to dig up an old picture I took from that building. So very... Gotham-y.
