Road to the Bat
Gotham
The DC comic book corporation has always played second
fiddle to its competitor Marvel Comics. Though, with one of DC’s less than
popular franchises (Green Arrow) making splashes on TV with the CW show Arrow, anything DC or comic book related
have become a hot commodity. DC has decided to expand the DC universe on the
small screen. The Flash is premiering
on the CW October 8th and Constantine
(yes that is a DC property) is premiering on NBC October 25th;
so Fox has decided to get in on the action and grab a DC franchise of themselves.
However, they grabbed one of the most popular franchises in the world, the
Batman franchise.
Gotham is set many
years before Bruce Wayne dons the mantle of Batman and the series starts with
that catalytic event of Bruce’s parents being murdered. Assigned the horrific
case are rookie detective James Gordon (Ben McKenzie Southland) and his seasoned partner Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue Sons of Anarchy). Gordon investigates
the case to its conclusion, but comes to find out that the “conclusion” isn’t
what it seems.
This premiere episode is packed full of Batman characters in
their younger state. People like Oswald Cobblepot aka “The Penguin”, Edward Nygma
aka “The Riddler”, and prepubescent Selina Kyle aka Catwoman just to name a few
and yes this is a few. The audience is introduced to a lot of people in this
first episode and I think this is a good and bad thing. The good part of this
is for die hard Batman fans, like myself, it is cool to see these characters on
screen and watch them evolve. The bad is for fair-weather fans, who don’t necessarily
know these people have a lot of information to take in with just the first
episode. I thought that it might have been better to slowly introduce
characters for those new or fair-weather fans.
The acting in this episode was superb from the entire cast.
Hard to pinpoint stand outs because everyone was great, so I will stick to what
I think is the main three cast members. Ben McKenzie brings an inner fire to
Gordon not seen on screen before. He is the rookie when it comes to Gotham and
McKenzie shows us that passion to do good in a very corrupt city. Donal Logue
steels nearly every scene he is in. Logue’s Bullock is everything that Batman
fans have grown to love about the character, gruff and very pessimistic. Logue
portrays Bullock as a man with a conscience, but to beaten down by the city to
fight any harder and does what he needs to do to survive Gotham. Robin Lord Taylor (The Walking Dead) plays a young Oswald Cobblepot before he becomes
known as The Penguin. Taylor teeters back and forth with being a sadistic
killer and a frightened young man way out of his league among the organized
crime families. Taylor does this so well that it made me very excited to see
where they take his character. So looking back to my earlier post, On The
Dark Streets, I noticed that a couple characters from my list made it to
the show. I do still hope that the others make it in some form. So with what I know from news/internet rumors
and what was shown already I have decided to make a few bold predictions:
1)
According to multiple reports, this first season
of Gotham will revolve around
Cobblepot. My prediction is that Oswald will rise among the crime families,
HOWEVER, I don’t think he will rise to the power Batman fans know him to have.
I think he will still struggle to earn the respect he feels he deserves.
2)
Creator Bruno Heller (Rome, The Mentalist) said
they created the Jada Pinkett-Smith character Fish Mooney just for the show. My
prediction is that she doesn’t last out the first season. I believe she will be a casualty of Cobblepot’s
rise to power.
3)
Without saying a word in the first episode,
audiences were shown a young Selina Kyle played by Camren Bicondova. I predict
that she becomes a very important character as the season goes on. She does
witness the Wayne murders, so this may be the reason for her importance.
4)
With Selina Kyle’s screen time on the rise, I
predict that young Bruce will see his screen time dwindle. Unless Gordon
becomes friends with Alfred, I don’t see any reason on why Gordon will keep
going back to Wayne Manor.
This was a great start to what I
hope to be a great show. I do hope that Gotham City will become more of a
character as well, but Mr. Heller has given this Batman fan a reason to tune
into Fox on Monday nights.
The Verdict: Worth Your Time
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