Update

Click here for a video of Al Roker looking on while Meredith Vieira poses on the Batpod on NBC’s Today this morning.

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What is the Batpod?

It’s not something Batman uses to listen to his BBD mp3s while he’s fighting crime.

It’s a new vehicle …

… from next summer’s Batman Begins sequel, The Dark Knight, and you should click right here to read all about it!

There’s another picture, of Batman riding it, in the article.

(Big thanks to Susan Carpenter at the Los Angeles Times for an excellent article packed with awesome descriptions and great quotes.)

My favorite bit is when special effects coordinator Chris Corbould is asked how much the Batpod cost to build:

“I can’t tell you that. I haven’t even told the producers.”

Ha! Awesome.

The article includes a detailed description of how it works, and that’s what’s got me excited about this thing: it WORKS. If a team of designers and stunt guys can build something like this and make it work, then I totally believe that Batman and Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman!) could build one, too.

One of the coolest things about Batman Begins was its reinvention of the Batmobile as a muscular, jagged military vehicle. (Though my friend Bonnie wasn’t impressed; I’ll never forget her hilarious and fervent declaration that “it’s preposterous; it’s barely even a mobile!”)

What made it so real is the fact that it was, well, real. The Begins team designed it and built it from the ground up, just as they did with the new Batpod. The vehicles really do what you see them doing on screen, which fits right in with director Christopher Nolan’s vision that if you can’t do it with real and practical effects, then it doesn’t belong in a Batman movie in the first place.

Let’s all watch the Batpod jump the concession stand on July 18, 2008!

Source: Batman on Film