Series Review: The Penguin a good project that came too late
It is undeniable that there is a very serious crisis in terms of entertainment, whether in film or television, things have not gone as well as the studios had hoped for a few years now, and this is not due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and its variants, nor to the strike of actors and writers, it is mainly due to the lack of original ideas.
In March 2022, what was intended to be a new beginning and a new shared universe in Batman created by Matt Reeves arrived in theaters, giving a twist to everything we had seen before and leaving aside Ben Affleck’s Batman belonging to the SnyderVerse, a story that narrates the events during his second year fighting crime and corruption in Gotham City as well as facing the serial killer called The Riddler.
Despite all the controversy that the film had, it was well-received by both fans and critics. A novel that served as a prequel to the film called Before the Batman: An Original Movie Novel and written by David Lewman that presents his origin as well as his enmity with an orphan named Edward Nashton who years later would become The Riddler, a story that placed us more specifically at the beginning of this universe.
A 6-issue comic book miniseries written by Paul Dano and drawn by Stevan Subic called The Riddler: Year One was also presented. This story is a direct continuation of Before the Batman: An Original Movie Novel and tells the tortuous life of Nashton until he became a serial killer.
After the film’s release 2 years ago, there is now talk of a second installment and 2 television series, one based on the Gotham Police which would be a prequel to the film and the novel showing Batman’s first year from the perspective of corrupt Gotham City police force, a project that ultimately ended up being canceled, and the other series based on the character of The Penguin and his ties to the mob, detailing the rise to power in Gotham’s criminal underworld after the events of the film and serving as a link to the tentative The Batman 2.
With the change of CEO at Warner Bros. things also changed, Gunn and Safran were hired to lead the newly formed DC Studios in November 2022 after working on several DCEU projects including the film The Suicide Squad (2021) and its spin-off series Peacemaker (2022), this pair decided to put aside all the projects that Walter Hamada had planned for development and start their universe from scratch and from which We haven’t seen much.
Finally, and after many setbacks, in 2024, The Penguin is released, an 8-episode spin-off miniseries in which we will see a more concrete development of the character and his motivations to be the supreme boss of the mafia in Gotham City and establish himself as a Batman villain.
What is The Penguin series about?
Set a week after the events of the movie The Batman (2022) the story tells us about the rise to power of Oswald “Oz” Cobb alias Penguin (Collin Farrell) in the criminal underworld of Gotham City.
Once again we see that a series based on the Batman characters but without Batman may not be a good idea, we already saw the failure of Gotham when trying to imitate what was done in Smallville (2001-2010) a fruitless work that left much to be desired in terms of its narrative and chronology of events having serious and very marked inconsistencies in the Batman universe in general, The Penguin as a series aims to be a separate material where we learn more about the corrupt underworld of Gotham City and the relationship that the mafias have and how they operate in their territories.
Series like Birds of Prey (2002), Pennyworth: The Origin of Batman’s Butler (2019), and more recently Gotham Knights (2023) left a very neutral and succinct impression on the taste of both insiders and outsiders, the current vision that Lauren LeFranc has as creator of this criminal mobster rises, or rather staggers, pretending that this is an epic story between gangs and powerful mobsters from its origins in the comic and that although it is far from surpassing it, at least it remains on equal terms.
The Penguin as a series is an adaptation of the dirty, dark, and boring version by Matt Reeves taking as base and inspiration the film Se7en by David Fincher (1995) for his The Batman, this first episode immediately resumes the events that happened at the end of the film, after The Riddler by Paul Dano blew up the sea wall that protected Gotham City and flooded most of the poorest neighborhoods, an opportunity for all the powerful to get a place in politics or the mafia, mediocre mid-level mobster Oswald “Oz” Cobb sees an unrepeatable way to get to the top in the middle of all this chaos, facing the crippled Falcone (Mark Strong) and Maroni (Clancy Brown) who is locked up in Blackgate penitentiary, his idea is to confront these families so that they annihilate each other and thus keep all the domain.
This a story that we have seen told many times with results ranging from very good to truly regrettable cases, what is intended here is to explore and scrutinize the life of this character, Oz’s greatest virtues are his ease of speech, his wit, his chameleon-like ability to earn respect and stay alive and this goes hand in hand with his weaknesses that include resentment for those who in his childhood mistreated him, humiliated him and made fun of his physical appearance which incites him to violence.
In the first few minutes, we can see that this impulsiveness and insecurity get him into serious trouble, a direct insult from Falcone’s heir, Albert (Michael Zegen) incites Oz to take out his gun and shoot him at point-blank range, killing him instantly, and he will have to fix things to stay alive, so he makes up a plan to make everyone believe that the Maroni family was responsible for this crime and that Oz is free of all suspicion.
There is a constant push and pull between Oz’s ambitions and insecurities that we will see throughout its eight episodes, which somehow makes this low-level criminal epic more complete in the absence of Batman, who is only mentioned very briefly in a newscast that reports on the current state of the city and at least in this episode his intervention is not mentioned again. LeFranc along with director Craig Zobel slowly builds a crime drama that quickly intensifies and desperately imitates the series created by David Chase The Sopranos (1999).
It is inevitable not to make the proper comparisons between one and the other, the structure of The Penguin is shamelessly based on this other multi-award-winning series, it is difficult to create an original story when it has a secondary character of an extremely important character in pop culture and that myt recently just turned 85 years old in the entertainment and merchandising media.
The episode that is currently available is:
1. After Hours.
A week after the murder of Carmine Falcone (Mark Strong) and the destruction of Gotham City Bay, Alberto Falcone (Michael Zegen) Carmine’s son and heir apparent to his entire criminal empire catches Oswald “Oz” Cobb (Collin Farrel) while retrieving Falcone’s valuables from the Iceberg Lounge including a folder with confidential information on the city’s current politicians, Oz listens as Alberto explains his plans to revolutionize Falcone’s drug operation when Oz expresses his aspirations to be a powerful and respected mobster Alberto mocks him, leading Oz to impulsively shoot and kill him.
Oz attempts to dispose of the body of and scare off a group of juvenile delinquents who are stealing tires from his car, he catches and recruits one of them, Victor “Vic” Aguilar (Rhenzy Feliz) to be his driver and helps him, Oz learns that the Falcones plan to take over his drug ring, he later meets Alberto’s sister Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti) recently released from Arkham Asylum, Oz plans to leave town to stay alive but changes his mind after being encouraged by his mother Francis that he should fight for his rightful place and have power over everything and everyone, Oz visits Falcone’s rival Salvatore Maroni (Clancy Brown) in Blackgate Prison and offers to give him back control of the drug trafficking operation, Maroni is reluctant and distrustful after previously betraying him but reconsiders after Oz returns a ring that Carmine had taken from Maroni and that he is forced to leave the city to stay alive. Alberto used, Sofia later captures and tortures Oz but is distracted from killing him by the sudden recovery of Alberto’s body arranged by Victor under Oz’s orders to implicate the Maroni family, Oz is freed and begins conspiring with Victor to take control of the Falcone crime family.
An episode that manages to hook you from the start and that doesn’t bore or detract from the narrative work they are doing, they treat this character more realistically, following the noir and dark line of Reeves’ film. The question we must ask ourselves now is why is it so necessary to give absurd realism to fantastic characters. This has been the trend of this genre since the Batman trilogy made by Christopher Nolan (2005-2012). Few are those who have done it well, but let’s remember that these universes are more fantastic than realistic.
Throughout this episode The Penguin does not offer us anything new, it oscillates between the grotesque and the realistic in a crime drama full of stereotypes and clichés of cartoonish mobsters and exaggerated characters with elaborate personal interests, it establishes that Oz and Sofia will fight for power and control of the city, both try with frustration to fight against society and themselves until they kill each other, there is only a place for one of them, a story that aims to be bold and that takes place in the context of Gotham City and the Batman universe but, without Batman, and this series wants to show that his presence is not needed to be able to tell it.
Nothing to say about the makeup, Farrell puts on the costume and facial prosthetics again that transform him into a completely different man, a great job, as well as the costumes, do evoke that this is a sequel to what happens in the 2022 film, every detail has been carefully taken care of so that everything looks and feels the same or as similar as possible to what we already saw, emphasizing more on its color palette to recreate the dark and sinister atmospheres and a lighter one for the exteriors in the daytime scenes.
The references to what we already know about the character are very subtle but direct at the same time, Oz uses an umbrella like in his version in the comics, the jewelry called Burgess in a clear reference to the actor Burgess Meredith who played The Penguin in the Batman television series of the 60s, Alberto Falcone in the Batman: Long Halloween comic series is the murderer Holiday Killer, the clear mention of Arkham Asylum, the clear references at the beginning to the end of The Batman movie, which while nice are not important enough in this universe, a blatant fanservice to keep the attention.
The cast includes Colin Farrell, Cristin Milioti, Rhenzy Feliz, Deirdre O’Connell, Clancy Brown, Carmen Ejogo, Michael Zegen, Berto Colón, James Madio, Joshua Bitton, David H. Holmes, Daniel J. Watts, Ben Cook, Jayme Lawson, Michael Kelly and Mark Strong. It is impressive what these actors do with their characters, they make something that could be ridiculous take on a more serious and convincing tone.
The music composed by Mick Giacchino, son of Michael Giacchino, follows in his father’s footsteps with music with its personality, more reminiscent of the noir and mobster films of the 1940s, a good work that perfectly accompanies every one of the scenes, a mix of modern influences with traditional orchestral structures, but with his personal touch. The songs used in the background are Put the Blame On Me by Rita Hayworth, The Promise by When In Rome, and for the closing of episodes 9 To 5 by Dolly Parton, each with a clear reference to its lyrics and the situation at that time.
In conclusion, The Penguin as a series comes at a time when almost no one cares what happens or not with the sequel to The Batman. This work took too long to be released and that now seems completely unnecessary but that has given us a pleasant surprise, the life and work of one of the most iconic and recognizable villains in comics will go down as something else that was done with Batman without Batman and that could work in its context.
The Penguin is now available on the Max platform.
Spanish review
