News Variety Reports Robert Pattinson is the new Batman

I know. But there have been skinny Penguins before, and with the somewhat dark and gritty vibe they seem to be going for with Pattinson, I would be honestly surprised if this version of the Penguin was anything more than a bit chubby at most.

 

Yeah, no one seemed to mind too much how gaunt and pale the Gotham Penguin was.

 

Why not? There are plenty of plus-size people in the world; there's nothing wrong with it, and nothing about it that's in any way incompatible with "dark and gritty" (look at Vincent D'Onofrio as the Kingpin in Daredevil). Heck, we've finally outgrown fat-shaming enough that we can even have plus-size people in heroic-lead roles, like Allison Tolman as the lead of ABC's new Emergence. Of course, movies tend to be more backward about such things than TV, but still, I don't seen the slightest reason why a movie would require Oswald Cobblepot to be as lanky as Robin Lord-Taylor.

Besides, it's not like the Penguin is actually obese, outside of the Tim Burton design used in Batman Returns and Batman: The Animated Series. In his usual design, he's just a short, middle-aged guy with the same kind of potbellied physique as millions of other middle-aged men who don't work out a lot. There's nothing remotely extraordinary about his physical appearance aside from his beakish nose and his incongruously formal attire in mundane situations. Heck, Patton Oswalt would make a terrific Penguin.

 

I agree as a comedian Jonah Hill is overrated and not funny at all, but in dramatic roles he's not bad. He's not great, but I wouldn't call him terrible either.

Not sure I see him as the Riddler, but this movie does seem to be going for some truly unconventional casting anyway.

 

I don't think I've ever seen Hill in live action. I only know him from his voice roles in the How to Train Your Dragon films and Megamind. (And apparently he's Green Lantern in LEGO Batman, but that's a minor role.)

 

I don't buy him as the Riddler (for me, you need someone who exudes intellectual superiority, and that is not Jonah Hill) but I will say I thought he turned in a pretty great performance in Moneyball.

 

Some comic actors and comedians can make for excellent or at least acceptable Riddlers. Frank Gorshin is the gold standard of Riddlers but one could argue that John Astin and Jim Carrey didn't do bad jobs in their own interpretations of the character.

Hill? Eh. I don't see him as Batman villain material but then I was and remain a fan of a series where Milton Berle played a gangster who wore lilac-colored clothing.

 

Carrey wasn't really playing the Riddler, though, he was playing a Joker knockoff. That movie completely missed the point of the character. The difference between the Joker and the Riddler is that jokes are absurdities to react to emotionally, but riddles are puzzles to be solved intellectually. The Riddler shouldn't be a manic, cackling loon (or a Two-Face-like split personality as on Gotham), but a calculating mastermind. Sure, Gorshin's Riddler was known for his tendency to leap around and laugh, but his laughter was smug, superior, and sadistic, the glee of someone convinced that he was the smartest person in the room and had outwitted the idiots around him.

As for John Astin, the problem with his Riddler is that he was trying to imitate Gorshin and doing it poorly. He didn't really try to create his own version of the character, just to copy the existing version. So I don't even count his Riddler as a distinct interpretation.

 

I'm not saying it's impossible, just that I would be honestly surprised. I don't think it's going to be the kind of movie where they want to do the 'looks harmless and funny but is actually really dangerous' thing you're talking about.

As for the rest, you're not giving any reasons why Penguin needs to be heavy, either, and your last point goes far enough that I don't see why Hill as the Penguin would even (physically) be a problem in the first place, which is where this tangent started. Not that Hill even needs to be heavy to play a heavy character - DeVito wore a fat suit, anyway.

Maybe I haven't seen his best movies, but I've seen him pop up a LOT in all different kinds of films, and never seen a performance I liked yet.

 

For me, the gold standard for the Riddler is John Glover in Batman the animated series. He wasn't trying to be whacky, he was trying to be clever. The Riddler is the guy who may be smarter than Batman. Carrey took all the wrong lessons from Gorshin.

 

And I don't see why the "kind of movie" it is requires every actor in it to be rail-thin. I'm not talking about morbid obesity here, I'm just talking about looking like a normal, schlubby middle-aged guy with some heft on his bones, a Patton Oswalt or Jason Alexander type. I think both Bob Hoskins and Philip Seymour Hoffman were considered for the role at various times back in the day, and they both would've fit the type more or less.

Huh? I wasn't arguing against Hill as the Penguin, since he's reportedly up for the Riddler. (And since I only know him from voice roles and the occasional headshot in recent articles, I don't actually know what his physical build is.) I was arguing against your premise that the Penguin would have to be "skinny," a word that refers to an ectomorphic, atypically thin body type like Robin Lord Taylor's.

Which, again, was to fit Tim Burton's highly revisionist take on the character. DeVito could've been a pretty good Penguin without the grotesque makeup and fat suit.

Yes. B:TAS got the Riddler's character right, although they had trouble telling good Riddler stories because they tried to update him by building his capers around computers and video games and doing it rather badly.

 

Another confusing thread because of extreme overuse of the ignore feature.

 

I never said it requires every actor to be rail-thin. I didn't even say it *requires* the Penguin to be thin. I said I, personally, don't expect this version of the Penguin to be noticably fat. I may be wrong. But my expectation at this point is something more along the lines of gangster Penguin a la Gotham than traditional penguin (with the caveat - before you go back down the same path again - that gangster Penguin doesn't have to be as thin as he was on Gotham, he just isn't likely to be significantly fat. There is a medium space in between the two). I'm not making predictions here or telling anyone what 'will' happen in the movie. Stop trying to categorically disprove something that I made clear from the start was just a personal feeling.

As I said, that wasn't my premise. And you inserted yourself into a conversation that started when I said if we have to have Jonah Hill as one or the other (because a linked article said he was up for either Penguin or Riddler) I'd rather have him as Penguin (for reasons entirely unrelated to size). To which someone else said 'Jonah Hill isn't fat anymore' as if that were a problem, which is why I mentioned my personal feeling while also pointing out that Penguin doesn't have to be fat and skinny Jonah can play a fat person even if he is. And somehow you turned that into 'Penguin MUST be skinny' and tried to disprove what I didn't say by talking about how Penguin doesn't need to be extraordinarily fat, which is literally what I was saying in the first place.

 

No, I'm saying it makes no sense to suggest that an overweight actor somehow wouldn't be serious enough for a dramatic movie. You keep saying that the "kind of movie" it probably is precludes more than a slight amount of chubbiness, and I'm saying, why do you think there's a correlation there? Lots of heavyset men have starred in very serious, dramatic films, going back to the likes of Orson Welles, Charles Laughton, and Marlon Brando. I just don't see what the level of seriousness of the film has to do with the actor's body type. And you mistook me to be saying that the Penguin needed to be fat, and I was saying, no, that's not what I'm suggesting, I just don't see why any body type should be off limits for a serious film.

 

1) I didn't mistake you saying Penguin needed to be fat. Someone else specifically said that and my entire side of this conversation which you inserted yourself into has been in the context of that discussion.

2) I still never said fat characters don't belong in serious movies. I said the dark and gritty style (and just all the general info I've heard about so far) of this movie made me think they were likely to go a particular direction with this specific character, which would likely not be very fat.

Specifically I get the idea this Penguin will quite possibly wind up in a serious, direct physical altercation with Batman and the filmmaker will want him to a) be reasonably scary/intimidating and b) make a fair show of the physical fighting, even though he obviously won't be on Batman's level. And yes, you can bring up the Kingpin again if you like, but I still just think it's more likely in this particular instance that they'll make a more or less normal weight to maybe slightly chubby gangster-esque Penguin than that they will a Kingpin-esque Penguin.

 

I don't think that follows. There are ways Penguin could pose a physical threat to Batman without fisticuffs, by using weaponry or henchpersons. For instance, in the animated series of the same name as this film, the Penguin, while a reasonably capable fighter himself, had two very creepy, birdlike female martial artists as his enforcers, and they were rather scary. Give Penguin a similarly intimidating sidekick -- say, Killer Croc, or maybe a version of Magpie for the bird theme -- and he doesn't have to do the fighting himself. The idea of the Penguin is that he's unassuming at first glance but quite deadly in practice because of his cunning and ruthlessness. He's not supposed to look dangerous; that's the whole point. What makes him scary is what he does.

Although it's certainly possible for a heavyset man to be an effective fighter. Watch any Sammo Hung movie.

 

^That's more or less the direction the Arkham games took with their version of The Penguin, who is very short and fat. In Arkham City there is a bit fight, but in it he's using a big shot gun or rifle, and you have to avoid him until you sneak up and grab him. You have another confrontation in Arkham Knight, and this time you have to fight through a whole ton of goons, before you basically just grad Penguin and talk to him. I could easily see scenarios like that in a movie.
As for Hill, I just don't see him as Riddler. I've seen him in a few things, and that's just not really the kind of character I see him playing.

Wow, that's a bit extreme.

 

Just do with him what Eddie Murhpy did in the 1990s for a couple movies or more, put him in a fat suit and be done.

Which isn't to say an anorexic Penguin couldn't work, but acting talent to really energize what's on script becomes key. But if Pengy was created as a comical-in-appearance mastermind that nobody would suspect (until engaging in enough capers, but who wants another bloody pointless "origins story" or prequel or whatever. Sometimes villains come in pre-established with their own iconic attributes and it needn't get any more convoluted than that. Besides, we all know why Penguin became a baddie, using a retcon in an unintended way:



...umm, check out 13:58-14:10 for the batty explanation...

)

 

I was about to say we didn't know how much Batman was paid, but then I realized that Pattinson probably wasn't cheap.

On the other hand, Pattinson has said he was a big Batman fan, and he does all those low- to mid-budget arthouse movies. Maybe he is cheap. Not like he needs the cash, with all the money he made from the Twilight movies, after all.

 

Actors usually don't make much from their first superhero roles because of the promise of big pay days in the sequels. henry Cavill got $300k for MOS.