With precious little information about the upcoming The Batman: Part IIMatt Reeves’ Batman universe expands with HBO’s 8-part spin-off series The penguin. Once again with Colin Farrell as wannabe Gotham City kingpin Oz Cobb, The penguinThe cast boasts newcomers like Christian Milioti, Deirdre O’Connell, Rhenzy Feliz and Clancy Brown and takes DC firmly into the realm of prestige television.
Picking up immediately after the events of The Batmanend, The penguin Deals with the aftermath of Carmine Falcone’s death and the criminal underworld’s attempts to consolidate their positions. Gotham City’s crime families and gangs battle for control of the drug trade as chaotic heiress Sophia Falcone (Miliotti) and Oz Cobb make their own devious power plays. Is it all worth it? Certainly, but there are significant casualties along the way.
somewhat vain, The penguin has drawn comparisons to HBO’s other top-tier gangster shows, The SopranosAnd the two stories share some genetic material. But the return of Colin Farrell as the Penguin is more than just a derivative clone in the new DC pajamas: it’s a tense, bloody 8-hour commentary on power dynamics, deception and the peculiar condition of living in Gotham City.
The penguin is slow, but it’s worth it
Oz Cobb’s story deserves the space to breathe
The passing may not be for everyone, and it’s a world where this could have been a movie – titled The Night of the Long Knives or Everyone Hates Oz perhaps – but there are great ideas that need room to breathe. And there is a lot of history to get through. Just maybe don’t try and binge it all at once (Thankfully something you can opt out of with HBO’s weekly releases), because it will hurt.
Although The penguin The slow-burn format is actually very clever: like Victor, the audience is set to be groomed by Penguin. He’s not exactly impressive, but he’s compelling: a pragmatic villain, realistic about Gotham’s corruption who offers a means to exploit it. For the first few episodes, we’re Vic, seduced by his charm with flashes of his true ability, and it takes time for the sales pitch.
How the Penguin sets Oz as the next villain of the Dark Knight
HBO’s new show may be retitled The Penguin Rises
There’s a danger with something like this – built on the back of an excellent but largely bit-part character performance – that familiarity breeds contempt. Villain-focused stories often veer too close to humanizing the subject, and lose some of the mythology, but finally, The penguin Just about avoids the pit. Oz is very rewarding to watch, but you don’t really want him to win, even when his motivations are laid out. This is not so much Breaking bad Like breaking worse, because Oz was never really a good guy.
That’s thanks in part to one of the grossest, tame-stomp endings of any DC project that’s shocking enough to leave a nasty mark, but which sets Oz up for his destined role in The Batman: Part II And further. At times, you really feel a connection to Oz, because his entire propaganda campaign is about personal improvement and taking down the elites, but by the end, he’s despicable and deluded, and any vulnerability he might have projected disappears.
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Walter White is another interesting comparison: more than Tony Soprano, In fact. Oz’s plans for domination are not intricately planned, they are reactionary and sometimes desperate, and there is something of Bryan Cranston’s genius double performance in it too. After all, you don’t fear Heisenberg any less because you saw Mr. White in his underwear, and you don’t lose a sense of what Penguin will become because he didn’t nail the approach.
Unfortunately, it’s already very easy to see where some of the more animated online criticism comes from The penguin is going to focus. Because Oz is not fully formed, he grows in his power, and takes some losses along the way. He is also an opportunistic victor in his inevitable rise, but for every accidental victory, there is a precise strategy (even if it comes in the wrong order), and the Penguin as a character that reflects Gotham’s class conflict is a credible trade- Off for him. Being an invulnerable tank.
Colin Farrell’s Oz Cobb performance delivers (again)
More of Farrell’s stunning transformation is a reward in itself
Colin Farrell manages to balance perverse charm on top of the pile of Oz’s monstrosities: there is just enough of his “All for a better life“Propaganda that keeps him only on the side of appealing without a post-Sopranos Deconstruction of the character. It is a Mystery rolls into his backstory that justifies the decision to completely retcon his DC Comics originAnd what makes him more interesting than a villain who just wants power. The work should pay dividends when it comes to facing him against the Batman in Matt Reeves’ sequel.
Farrell’s performance continues to be a joy: she is bigger and more pronounced here but with greater nuance at the same time. His physical performance is more pronounced – to justify the “penguin” insult, of course – but the range he shows in Oz’s conflict is spellbinding. He is at once a monster who will do anything to anyone for a whiff of consolidated power, and also a poor upstart with major Oepidal issues. He is a very rewarding contradiction and Farrell’s take on the character is a top tier DC performance.
Cristin Milioti’s Sofia Falcone is a major standout
The DC newcomer is as crucial to the Penguin as the titular villain
Where the deconstruction in The penguin Enter Cristin Milioti’s excellent Sofia Falcone. She’s everything I’ve ever wanted from Harley Quinn: A sort of reclamation that consciously bites your thumb at the sanctity of adaptive purity To offer a real look at the condition of being a woman in a mafia world. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and that goes for a falcon.
Again, there will be discourse around her and some of the specifics of her story, which are for after the spoiler discussion curtain rises, but Milioti’s performance deserves specific praise. The episode that delves deeper into her backstory is nerve-wracking and properly gives her the space to shine without Farrell’s presence trampling it. It too Leads to a deeply engrossing subplot that culminates in her Cersei Lannister moment halfway through.
The mafia element is all very well observed, but Sophia throws a huge spanner in the works. She is a walking challenge to the status quo: a nuisance, partly because of her sex and refusal to accept the typical tropes that are assigned to paint and mob women, and partly because of a delicious family secret. And while something like The Sopranos Sophia’s story is refreshingly chaotic, taking years to show the precise machinations of the mafia machine. Oz’s too, to a certain extent.
Sofia and Oz are interesting parallels throughout. Both are victims of Gotham’s corrupt class and crime systems, and Both offer interesting discussion points on elitism, class warfare and family legacyWhat floats over The penguin As much as Killing the Waynes does over Bruce Wayne. And in the end, you get a real sense of what Gotham’s spell is, which sets up the Penguin himself as a bigger idea irresistibly.
What does not work in the penguin?
The HBO show is, unfortunately, not perfect
Not everything works entirely: some of the characters fall too close to caricatures, like Deirdre O’Connell’s Ma Cobb, and Clancy Brown feels terribly underused as Sal Maroni. The heavy pacing at times makes the sudden bouts of hyper violence feel a little fetishized, and even while heartily recommending it, I’m not entirely sure that there should be 8 episodes. Nor is it good enough to deal with his Batman problem (not that of Jim Gordon, who presumably took an extended vacation after the Riddler was caught).
moreover, The penguinThe aesthetic is quite brown and yellow. The color correcting community on social media will have a field day with it, but it’s an improvement on The BatmanWhose color palette was black, deep midnight, charcoal, and dark black mostly. It’s an obvious artistic choice, and there’s something to be said for the comment on the sludge of Gotham, but I can make excuses for it here that even I don’t fully believe.
The Penguin explores Gotham without Batman, for better or worse
It doesn’t quite answer the nagging Dark Knight question
And what about Batman? Matt Reeves promised that his presence was lowered throughout The penguinBut he’s not much more present than a news report in the opening episode. From there he sits it out, and far be it from me to get all Homer Simpson about him, but it’s hard not to wonder why no one even makes reference to him when he’s not on screen. The city is in ruins and a crime war is raging after the Riddler’s attack on Gotham, and revenge, its great protector, does not even cast an ominous shadow over things.
This isn’t his circus though, and it’s important to acknowledge that Batman is a necessary sacrifice to the show’s agenda to show Oz and Sophia’s perspective of Gotham. We’ve had too many Marvel movies where the Avengers don’t show up for this to be too much of a distraction, but I wish there was a little more careful nod to explain why Batman is so absent, all the same. It makes it hard not to shake off the accusation that he isn’t really Gotham’s protector.
yet, The penguin Really sold the idea of ​​Gotham. It portrays Arkham in a bold way (and explains why a spinoff set would be an incredibly difficult sell), but it also gets into the minds of Gotham’s people. In Rhenzy Feliz’s Vic, we have an insight into this, just as Joseph Gordon Levitt’s Blake was a street level voice in Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. Around him, Gotham feels like a blanket, smothering but comforting: and you really get the dangerous hold it has on its people. It’s a rat’s nest where the rest of the world really feels inconsequential.
It’s also fair to say that Vic’s story ends stronger than it begins. Introducing any kind of child sidekick is difficult to balance, however The penguin It is able to explain Oz’s love for him in a way that adds depth to his own weakness. And Victor works as a sort of passive Batman stand-in, naively exploring the criminal underworld, without interfering.
Does the penguin justify its existence?
Spin-offs need to work harder than sequels…
We are repeatedly asked if it is all worth it The penguin As his heart thought, just like The Sopranos And Breaking bad Before it, and it’s hard to say no. Spin-offs always come with the question of justifying their existence, and in The penguinIn case, you get the sense that they are actively trying to do something new, without the crutch of an extensive DC study.
The show packs a lot into its 8-hour run time, offering surprisingly heartfelt moments alongside the violence, twisting narrative and bloody violence, and it’s a strong addition to Matt Reeves’ Batman universe. It manages to do what Lauren LeFranc clearly set out to achieve, and remains refreshingly different, despite the easy comparisons to other prestige TV shows on a broader level.
The penguin Episode 1 airs on Thursday, September 19 on HBO, before the other 7 move to Sunday night.