When Oswald “Oz” Cobb (Colin Farrell) limps through a dark urban landscape and, together with Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti), turns various mafia clans against each other in a game of cat and mouse, no viewer would actually think that he is currently watching a spin-off series of the last Batman film. Batman, the superhero from the DC comic universe, appears at least in the first episodes of the lavishly produced HBO series that are available so far The Penguin not at all. Let’s see if he still jumps out of the box like Kai at the end.
Of course, anyone who recognizes Matt Reeve’s three-hour gloomy The Batman (2022), Colin Farrell, who was actually made up beyond recognition by make-up artists and played a supporting role there as “The Penguin”. But the mafia series, set in a Gotham destroyed by flooding, has none of the morality or pathos usually celebrated in the DC Universe. On the contrary: The Penguin is a stylized, atmospherically dense, at times almost socially realistic urban drama about organized crime and the desperate fight for survival of those who didn’t get a good place in the hierarchy.
There are three of them: First of all, there is Oz, the henchman of the recently murdered head of the Falcone clan, and his daughter Sofia, who was deported by the family to a psychiatric clinic because she threatened to become a danger to the head. Oz was once the chauffeur of the mafia daughter who was supposed to inherit the Falcone empire, including the eternal enmity with the Maroni clan, before she was locked away as a security risk. After the death of Carmine Falcone (Mark Strong), a dispute breaks out within the clan, which Oz fuels into a real gang war. Sofia helps him and goes to war against her family. In addition to this escalation of power politics in the mafia milieu, the question is: Who controls the trade in a new drug that is grown on mushrooms in cellars and consumed as red, liquefying crystal? The third person who is literally fighting for survival is the non-white teenager Victor (Rhenzy Feliz), who was forcibly recruited by Oz as a driver and whose family died when the slums of Gotham were flooded.
Family matters
The loss of family and the fight for relatives and their legacy becomes the central motif of this series. Oz looks after his demented mother in the suburbs. Sofia tries to come to terms with her mother’s suicide and the hatred of the other Falcone family members and discovers disturbing connections. Victor has to deal with the fact that his neighborhood is flooded – because of the one at the end of the film The Batman flood caused by an attack – and he no longer has any social points of reference. These three lonely, desperate and violent characters join forces, with Sofia’s campaign against her family soon becoming a fight of a tough woman against the all-dominating male violence of her clan.
The Penguin is not the first attempt in the DC Universe to leave the genre cage of flat fantasy. Already had it Joker (2019), the sequel of which can be seen in cinemas from October 5th, is very different from previous DC stories, this also applies to The Penguin. These films and series from the so-called DC Elseworlds try to take advantage of the brand’s popularity, but to tell different stories apart from the established heroes.
Are spin-off series perhaps even the better sequels in the fantastic universes with which the film industry has lured millions of viewers to cinemas over decades in tried-and-tested branded product lines? Another example is the series Andor (2022) from the Star Wars universe, which has nothing to do with the other “May the Force be with you” fuss of the star saga. The dark, political series with an anti-fascist twist against the Empire, including street battles against imperial riot cops, largely foregoes the usual fantasy apparatus of Star Wars. Andor comes without lightsabers, Jedis and floating ghosts. Instead, the revolutionary becoming a subject of Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) is staged.
The series also sets its own accent Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (2023) on Apple TV+. The spin-off series from the “Legendary Pictures/Monsterverse”, which has brought five feature films about Godzilla and King Kong to cinemas since 2014 (most recently Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire), tells the story of three young people who suddenly find themselves in the middle of the global battle over giant monsters. Instead of aggressive military officers or secretive scientists who deal with the phenomenon of dinosaur-like creatures or fight them by extermination, here is the queer elementary school teacher Cate Randa (Anna Sawai, who just won an Emmy for her appearance in the series Shōgun awarded) from the Bay Area, the young artist Kentaro (Ren Watabe) from Tokyo and the young black hacker May (Kiersey Clemons) at the center of the story. The story of Godzilla’s destruction of San Francisco (from the film Godzilla vs. Kong) remains in the background at the beginning. Before that, the series unrolls an exciting Japanese-American family story, which primarily tells of anti-Asian racism in the USA. It’s about trauma, cultural and family identities, but also personal secrets.
As well as Monarch: Legacy of Monsters the action-packed blockbusters of the Godzilla series Andor and now too The Penguin cast their anchors in completely different waters. This is exciting, but it shows once again that the film industry in the field of fantasy only invests large budgets in proven product lines.
The Penguin Lauren LeFranc USA 2024, on Sky since September 20th, new episodes every week
