There have been many Batman TV shows over the years, both animated and live-action. But the one on Fox Gotham City is probably one of the most outlandish series: a prequel centered on Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie) investigating the murder of the Waynes while Bruce himself (David Mazouz) is just a child. And is his future rogues gallery around his age or a young adult?
Despite that strange premise, things paid off. Gotham City had a solid five-year run spanning 100 episodes, a prequel series in Pennyworth: The Origin of Batman’s Butlerand a passionate fan base that still has affection for him. Ahead of the show’s 10th anniversary on September 22, IGNITION has published an extensive retrospective on the series that includes interviews with the main cast, creator Bruno Heller, and executive producer (and recurring director/writer) Danny Cannon. As Heller explains, the show came about after Warner Bros. and CBS rejected his legal drama. The defenders (which also featured McKenzie) and was thinking about what to pitch next. He had decided on a Batman series because the character was ready for television, but said his son Felix (an avid comic book reader) helped him realize that the show should focus on Gordon rather than Batman.
“From there, a young detective investigating the Wayne murders was a natural concentration of ideas,” Heller said. “As soon as I came up with the idea that he was the cop investigating the Waynes’ deaths… The whole series is there. It’s Batman as a kid, the origin stories of all those characters like the Joker, the Riddler and the Penguin, but as young people.”
Cannon said Heller had two firm ideas for the first season: Gordon trying to fulfill his promise to Bruce to investigate the Wayne murders, and the story of Penguin’s (Robin Lord Taylor) rise to power. “You had the journey of a kid who lost his parents, and you had this other kid who had nothing,” he told IGN. “One was going to build his life with his butler and with Jim Gordon, and investigate the death of his parents and become curious. […] And this other one, the only way he could become a man and become the person he wanted to be was by stomping on the skulls of the dead and doing it himself in a nefarious way.”
Doing anything Batman-related comes with a lot of baggage, and there was an understandable secrecy surrounding the show at first. Most of the cast admitted that they didn’t even initially realize they were auditioning for a Batman show. While Heller told McKenzie that Gordon was written with him in mind, Sean Pertwee (Alfred) found out in a conversation with Heller and Cannon right before the audition; and for Camren Bicondova (Selina Kyle) it all completely fell into place the moment she was told she’d gotten the part. “I think they said, ‘You’re Catwoman,’ but the first thing they said was ‘meow.’ And I was like, ‘What? I don’t understand,'” she recalled.
Like McKenzie, Mazouz knew he was auditioning for Bruce, though he admitted he couldn’t remember how he learned that information. Heller claims he was at the top of her list “pretty early on,” and Cannon considered it fortunate that Mazouz was cast as the lead in the two-season Fox series. Tap, whose creators recommended him to Cannon and Heller. Mazouz landed the role in early 2014, and recalled that it was his Bar Mitzvah and he saw his friends wearing Batman clothes. That moment, he said, marked the first time he truly realized he was going to be Ordinance, regardless of whether he would wear the suit or not.
Looking back Gotham City, Its cast and crew have fond memories of working on the series. Pertwee said he goes out of his way to stay in touch with his former castmates, and many consider it a show that simply couldn’t be made these days. Taylor noted that a big-budget, 22-episode superhero show “doesn’t sound like something that’s coming back anytime soon” on network television, let alone the freedom it had to play with the Batman mythos on a weekly basis. “We showed that we could play with canon and play with these classic stories in a way that was brave in a lot of ways and also unexpected for a lot of fans. Ultimately, we’re going to be able to play with the … [it’ll] “It turns out to be an infinitely refreshing take on these stories that have been around for 80 years.”
Bicondova said the show “brought a different twist to comic book stories” that couldn’t be found in other shows back then, or even now. Pertwee echoed that sentiment, believing people would find elements of the show that were “right on” and “humanized the craziness” of Batman’s corner of the DC universe. Speaking of those characters, she added that the show’s backstories about Batman and his villains would resonate in other media incarnations.
McKenzie paid homage to other DC shows in later years, but believed that Gotham City was “quite different from many of the others that existed then and now. Without Gotham City, “I don’t know if they would do a show about Penguin,” McKenzie said.[It’s] “It’s a testament to both Robin’s performance and that you can make a network television show essentially PG-13, if not PG-18, without dumbing it down for audiences, while still keeping the story lines intricate and the characters three-dimensional. I’d like to think we’ve taken a step forward in that regard.”
“The legacy of a program is whether people enjoyed doing it, whether they left feeling well treated and had fun, whether they made friends and felt proud,” Heller said.[Gotham] It’s a small part of a larger Batman mythology.” Comparing Batman to a pop culture saint, he said, “I hope we’ve done him justice.” [and] “He took it seriously enough to honor it, and he took it lightly enough to make it work as a TV show.”
You can read the full article at Gotham City herewhich covers the show’s production design, the incorporation of Batman’s more superheroic side, and more. While you’re here, check out Gotham City and everything is Gotham City-ness in the comments below.
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