THE PENGUIN. The Lost Magic of the Supervillain [REVIEW of the First Episode]

The first episode of the long-awaited “The Penguin” series is now available on the Max platform. However, it won’t be the salvation for DC, as some might have hoped. Oswald Cobblepot (the Penguin) in Matt Reeves’ universe has lost his surreal magic. On screen, he has become a standard Italian-style criminal. He’s lost his supervillain essence, which he undoubtedly had in Tim Burton’s films and even in the comics, although the series portrays him according to the literary pattern. This happened because the reality drawn on paper is much more symbolic than on screen. Additionally, the seriousness of the first episode evokes “The Godfather” more than a superhero movie. Unless Penguin is not supposed to be part of that. But will he manage as a standalone character in a mafia series, stripped of all fantasy superpowers and sci-fi elements, when detached from Batman’s legend? No, because he’s already become flat, non-comic-like, even boring, just ticking off the points on the checklist for how a noir-style series should look.

The creators took the concept of “noir” very literally in “The Penguin”. The series is dark, not emotionally, but in the brightness of the frames. Some scenes seem to have a slight vignette filter, making only the center of the shot visible. The contrasts are sharp, shadows deep, even in daylight. Without a bright TV or even with a bright one but under strong side lighting, you can barely see anything. So, the series works best in a dark room with an OLED screen or a high-quality mini-LED matrix with hundreds of independently lit zones. In other cases, watching it will only strain your eyes, and in some scenes, all you’ll see is Penguin’s face, lacking contrast, somewhere in the center of the image. Does this make sense? There was undoubtedly an artistic intention, as in “The Batman”, but the world presented in Reeves’ feature film was much richer. In “The Penguin”, it’s often hard to justify why simple scenes in a stylized bar-office space are so dark, even in the foreground. While watching the first episode, there was an urge to reach for the TV and pull away the annoying veil to visually breathe deeper.
The creators, following “The Boys“, ditched a uniform opening. They chose to show the title situationally. However, the first reveal didn’t make an impression. Even the embedding of a dead man’s face into the transparent letters felt too restrained, almost polite.

Maybe “The Penguin” would benefit from an independent, uniform, characteristic intro, since as a villain, he’s visually unimpressive. The problem is that creating a good opening is a real art, so Reeves and his team likely didn’t want to risk it. When I say “The Penguin” is visually unimpressive as a villain, I mean his way of moving, his overall agility, and his lack of fit into the superhero genre. I have a big problem with this antagonist, even though I hadn’t seen him before because he was always surrounded by more important characters. Besides, he was much more distinctive under Burton. He could hide in the background. Now, as a standalone hero, my issue has come to light. That’s why I doubt whether “The Penguin” deserved a series, because as the main character, without being balanced by another with different morals, he fails to capture the viewer’s attention intensely and authentically enough, even in the world of fiction. Unless someone enjoys the currently popular, but ultimately dramatically naive, romanticizing of criminals, casting them as grand characters. Coppola started this trend with “The Godfather”. Today, in the superhero genre, Penguin has been singled out for his own series, but so far, he’s a minor figure, at least after the first episode.

Colin Farrell, however, shines. He already did in Reeves’ full-length “The Batman”, and in the series, he proves that his life experience has brought him to the stage where, as a villain, he can carry the entire show and turn it into something artistically valuable. But he couldn’t restore the lost magic of the superhero villain, who has become just another criminal, and there are plenty of these “iconic” figures posing in contemporary cinema. Do we really need another story about a minor mobster, who impulsively murders someone like Alberto Falcone, and suddenly gets the chance to gradually dominate Gotham’s criminal world? The only question left is, where’s Batman? He’s always been so precise in handling even petty thugs who stole purses from old ladies. It would be nice to see him in “The Penguin”, which, as a series, lacks any unique characteristics – not in its music, cast, editing, or cinematography. It’s professional filmmaking, but created by filmmakers tired of their professionalism, like a professor just before retirement, delivering his best lecture for the thousandth time. So, the first episode, thanks only to Colin Farrell, gets 5/10.