When you think of a superhero movie, you are probably thinking of bright supersuits and dramatic action scenes with even more dramatic villains. In today’s Marvel Cinematic Universe, you probably think of snarky one–liners, less saturation than you would traditionally imagine, and a balancing act between gritty darkness and fun action. Perhaps after all this time, the movies and television shows sort of blur together with some standing out but most falling into a tapestry of mediocrity. We have been long overdue for a show that takes a new angle on a classic story.
HBO’s The Penguin feels like a breath of fresh air in this oversaturated, post–Avengers, superhero landscape. It embraces an aesthetic somewhat different from what we are used to seeing in superhero movies. With its crime, Italian American New York accents, and true moral ambiguity, The Penguin feels cut from the tried and true noir crime drama. This subversion of genre is, in my opinion, what makes The Penguin so good.
The Penguin tells the story of Oswald “Oz” Cobb (Colin Farrell), also known as The Penguin, a cruel nickname in reference to the limp he has due to his disfigurement. An insecure and calculating man, Cobb begins his story as a lieutenant under crime boss Carmine Falcone (Mark Strong). The show picks up right after Carmine’s death, where his son Alberto (Michael Zegen) is now his successor to the Falcone empire.
In a fit of petty rage spurred on by Alberto’s insults, Cobb murders him. His actions royally piss off Alberto’s sister, Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti), recent Arkham Asylum graduate and reformed serial killer. The show follows the tango between Sofia and Cobb, as Cobb tries to climb his way up the organized crime ladder and Sofia seeks to avenge her brother’s death. The show dives into the psyches of all its characters, as we watch the schemes unravel and morality dissipate.
The superhero film is dichotomous by nature. In order for it to exist it must represent two things: good and bad, crime and justice. When these films play with nuance around the subject matter, you are still left understanding that the good guys are virtuous and the bad guys are evil.
The problem with a great deal of recent superhero media is that it treats its characters as archetypes. Our hero will fight a new, iconic villain in each new movie installation that comes out. The characters being adapted have—after all this time of existing in comics, film, video games, and TV—developed an existence of their own.
Because of this, oftentimes, a film might use name recognition as a shortcut rather than developing them as characters. When someone says “Batman” an image will surely come to mind of a brooding, masked, angst–filled vigilante and his revolving door of villains and sidekicks. Attention paid to backstory and interpersonal dynamics is always handled with the ginger care of a person terrified of angering a base of superfans with an encyclopedic knowledge of a character and the studio investing millions of dollars into the project.
And hence, we often find our superhero media playing it safe. It embraces the action movie style that seems to be the current fad and makes minor tweaks to a character without much experimentation or creative liberty. As we have seen in the past couple of years, at this point, the 2010s Avengers inspired action movie does not cut it anymore.
The Penguin is the perfect avenue for breaking the formula. The Penguin doesn’t really have good guys. It's a crime drama about crime, that just so happens to have superheroes exist in its canon. It creates an atmosphere of danger and intrigue as you are sucked into the illicit world Oz lives in. Gotham’s seedy underbelly feels tangible and you feel yourself unsure of who to root for.
The structure of The Penguin feels reminiscent of classic crime films and TV shows like The Godfather. As you watch each episode you find yourself forgetting you are watching something in the DC universe. Rather than spandex and leaping over rooftops, The Penguin has normal clothes and car chases. While many superhero dramas that seek to embrace realism fall into the depressing and boring hole of poorly executed grimdark media, The Penguin’s realism feels authentic.
Oz, too, is not the perfect, formulaic antihero. Farrell does a wonderful job of portraying his insecurity, intelligence, and sincerity wrapped up in a complicated little bundle of a man. He is petty and insecure and he makes it everyone’s problem and yet is competent and terrifying.
In the first episode, we are given a peek into how complex Cobb’s psyche is. After Oz rushes home to take his mother, Francis (Deirdre O'Connell), and hide her so that the Falcone’s do not involve her in the hunt to find Alberto’s killer, we see Oz’s mother’s reaction to his murder of Alberto that landed him in an incredibly life threatening pickle. After 40 minutes of watching Oz bully and intimidate the people around him, we finally see his head hanging down as he obediently answers his mother’s questions. The scene feels like a little boy being scolded by his mother. As the truth comes out, and Oz admits to killing Alberto, we expect his mother to be upset with him for impulsively landing himself in such a dangerous situation.
“Why’d you shoot him, why?” she asks.
After some resistance and expectant silence from his mother, Oz finally says, in a hushed tone, as if embarrassed by himself: “Fine … he f**kin’ laughed at me. Alright?”
His mother smiles, and the viewer might anticipate her to incredulously laugh at the stupidity of the reason. Instead, she berates him for ever showing any shame for his actions, calling him a “weak pussy boy.”
Her reaction is unexpected. Oz’s mother tells him that killing Alberto Falcone was not impulsive, but rather it was instinctual, and that he is now closer than ever to getting everything he deserves. It is her words that prompt Cobb to use this as an opportunity to seize power. The scene subverts what you might expect of a mafioso in a situation like this. Cobb is not a strong, stoic, patriarch. He is an insecure, enabled, mama’s boy. But when he wins, it feels like watching an underdog succeed, despite the depravity of many of his actions. You cannot help but root for him even if he isn't like the perfect, silent, cigarette–smoking, confident Don Corleone.
The Penguin is not necessarily redefining any particular genre. It aesthetically bears a great deal of similarity to its mafia movie predecessors. Yet nonetheless, there is something very refreshing about The Penguin. It perfectly utilizes the rich lore of its characters to fully flesh them out as antiheroes.
The best part is, you need not know anything about DC to watch this show. While the characters are surely taken from the story of Batman, Batman is generally irrelevant to the procession of events in The Penguin. In watching this villain’s story about his rise to power, you barely think about Batman at all.
The inspirations for this show are clear as day; the internet has already made a million posts about Oz essentially being Tony Soprano. But this decision was not the most obvious one. With the recent superhero television, taking this, sobering, slow built up, chess game of action route was a gamble that paid off. With season one just finishing, The Penguin is a wonderful and refreshing watch that anyone could enjoy.
In a media landscape of overdone, Marvel formula film and TV, the drug dealing, scheming, mafia aesthetic of The Penguin is a wonderful new world to get sucked into. The dark tone and true moral ambiguity of the show shed new light on what can be done with superhero media. And frankly, the city of Gotham has always carried with it an air of darkness.
