Hong Kong's bacteria are too much for Batman - Guardian

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Hong Kong's bacteria are too much for Batman

· High pollution level forces axing of action shot
· Officials promise water clean-up - after 2009

Vaudine England in Hong Kong
Monday November 5, 2007
The Guardian

He has locked horns with Gotham City's darkest criminals,
including the Joker, the Riddler, Catwoman and Penguin.
But now Batman has crumbled in the face of an even deadlier
foe: the polluted water of Hong Kong.

The Dark Knight, a sequel to the 2005 movie Batman Begins,
is filming in Hong Kong in and around Victoria Harbour. But
a scene where the caped crusader jumps out of a Hercules
C130 cargo plane into the sea between Hong Kong island and
Kowloon has apparently been scrapped after the water was
found to contain such high levels of life-threatening
bacteria that the actor, Christian Bale, would have been at
risk of catching much more than a cold.

"The plan was for Batman to be seen jumping into the water
and then climbing up some bamboo, or something similar, on
to a pier. 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," the
South China Morning Post quoted a production team source
as saying.

In colonial times between the two world wars, businessmen
swam in the harbour to cool down. They would enjoy a quick
dip at lunchtime before retiring to the Hong Kong Club for
a drink with a view over the cricket ground. But decades of
intense shipping and the emptying of raw sewage into the
harbour has changed all that. The only people usually seen
diving into Hong Kong's harbour these days are a few die-
hard political activists - precisely because everyone knows
what a sacrifice is involved in braving the waters.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,,2205204,00.html