22/35
After the events of Batman (2022), Oz Cobb, also known as The Penguin, makes a play for control of Gotham’s criminal underworld. Aside from the Bat-signal in the final shot of the season finale, we never got our Robert Pattinson in the lead role in “The Penguin”. In this short IMDb video, he tries to answer: Where the hell was Batman?. Colin Farrell fought hard to make his version of the tobacco-smoking Penguin in Batman (2022), but failed. In his own series, however, the character is depicted as a casual smoker, with a weakness for cigars. The DC Studios logo is set in a rainy Gotham alley. The umbrella falls and the logo changes to the Warner Bros. logo. Featured on The Graham Norton Show: Lady Gaga/Demi Moore/Colin Farrell/Richard Ayoade/Jack Savoretti (2024). The first episode is a direct sequel to Matt Reeves' Batman and I imagine that those who haven’t seen the latter will feel a little lost. But I watched Batman a while back and this series did a great job of quickly bringing me back to where the film left off without bogging me down in a didactic recap. It also captures the film’s dark aesthetic tone well, even if the show has a lot more moments of sly levity than the film. As in Batman, Colin Farrell does a great job playing Penguin as a stereotypical “street” mobster: crude, profane, tough and prone to violence; but also smart, cunning and able to read people. The character may have absolutely nothing to do with the comic book version, but he’s interesting in his own right. I have my doubts about the show giving Penguin a teenage sidekick; and I don’t know if Penguin’s plans will be enough to last the entire season. But so far he’s off to a great start.