First Images of Christian Bale in 'Nanjing Heroes' Emerge Online

As he is wont to do, Christian Bale is not merely sitting back and waiting for those Batman checks to clear. He even has another big-budget blockbuster coming out - Zhang Yimou's "Nanjing Heroes."

Now, sure, Yimou doesn't have the name recognition of your Christopher Nolan, and the titular heroes are not super in any way, but with a roughly $90 million budget, this is among the most expensive Chinese films of all time.

It tells the story of the Nanjing Massacre in 1937, a six-week period during which Japanese forces gained control of China's then-capital. Hundreds of thousands of unarmed people were murdered and tens of thousands of women raped.

Bale is playing an American priest giving shelter to prostitutes and students (though one would imagine he'd let other kinds of people in if need be) during the attack.

If this were a film made here in America, it'd almost certainly portray Bale's character as the hero in this situation, someone who almost single-handedly saved hundreds, if not thousands, of lives. It will be interesting to see a different national perspective on the kind of story we're by now all too familiar with.

And if Yimou's past work is any indication, he can take a pretty small budget and make it look as good as a major U.S. release. I wasn't the biggest fan of "Hero" or "The House of Flying Daggers," but both looked absolutely incredible. Can't wait to see what he does with three times as much money.

Tianjinwe debuted the images.