Simply while you thought you have been performed getting excited for Batman tasks in an oversaturated market, who ought to come strolling alongside however “Batman: The Animated Sequence” co-creator Bruce Timm? The DC animation legend’s “Batman: Caped Crusader” may very properly be “the perfect piece of Batman media in a decade,” to cite Witney Seibold’s glowing evaluate for /Movie. It is actually a worthy successor to “The Animated Sequence.” The place that beloved ’90s cartoon was restricted by the censors at Fox Youngsters, Timm’s newest animated tackle the Darkish Knight — which almost died on the vine after it was dropped by Max, just for Prime Video to select it up — is given the house to be as emotionally mature, political, and even scary because it desires to be.
Moderately than placing a superficially grimdark or excessively violent spin on the DC Comics universe, “Caped Crusader” takes benefit of its lack of censorship to dig deeper into not simply the psychology of Bruce Wayne and his rogues gallery, but additionally the underlying themes of sophistication warfare and systemic corruption that’ve at all times been part of the Batman mythology. Certainly, the ’40s-set crime drama re-imagines lots of the Darkish Knight’s best enemies in ways in which really feel notably well timed in 2024: Clayface is now mainly an incel and one large homage to traditional black-and-white horror cinema; Catwoman is a spoiled heiress who resorts to crime when her checking account runs dry; Harvey Dent is a morally compromised district lawyer whose eventual transformation into Two-Face takes on a good higher sense of tragedy; and so forth.
Even The Penguin will get a makeover right here as Oswalda (with an “a”) Cobblepot, a classy, cold-blooded woman of crime dropped at life with relish by the voice of Minnie Driver. Why gender-flip the Penguin? To paraphrase Timm and producer James Tucker — why not?
Caped Crusader’s Penguin is a component Marlene Dietrich, half drag queen
As Timm famous in an interview with the Tv Academy, the thought for the present’s gender-swapped Penguin took place throughout pre-production when he pointed on the market are way more memorable male Batman villains than there are feminine ones. “And off the highest of my head, I mentioned, ‘We by no means actually may determine precisely what to do with The Penguin, what the gimmick for The Penguin can be. What if we gender-flip The Penguin?'” he recalled. The end result was Oswalda, a burgeoning Gotham mobster who’s simply as ruthless as her male predecessors and would not blink twice at killing a possible traitor, even when it is somebody near her.
Like Oswald Cobblepot, nonetheless, Oswalda has a way of flamboyance that evokes old-school Hollywood with greater than a contact of camp — on this case, appropriately, the drag queen selection. As Tucker defined:
“When he mentioned ‘Perhaps we are able to gender-flip Penguin,’ I simply bought this flood of concepts. I used to be pondering of Marlene Dietrich in her tuxedo and ‘Cabaret’ the musical and the artwork type of cabaret, and I simply began drawing. I immediately bought a flood of concepts. Additionally, I used to be pondering a bit of little bit of Harvey Fierstein and ‘Hairspray’ and Divine. It simply was like I knew immediately what it might be.”
Admittedly, Oswalda is not as fascinating as the opposite reimagined rogues in “Caped Crusader.” Even together with her filicidal tendencies (that are actually extra stunning than the violent mood tantrums her male counterparts are vulnerable to), her motives and mindset simply aren’t that completely different from earlier iterations of the character. Be that as it could, her introduction within the present’s very first episode, “In Treacherous Waters,” permits “Caped Crusader” to announce itself as one thing completely different and even surprising. Who is aware of: The already-ordered second season might but reveal there’s extra to this slippy crime mama than meets the (monocled) eye.
“Batman: Caped Crusader” season 1 is now streaming on Prime Video.
