RIDDLE ME THIS (Oh, wrong Batman villain..sorry!).
HBO Max / Minimum/ woteva has a trailer out for a PENGUIN show. Fine. Great. Except, consider the following:
1: Didn’t they just do this? A show called GOTHAM? As in, the city of Batman, without, in fact, um, any appearance by, Batman?
2: Everyone raves about Colin Farrell’s performance. WHYYYY? Yes. It’s good. But the make-up does half the work and countless other actors could, would and should have been cast, surely?
3: Are we supposed to sympathise with this villain? Laugh at/with him? What? He’s a mobster. And they have made him look a generic caricature. Even Tim Burton’s bile spewing grotesque take on the character had moments with an umbrella and top hat.
4: This is yet again, an attempt at world /universe building on a brand. Filmmakers who now think it ok to nick better, more substantial motifs from old classics and weld them into infantile comic book or sci-fi /other nostalgia bait teenage fare. Fine. IF you call that out for what it is. As in: comic book fun. Once again, that is not all on Matt Reeves. One could argue it goes back to Nolan’s Dark Knight being touted as HEAT/GODFATHER/EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. My point, in either case, is not so much that the quality is lacking or the fun necessarily missing. More that there is an archly pretentious inability, within mass media, today, to simply say ‘yeah it’s camp comic book fun’ or ‘it’s cops and robbers’. Not everything must be some profound epic. Especially if your central character is a B list Batman baddie. GROW UP. Or? Grow down. But don’t play grown up games in kids’ clothing or vice versa.
5: They give us THIS? But cannot simply release a third Keaton Burton-verse Batman movie, even on HBO? And that’s just one idea from the top of my head that would excite, innovate and entertain more at first sight, whilst remaining nostalgic, challenging and surprising in all the ways they seem to THINK that a PENGUIN show will do?
Obviously. I could be wrong. But I think I am right. Wah wah.
