From Eminem video to Batman movie: Michigan Central Station has had many pop culture roles

Michigan Central Station has always been a star of Detroit’s architectural scene. Yet in popular culture, it is more of an ever-changing character actor.

Need a setting for a superhero smackdown? A backdrop for a K-Pop video? A touch of Beaux Arts grandeur for your wedding album? The historic depot has been happy to oblige, even when it was abandoned and ignored.

Now that the majestic building has been meticulously restored by Ford Motor Co. and is ready for its latest close-up, let’s take a look back at how it has inspired storytellers, artists and tourists through the decades.

'Detroit: Comeback City'

In  the 2018 documentary "Detroit: Comeback City” (a collaboration between Ford and the History network), the 1913 train station is given its due as a portal to the hopes and dreams of those arriving in the Motor City. In its heyday, giants of industry, politics and Hollywood walked through its soaring lobby. The list includes silent-movie stars Charlie Chaplin and Gloria Swanson, inventor Thomas Edison and presidents like Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman. During World War II, a war bond rally brought legends like Lucille Ball, James Cagney and Judy Garland to town by train.

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'Four Brothers'

Need to visually signal to moviegoers that the plot is unfolding in the D? If it’s a comedy, the oft-used Renaissance Center is a fine symbol. But for action dramas like 2005’s “Four Brothers,” the worn, empty Michigan Central Station was a prime scene setter. In this tale of four men who return to Detroit after the murder of the woman who adopted them, a mournful Mark Wahlberg drives past the desolate structure in a cityscape coated with dirty gray snow..

'The Island' and 'Transformers'

Michael Bay, the director known for staging larger-than-life spectacles on the big screen, has filmed in Detroit several times and used the station to dramatic effect. In 2005’s “The Island,” a dystopian sci-fi movie about a cloning conspiracy that provides organ harvesting to the wealthy, Ewan McGregor and Djimon Hounsou wind up in Michigan Central Station for a nail-biting standoff on who’ll get shot, the billionaire human or his sympathetic carbon copy. In 2007’s “Transformers,” the first entry in the franchise, Bay returned to the same location for a crucial foot chase where Sam (Shia LaBoeuf) runs into the empty building clutching the AllSpark, the cosmic cube that brings technology to life.

'Detropia'

Numerous chronicles of the city's plummet into bankruptcy — some of them deserving the ruin porn label —include shots of Michigan Central Station at its most derelict. But 2012’s “Detropia,” made by Oscar-nominated filmmakers Heidi Ewing (a metro Detroiter herself) and Rachel Grady, was a thoughtful, hauntingly lovely look at the city’s struggles in the new global economy. Winner of an Emmy and a Sundance Film Festival prize for its evocative editing, the film gave worldwide audiences a glimpse of the building’s potential by showing an opera singer giving a brief recital inside its neglected walls.

'Batman v Superman'

Zack Snyder’s “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” released in 2016, needed a bold, supersize place for the title battle between DC’s top characters. So, of course, it selected the station to play the Gotham setting for the brutal slugfest between Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent’s alter egos. “The city supplied me with so much beautiful and amazing art direction and artistic backdrops for the movie,” an appreciative Snyder told the Free Press about this and other locations used in the metro Detroit-made movie.

'Detroit 1-8-7'

The 2010-11 ABC crime drama “Detroit 1-8-7” wanted to be authentic, but it didn’t quite understand that referring to a carbonated beverage as a soda is a cardinal sin in a pop zone. Even the title's numbers worked against the fictional police precinct's cred by using a number from the California penal code section about murder.  But as the rare TV series shot entirely in and around Detroit, it featured all the signature spots in scenes like the one where Michael Imperioli and Jon Michael Hill, playing police detectives, chase a suspect through the abandoned train station.

Eminem's 'Beautiful' video

Eminem’s single “Beautiful,” released in 2009 from the “Relapse” album, starts out as an expression of his depressed state. “I just can’t seem to get out this slump,” he raps. “If I could just get over this hump/ But I need something to pull me out this dump.” In the video, Eminem visits three abandoned landmarks — Michigan Central Station, the former Packard plant and the now-demolished Tiger Stadium — to convey those emotions. As he walks through the station, Slim Shady passes an older woman holding a suitcase who represents train passengers of yore. The video may have provided some inspiration for a K-Pop group called B.A.P., which filmed its 2013 video of “Badman” in Detroit, complete with moody footage from outside the station's keep-away chain link fence.

Shutterbugs, tourists and wedding parties

Cinematographers and photographers understandably love the station for its graceful, noble style of construction. Beaux Arts architecture, after all, draws on the best of the Renaissance, Baroque and neoclassical schools. The historic building also has become a favorite for tourists. A 2010 New York Times article quotes an estimate that 30 sightseers a day were visiting the station's locked gates. In 2016, the Free Press explored the trend of wedding parties using signature Detroit sites for their photos, including you-know-what.

Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds at jhinds@freepress.com.