Anyone else watch the premier of Gotham last night? If you haven’t heard about it, it’s a sort of Batman origin, but mostly Commissioner Gordon origin story. Jim Gordon is a new detective with Gotham PD and his first case is investigating the deaths of Thomas and Martha Wayne. He promises young Bruce that he’ll find the killer. Queue conspiracy of corrupt cops and organized crime. We also meet some of Batman’s rogues gallery before they are super villains.
It wasn’t bad, but I’m not sure it was good. I’ll give it a few more episodes, but I don’t think the show will last very long. Not enough “comic book” for the hardcore fans and “WTF, no Batman!” for the casual fans.
Donal Logue played grizzled and corrupt Det. Harvey Bullock. He was the standout of the show. I also liked Sean Pertwee as Alfred. I hope we see more of him.
I didn’t really care for Ben McKenzie as Gordon. Maybe he needs the mustache first. Also, Jada Pinkett Smith chewed so much scenery she left teeth marks.
I liked it enough to watch it again. I liked they way it was played as a police procedural within the Batman universe. Depends on how hard they begin relying on DC canon to attract viewers. It’s like a “live action” adaptation, without the capes. A novel approach that I will give a chance.
Some of the performances were uneven (Bullock often felt like he was reading lines) but I liked it. I suspect it is doomed though because no matter how interesting they make the show, half the audience is going to yell “When to we see Batman already!” every episode.
I thought it was interesting that the first thing the Penguin does after Gordon spares his life is kill an innocent man.
I agree with this. It adds some greyness to the proceedings - is there a little bit of truth to what Bullock and Falcone are saying, even if they are scum who make the city worse off in the end?
If they can do more that, that’ll be good. Of course, with Gordon being a “white knight” (as opposed to Batman’s “dark knight”), it may be difficult - or they may play around with Gordon being good, but realizing what his being a good cop may have cost the city and being more willing to allow some vigilante justice to make up for his well meaning errors.
Did you guys catch which of the cops was James Gordon. I was really confused who of the cops was supposed to be James Gordon. If only they would have identified who James Gordon was a couple more times it I probably would remember which of the cops was James Gordon.
Oh my god Harvey! You can’t just shoot an innocent man who’s trying kill you partner with a meat cleaver. You could go to jail or something.
The future wife of the guy I think is Gordon (If only someone would say his name again) must be loaded, no way would a cop afford an apartment like that.
See, that annoyed me. I thought Oswald’s path from cowardly stooge to crime boss would be interesting and maybe complex…but he’s just a killer.
I think that was also to outright set the precedent that this city can only get worse. Considering this show has showed all the subtlety of a flamethrower, I assume that was the point. That’s the idea which is why I had little interest in the show to begin with, the show is essentially about the failure of James Gordon. That’s depressing.
I did like the look of Gotham.
I liked Alfred being less “Pip, pip Mr. Wayne” and more “Oy, Bruce ged yur ass down here!”
There’s too much on Monday nights to watch everything. Fortunately, this show will be rebroadcast on Friday, at least in my area. Got the DVR set to grab it then.
I liked it very much. The last thing we need right now is a another comic-booky show. A realistic noir prequel to Batman (hopefully watching the highly disturbed Bruce Wayne’s transformation into the Dark Knight) is something I’ve been dreaming about for ages. IMHO, that should have been the starting point in the movie franchise; instead, it was all but skipped over in the first film with Michael Keaton.
I hope the writers are up to the task of keeping the series both dark and realistic. Evil should be shown as evil, not comical, the way it was depicted (lo, those many years ago) when Adam West was Batman.
THANK YOU! This bothered me more than anything in the episode, to the point that it was distracting. They didn’t shoot him for murdering the Waynes; they shot him for trying to kill them. As to why he did this if he was innocent… well… because, I guess.
I didn’t like it, though there was enough possibility to keep me tuning in for a few weeks at least. The writing was just so incredibly on the nose. Every development was hammered home, every Hey-That’s-a-Future-Batvillain was shoved so aggressively in our faces that it reduced the enjoyment of spotting them (come on, really, we had to have little Ivy playing with plants every time she was on the screen? How about a little subtlety, show?).
I also think Bruce is too young for his part of the show to be interesting. Jumping ahead a few years, to Bruce in his mid-to-late teens, would have been preferable. As it is, the kid can’t play any role except to have tedious weekly check-ins/lessons learned sessions with Gordon.
Can you provide some examples of these conventions? I’m just surprised since you are the first person that didn’t think it was comic booky–(and most people have meant comic booky in a good way).
He freaked because he was being framed. In a city like Gotham*, would you want to be hauled in by the cops on a bogus charge? :dubious:
If I were even partly responsible for someone’s death and later learned that it needn’t have happened at all, I might feel some pangs of guilt too.
*Or any other American city nowadays?
Costumes, super-hero quips, derring-do, outlandish criminal plots, that sort of thing. Compare Gotham to Adam West’s Batman, and you’ll see what I mean.
Kinda weird that Montoya is older than Gordon, but whatever. And could they have gotten Poison Ivy’s real name MORE wrong?
After thinking about it, I decided that was one of the most interesting things about the show so far. Whether intentional or just coincidental, it ties in nicely with the old gripe/observation of how many people wouldn’t have been murdered if Batman would just kill the Joker (or whatever other villain) rather than apprehending him just so he can break out and kill again.
The Graysons would be good. In the comic books, Dick’s parents were killed by mobsters trying to take over the circus, so he would have shared Bruce Wayne’s visceral hatred of criminals.
I want to see how Bruce develops into Batman, so long as it isn’t sugar-coated in any way. Something that was either underplayed or ignored altogether in earlier incarnations was just how mentally disturbed someone would have to be to dress up like a bat and stalk criminals through city alleys all night long.
