Christian Bale says he's obsessive about acting, always looking for material that will challenge him.

He gravitates toward what he calls "dangerous" roles, like Patrick Bateman, the well-coiffed serial killer of "American Psycho" (2000), or Trevor Reznik, the tormented protagonist of last year's "The Machinist," a role for which the 31-year-old Welsh actor lost more than 60 pounds.

But a comic book superhero? Doesn't sound very Christian Bale. In fact, until this movie came along, he'd never read Batman comics.

"I wouldn't have wanted to make 'Batman Begins' if it didn't offer a complete overhaul of Batman lore," Bale said in a telephone interview from New York. "And from the beginning Warner Bros. sent the signal that they wanted something a bit radical. If they were after the same old thing, Chris Nolan would not have been chosen to direct. And they wouldn't have cast me."

In fact, Bale recalled one studio executive confiding that he wasn't particularly interested in breaking box-office records.

"What he said was: 'We want to make the best comic book movie ever.'"

Neither "Batman Begins" director Nolan ("Memento," "Insomnia") nor leading-man Bale had ever made a summer franchise film, and the actor said he initially feared that the logistics of a big special-effects movie might overwhelm the human elements.

"Too often on one of these movies it all becomes very impersonal," Bale said. "The story goes out the window, and it becomes an exploitation picture. It becomes about how much you can do with all that money. Whereas in the movies Chris and I have made, you had low budgets and had to show what you could do without a lot of resources.

"Early on Chris made it clear that he wasn't going to forgo good filmmaking and a strong storyline in favor of effects and action. And, in fact, he did manage to make our work feel intimate despite the huge sets, a seven-month shooting schedule, phenomenal locations and hundreds of people on the set. He took a small-movie approach to a big movie."

During the last several Batman films, Bale said, the Caped Crusader has become a camp icon.

No more.

"Our Batman is a badass," Bale said. "He's the most fascinating of the superheroes, in part because he's not really a superhero. He has lots of money, yeah, and that's a kind of superpower, I guess. But everything he accomplishes is through training, imagination and hard work."

In fact, the first half of the movie is devoted to an examination of Batman's psychology: His childhood fears, the death of his wealthy parents, his attempts to reconcile his desire for justice with his darker yearnings for pure revenge.

"There's a lot we investigate in this movie that's never been seen before in any of the 'Batman' movies," Bale said. "And I don't understand why it's been ignored because these are huge questions. For me, the essence of Bruce Wayne is that he's devoted himself to this life of sacrifice and danger, but the parents he's doing it for would disapprove. And he knows they'd disapprove. He knows he should be moving on with his life, but he can't.

"I view him as fanatical in the pursuit of his goal. He's always teetering on the edge, about to lose control of his negative emotions, ready to satisfy his thirst for revenge and his tremendous capacity for violence."

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