The Batman and The Penguin offer a very grounded interpretation of Gotham City. While the version in DC Comics sees all sorts of superheroes and vigilantes flying around fighting absurd supervillains (like Calendar Man), Matt Reeves’ take on Gotham has grounded the city in reality. The Penguin itself takes obvious inspiration from classic crime dramas like Goodfellas, The Godfather, and HBO’s own The Sopranos. But Reeves’ Gotham as a whole was inspired by William Friedkin’s The French Connection.
In an exclusive interview with MovieWeb, The Penguin production designer Kalina Ivanov explained how Matt Reeves and showrunner Lauren LeFranc wanted their version of Gotham to be inspired by Friedkin’s timeless ’70s classic. “[Something] that Matt said to us and Lauren was that he really wanted us to look at The French Connection,” Ivanov said. Reeves’ version of Gotham was inspired by a 1980s version of New York. While The French Connection was released a decade earlier, its presentation of New York was exactly what Reeves had in mind for Gotham City.
Additionally, much like The Batman, The Penguin also drew great inspiration from Frank Miller’s 1986 Batman run, Batman: Year One. Kalina Ivanov continued:
“Once you know that the comic book was written in 1986, so it was ’80s New York or ’80s Gotham, and once you know that [Reeves’] frame of reference is The French Connection, then you have a really great point of view about what locations you’re going to search for in New York, and what is the architectural vernacular that you’re going to go for as a designer, which meant always being underpasses, under bridges, under arches.”
How The Batman Differs from Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight
Before the new millennium, almost every on-screen version of Batman featured outlandish and cartoonish elements — after all, he is an orphan who beats up criminals dressed like a bat, instead of going to therapy. However, Christopher Nolan changed Batman on the big screen forever by setting his Dark Knight Trilogy in a grounded, realistic version of Gotham City. Matt Reeves’ version of Gotham takes a similar approach. However, the version of the city shown in The Batman and The Penguin isn’t afraid to take influence from the original comics.
According to Kalina Ivanov, The Penguin‘s setting differs from Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy because it features actual sections of Gotham from the Batman comics. In the comics, Gotham City is divided into various sections, including Old Gotham, Burnside, Bristol, and Bludhaven (the home of Batman’s former Robin, Nightwing). The Penguin takes place in Crown Point, one of the most impoverished areas in Gotham City, especially following the floods in The Batman. Crown Point appeared in The Dark Knight trilogy, but, for some reason, Nolan decided to change its name to separate it from the comics. Ivanov explained:
”
They did not want to be in a Tim Burton kind of look. And they wanted to create a different Gotham from Christopher Nolan’s Gotham
, and in Christopher Nolan mythology, it’s The Narrows; the equivalent of Crown Point. So, they even changed the name of it.”