…. Wow. They really did nothing with the penguin for 30 yrs in movies? It was always weird Nolan never touched him or Snyder . After Heath all other bat villains were buried under the awesome might of joker.
Once you take the core concept of Penguin past the "caricature" level, he becomes a beacon for populist viewpoints. He's a far end social outcast. It's very hard to economically write a character like that as non populist, at some level, when it's typically the 4th or 5th major character in a storyline. Nolan's Dark Knight films, IMHO, are pro authoritarian collectivism but window dressed in different ways. In recent years, I've read a good number of quite excellent scripts, written by talented people, who will never see their projects see the light of day because what gets made is a function of what gets financed, and moderate populist themes will simply not get financed.
In the Nolanverse, Penguin has no function. It's also hard to write in a caricature in a series that has a more realistic tone. Now you could fit Penguin into what Joel Schumacher did, if only because Schumacher really didn't care if his Batman world building was grounded or not, it was basically a tribute to pro sodomy. I've never seen anything quite like Schumacher's Batman And Robin. He didn't even try to hide what he was doing. I'm still thoroughly convinced that film was only made to see how much of Joel's belly button lint would end up on Chris O'Donnell's forehead. Sorry kid, even if you close your eyes, it does not ever taste like Red Velvet Cake.
But this iteration of The Penguin, with Farrell, IMHO, was more derivative of the real life relationship with Carlo Gambino and Albert "The Mad Hatter" Anastasia. Oz Cobb has a little of both, but more aligned to how Gambino had to very carefully navigate in a world far more hostile than he could manage on his own. Gambino rose by being clever, strategic and almost non threatening. You can see that with Cobb, the Falcone's see him as a pet or mascot, more than a true player in a larger game. In Coppola's The Godfather Part 2, the construction of Hyman Roth was built around Meyer Lansky, but there were shades of Gambino there too. Lansky was outcast in many ways in real life because he was Jewish, but he was not outcast to Lucky Luciano and Bugsy Siegel. But what if Lansky was never accepted? I believe some of that also drove how this conception of The Penguin broke down and was applied.
Doe anyone remember back in high school, when some small groups of guys, just bored and trying to get laid, started a small garage band? I can't imagine there exists an American high school where this is not a common trope at this point. But music as such, was supposed to appeal to young fury, rebellion and anti-establishment. But if you look at current high level music now, it's corporate, sanitized, politically correct and openly bought by the establishment. Part of this is a lagging indicator of the entire entertainment industry, for the past 15 years, moving it's tone overall towards more pro authoritarian themes. While this might be more anectdotal, maybe I have a different exposure point because I'm reading scripts and discerning what's going to get financed and if you read enough scripts, you can start to see trends and the loss of a very organic populist appeal that usually sells well to a working class widespread film audience.
Penguin is very working class. Many films and TV series cover systemic rot, but most of them lecture at you. This series lets you decide for yourself. My take on part of the appeal and popularity of the current Penguin S1 is it carries a working class aesthetic that hasn't been seen in a long time with a prestige series. It's the garage band filled with high schoolers who can't carry a tune, but there's actual fury and passion there. It's also a bit rebellious in that Hollywood in general, to my viewpoint, and honestly I'd consider myself relatively observant, just completely despises it's working class audience.
