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‘The Penguin’ And ‘The Batman’ Share The Same Theme

November 13, 2024

Colin Farrell as Oz Cobb in HBO’s ‘The Penguin’

HBO

The Penguin follows Colin Farrell’s titular crime boss as he grows into his traditional supervillain role, climbing the greasy, blood-stained ladder of organized crime to the very top.

The Penguin is a spin-off from Matt Reeves’ The Batman, and the two explore similar themes, featuring self-serving villains who believe they are acting in the interests of the working class.

This incarnation of Batman is concerned with the question of wealth inequality, and his antagonists cloak their true motives under a veil of righteous anger.

Or, as Robert Pattinson’s Batman puts it, “vengeance.”

Spoilers Ahead for ‘The Penguin’ and ‘The Batman’

‘The Batman’ Is About Misplaced Anger

The Batman establishes Bruce Wayne as an emotionally damaged vigilante, beating up street thugs to avenge his murdered parents, a man who lives to inflict violence on those he deems deserving.

The film follows Batman as he collects clues from Paul Dano’s Riddler, a serial killer who is murdering Gotham’s corrupt, wealthy elite. This version of Batman is still young, and the Riddler (along with Zoë Kravitz’s Catwoman) give him an education on the real source of the rot that infects Gotham.

Batman comes to understand that the institutions of Gotham are hopelessly corrupt, and he has been blinded from seeing it because of his billionaire upbringing.

In fact, Batman almost misses the Riddler’s final clue, as the weapon Riddler used to murder Gotham’s mayor was a carpet tucker, a tool Batman did not recognize, as he has never worked with his hands.

Once Batman was informed of the tool’s purpose, he was able to tear up the carpet, revealing the Riddler’s plan to explode Gotham’s seawall and flood the city in a “righteous” purge.

At this point in the film, Batman’s belief system has been shattered by the revelation that the Riddler was inspired by his costumed vigilantism, and believed they were on the same team.

Batman is forced to conclude that beating the snot out of muggers was not a solution to anything—he was really doing it for himself.

The film ends with Batman understanding that he needs to help the needy people of Gotham, not just punish petty criminals.

The Riddler Is An Angry Populist

The Riddler reflects and contrasts with Batman, having grown up an orphan, just like Bruce Wayne.

Unlike Bruce, the Riddler grew up in squalor, and was radicalized by the suffering of Gotham’s orphans, knowing that the city officials were redirecting funds away from public services to fill their own pockets.

The Riddler actually had a deeper understanding of the issues plaguing Gotham, but used righteous anger to justify his sickening acts of violence.

The Riddler claims to represent the working class (and even has a streaming channel where he radicalizes other angry young men), but his goal is to flood the city in an act of environmental terrorism, condemning the citizens to injury, struggle and death.

We see the aftermath of this in The Penguin, when Vic (Rhenzy Feliz) suffers the loss of his family, as his district is flooded by the Riddler’s careless destruction.

The Riddler may have experienced the depravity of Gotham’s failing institutions, but he has no real solutions—only grand, narcissistic acts of violence.

The Penguin Is Also An Angry Populist

The Penguin has much in common with the Riddler, having come from humble beginnings, spending his life being overlooked, or outright mocked. He is disabled, and his family needs to collaborate with the mob just to make ends meet.

However, Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell) doesn’t suffer a terrible home life; his soul seems rotten from the beginning, and he understands that life in Gotham is a race to the bottom. Oz desperately craves respect, and recognizes that other people in his orbit feel similarly maligned.

Hence, the Penguin spends every single episode lying to his allies and enemies, always pretending to be on the same team, emphasizing that they are all below the boot, and need to rise up.

At one point, the Penguin even gives a rousing speech to the lowly gangs of Gotham, and sparks something of a criminal class revolution, promising to tip the scales in their favor and demolish the old power structures.

The Penguin even manages to restore the power to Crown Point, Gotham’s most desolate district, after threatening a congressman with violence—notably, Batman does not accomplish this (to be fair, the show hints that Batman is busy with other matters).

However, Oz does this to impress his mother, who he has an unsettling, Oedipal relationship with; one gets the sense that he is only angry about the wealth inequality of Gotham because he happened to be born on the wrong side of the bridge.

During the Penguin’s “man of the people,” populist phase, he is flooding the streets of Gotham with “bliss,” a powerful new drug. Hence, the Penguin is filling his pockets with profits wrought from the suffering of the working class, all while claiming to represent the downtrodden.

The end of the series sees the Penguin ascend to the elite caste of Gotham, a crime lord cosplaying as old money.

He accomplishes this by convincing the underlings of Gotham’s gangs to rise up against their masters, then brutally murders his own underling, Vic, who helped him make his way to the top.

The Riddler and the Penguin both weaponize their working class identity to fuel their narcissistic goals, all while worsening the suffering of the regular people of Gotham.

Batman begins his journey on the same path, but learns from his mistakes, having had the right intentions.

It seems likely that The Batman Part 2 will continue this theme of misplaced righteous anger, and the clash between Gotham’s corrupt elites, and everyone else.