I’ve written on more
than one occasion that the only comic book movies that had ever resonated with
me are those involving Batman. I will probably go into greater detail in
another article but the most pertinent at the moment is that of all the franchises
the world that Batman inhabits is the only where a director can leave a mark on
it that is recognizable.
There isn’t a single
film in either the MCU or DC films that couldn’t have been directed by anyone
at all. Kenneth Branagh and Chloe Zhao might as well have been generic
directors for all the impact they left on the MCU in Thor or The
Eternals. The directors are irrelevant to any Marvel film and I remain
similarly unimpressed by any of the ones who’ve directed for the DCU ever since
Batman Vs. Superman. Patty Jenkins is a great director but for all
intents and purposes Wonder Woman could have been directed by Michael
Bay for all the vision they left in. When Martin Scorsese argued that comic
book film like the MCU aren’t really movies he might well have meant the fact
that they leave no room for a director to put his or her stamp on them, and I
doubt anyone would argue that point.
By contrast every
film that has been set in the world of Batman in my lifetime has born a mark of
a director and has the capability to shock us. Some do a worse job then others but
even Joel Schumacher’s work on Batman Forever was far more imaginative than
anything we saw Marc Webb try to do with The Amazing Spiderman series. Every
version I’ve seen over the past thirty years – even the Lego version –
has shown a level of creativity and imagination that I truly believe every director
should try to put in their films. And it can lead to great accomplishments you
wouldn’t have felt their previous work would have made them capable of: who
would have thought that Todd Philips, best known for The Hangover series,
could channel Scorsese in Joker and in
a way that I think even he would admire?
Aside from the Joker
the villain who I believe got the most accurate and searing portrayal to this
point in the Batman films (aside from Christopher Nolan’s work) was how Tim
Burton portrayed the Penguin in Batman Returns. Burton was very clearly
not trying to make a franchise film – something he made clearly years after the
fact – but in the case of the Penguin it worked perfectly. Almost every Batman
villain is unique because they have an aura of melancholy around them that
almost every other villain in comic books lack. Danny DeVito’s work as Oswald
Cobblepot was one of the most searing portrayals because he got to the essence
of the Penguin’s tragedy: that he is an outsider who can never be invited in. I’ll
never forget our introduction to him after his men have abducted Max Schreck,
the billionaire industrialist who we will quickly learn is as evil as anyone in
Gotham. “We’re both monsters, Max,” he tells Schreck. “But you are somehow, a respectable
monster and I, as of yet, am not.” It
was clear throughout the film that the Penguin was involved in a long con but
it was also clear that he was willing to be manipulated by Schreck and the
city: there’s a part of him that genuinely wanted to be respected and beneath
his rage was someone who was genuinely hurt when he wasn’t. We see that similar
outrage in his and Batman’s final battle: “You’re just mad because I’m the real
freak and you have to wear a mask!” he shouts at him and with that he gets to
the core of how the difference between Bruce Wayner and really all the villains
he faces is just a matter of degree.
Over the last several
months I’ve managed to see Matt Reeves’s epic version of The Batman and
admit that I was genuinely impressed by what he was trying to do. Reeves came
far closer to Nolan’s version of Gotham than any other film maker since,
particularly when it came to real world parallels that Nolan was a master at. I
don’t fault the film for being too long – that’s never a dealbreaker with me – and I got
the feeling that we got a closer look at Batman and his obsessions in a way
that it took Nolan three films to get to the heart of.
With all that said I
had no intention of watching The Penguin even though it had been the
subject of immense publicity for the last several months. I probably wouldn’t
had HBO not made the decision to move several of their original shows from
their streaming service MAX to HBO this past few months. Given the immense
praise for Colin Farrell, an actor who I’ve always had immense respect for, I
decided to watch the opening episode when it debuted on September 19th.
And from the moment I started watching I couldn’t look away.
It's now clear that the
writers of The Penguin are very clearly doing something that almost no
comic book TV series has tried, certainly not since Watchmen back in
2019. It seems to be using the Penguin – or as he’s referred to in the first
two episodes, Oz Cobb – and his role in the film as a jumping off point to tell
a different kind of origin story. The clearest parallel is how Philips is using
the concept of the Joker in his movies to tell a story of insanity and crime using
the bare minimums of the outline of Gotham City to tell a darker story. The
writers of The Penguin are doing the same thing, using the events of The
Batman to tell the kind of show that, absent the elements of a comic book,
would have fit perfectly with the contours of Peak TV on any streaming service
or cable channel over the last twenty years. And I mean this as a compliment.
Colin Farrell isn’t trying
to be DeVito or Burgess Meredith. From the moment you see him its clear he is
channeling Tony Soprano. The fact that this is essentially a story about
organized crime in what is for all intents and purposes New York setting actually
suits this story perfectly. The prosthetics may make Farrell have a hook nose; he
may be waddling but there’s no urbane classiness here. This is a street fighter
with the capability to kill at a moment’s notice and who acts both on impulse
and can improvise at a moment’s notice. He’s also very aware of the
precariousness of his situation and knows the games and manipulations he’s
playing could get him killed if he steps a foot wrong. There’s a lot of bluster
to him, but much of his masks genuine emotions in a way we rarely get to see in
comic book movies – and if I’m being honest, with far too many of the prestige
dramas we’ve seen over the years.
“Colin Farrell is The
Penguin’. There’s no better description. The Batman films frequently give better
chances for actors to disappear into roles than we usually get such is very
much what we see with Joaquin Phoenix or, more specifically, Paul Dano. Farrell
has always been one of the greatest actors working but this represents a different
type of triumph. As someone who’s been watching him for the better part of 20
years Farrell’s greatest strength has always been playing characters with a
moral ambiguity or characters who are out of their depth. His work with Martin
McDonnaugh best illustrates this fact: the characters he created in the movies In
Bruges, Seven Psychopaths and The Banshees of Inisherin show men who
are usually carried along in the company of madness. I didn’t think he was
capable of playing someone who is known as one of the most notorious comic book
villains in history.
What Farrell’s portrayal
of Oz Cobb does is show a man who is very much a cold-blooded killer but who has
the same basic desire to belong that DeVito’s version famously had. He’s more
impulsive by far – in the opening minutes of the series when Alberto Falcone
laughs at his dreams, he pulls a gun and shoots him without seeming to think of
the consequences. But he precedes this by baring his soul in a way that is
similar to DeVito’s. Oz wants respectability but he knows the options he has
are limited. The best he can hope for is to be the king of organized crime. He
knows it’s the hand he’s been dealt and he’s determined to play the cards as
best he can.
The Penguin takes place in the
immediate aftermath of the Riddler’s inspired attack on Gotham that left the
city flooded and essentially a disaster area. News footage shows that the
wealthy have managed to escape intact but the lower class and poor have been
the once to suffer the most. There’s also the aftermath of the murder of
Carmine Falcone and the gap in the Falcone family. Son Alberto was the heir
apparent but Oz’s impulses have left him scrambling. So in the opening he
encounters Victor Aguilar (Rhenzy Feliz) who tries to steal his car and he recruits
him into helping him bury Falcone’s body. Victor is terrified, understandably,
but for reasons that not even Oz himself understands he decides to keep Vic
alive.
Oz has to spend the first
episode trying to cover his tracks and stay ahead of the game, not easy when he
is barely a second level drug pusher for the family. The power grabs are being
made and he is under the thumb of capo Johnny Vitti (Michael Kelly getting to
play someone evil rather than an antihero) as well as Dom Gigante. But his
newest threat is Alberto’s sister Sofia, who was released from prison recently
and is known as ‘The Hangman’
Cristin Milioti is,
if anything, more of a revelation than Farrell in this series. I’ve been a fan
of hers ever since she did what she could playing the title character in the
final season of How I Met Your Mother and she’s been gifted in supporting
roles in the second season of Fargo and Love Life. But to say she’s
never played anyone like Sofia is the understatement of the year. If Farrell is
trying to channel Tony Soprano Milioti is trying to channel Talia Shire in The
Godfather films, a woman who started out as an innocent and ended up as
ruthless as anyone else in the family. Sofia is handled with kid gloves by the
capos in the family because she’s a woman but it’s clear from the moment she
and Oz go out to lunch that she’s as dangerous as he is. She spends most of the
first episode trying to figure out the truth about him and has him tied up and
naked ready to be killed with no mercy in her heart or eyes. Much of the
greatest drama in the first two episodes is watching Milioti even when she’s
not saying anything: she’s more dangerous when she’s thinking than acting. Oz is
clearly trying to ally with her to protect his long game but he knows just how
dangerous she can be.
And I should add the
entire series features the kind of character actors who have made all of Peak
TV over the past decade incredible to watch. Here’s Clancy Brown in what was
the last role he did before his death earlier this year as Salvatore Maroni,
the currently jailed mob boss that Oz is trying to move around. Carmen Ejogo
plays Eve, an exotic dancer and Oz’s sometimes lover who knows what Oz is but
who trusts him in a way people don’t. Deidre O’Connell plays Oz’s mother, whose
already endured the loss of two of her other sons and is now going through
dementia. Oz clearly cares about her and has been lying about her still being
alive in order to keep her safe.
I know that I’m
watching the origin story of a villain -
a comic book supervillain to be precise -
but I feel more sympathy and empathy for Oz then so many of the other
characters I’ve watched in prestige drama over the years, including Tony
Soprano. Oz has a self-awareness of him that so many of these characters never
did. He has a genuine respect for his crew in a way that I just never saw in so
many other White Male Antiheroes did for anybody. He’s fighting for his life
and he doesn’t have the brains that Walter White or Frank Underwood did or the
command of money Marty Byrde did. When he talks with Vic he can be brutal and a
bully in a way Walt was to Jesse Pinkman - there’s a scene at the end of the second
episode where he makes Vic bury the bodies of two men who died directly and
indirectly because of Oz’s actions and then tells him to lie down in the grave
with them. But in this case Oz sees it as a teachable moment because Vic’s
failures led him to nearly being killed and one of the men who was killed was forced
upon him by Vic’s ineptitude. Oz will do anything to survive and he knows this
is a lesson that Vic has to learn or he will get killed. (That may very well
happen by the end of the series; Vic as far as I know isn’t canon.)
Already The
Penguin has demonstrated an appeal that goes beyond the mere comic book
story. After just two episodes it has a rating of the 122nd best
show at imdb.com. Nor is this purely out of love for a franchise: critics have
already been enraptured by this series and Colin Farrell’s performance has
already been shortlisted as a contender for an Emmy in the Limited Series category.
It more than deserves to as does both Milioti’s work and the show itself. And I
know that this is going to be a one-and-done series – this is, after all, just a link for the next Batman
film - but this is the kind of show that
does not only Batman but the world of comic books itself proud. I have an idea
how it will end, but I wouldn’t mind a sequel to this show. Hell next week Folie
A Deux premieres.
My score: 5 stars.
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