There will be plenty of villainy plaguing Gotham City this fall, but don’t expect Batman to save the day.
As the new Bat-prequel “Gotham” premieres — Monday at 8 p.m. on Fox — Bruce Wayne is only a grieving tween, more suited to dressing up to go trick or treating than to dispense justice. So the job of keeping the crime-infested metropolis (relatively) safe falls on the square shoulders of young Detective James Gordon (Ben McKenzie).
“It’s like instead of Batman, they get me,” McKenzie says. “No pressure. At the same time, it is mythology that is so interesting. After I started reading the script, I realized that I’m not even a hardcore Batman fan and I find all this stuff fascinating.”
Gordon and his cantankerous partner Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue) have their case-files full with plenty of “fascinating stuff.”
“Gotham” opens with the iconic murder of Bruce Wayne’s (David Mazouz) parents, the act that ultimately inspires him to grow into a vigilante, and the origin stories of comic book villains Penguin (Robin Taylor), Catwoman (Camren Bicondova), The Riddler (Cory Michael Smith) and a new gangster with the moniker of Fish Mooney (Jada Pinkett Smith).
Without a working bat-signal, though, the New York-shot series is a tougher beat than the one McKenzie policed for five seasons on NBC’s drama “Southland.” Just check out the nasty battle-scar he notched on his forehead only 10 days ago filming a fight scene in a Manhattan office building.
“I did it once correctly and the second time around I just missed,” he says. “I slammed my own head into the edge of the pillar and opened up a pretty big gash right on the top of my forehead… but I’m all right.”
Warner Brothers and DC Comics had been circling show-runner Bruno Heller for years to quarterback a series, but “The Mentalist” veteran feared the scale of a weekly TV series would be kryptonite to portraying a superhero realistically.
“It’s hard especially on network TV to make a realistic superhero world live because by its nature it’s supernatural,” says Heller. “It’s much harder to sustain the suspension of disbelief that you can in a movie on a screen with people who defy the laws of physics.”
If it were a panel in the comics, Heller’s then-10-year-old son would have had a lightbulb drawn over his head two years ago when he cracked the problem by suggesting a series about a young James Gordon — the character made famous by Gary Oldman in director Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy.
The Bat-free characters seem to hold up on their own. As the future Catwoman, 15-year-old Bicondova has been a particular revelation, stealing the pilot with a scene where she scurries across fire escapes to steal milk for her kitties. She didn’t model her character after Anne Hathaway, Eartha Kitt or any of the previous Catwomen. “I’ve been observing my cat, Mr. G., at home very intently when it comes to his movements,” she says. “And I’ve been incorporating them.”
But the producers’ best decision of all was to film “Gotham” in the real-life Gotham City — at locations like Chinatown and Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, and at Brooklyn’s Steiner Studios.
“When you’re shooting a scene with New York City in the backdrop, you can’t help but feel energized, you can’t help but feel your feelings and emotions are magnified,” says Heller. “It’s the best stage for drama. What we’ve done is amp up New York to 11.”
McKenzie, who broke into the business treading the boards Off-Broadway, had an “only in New York” moment filming a rooftop chase scene in DUMBO where he could see the Manhattan skyline unfolding in front of him.
“You’ve got to shoot a show called ‘Gotham’ in New York,” says McKenzie. “You can’t shoot it in a backlot in Burbank.
“People are very vocal about everything in New York, you’ll be walking down the street and someone will go, ‘Hey, you’re that guy on “Gotham.” Looking forward to that,'” he adds, doing a solid impression of a Brooklyn accent.
Kind words from passerby are nice, but the jury is still out if a Batman prequel without the Caped Crusader can win the day.
“The beauty of it is these are characters that most people know,” says Heller. “They’re familiar with them and understand who they are, which means you’re playing with house money.”
It also helps going in to know that the early reviews are positive — particularly from the most rabid of fans.
“We screened the pilot at Chicago Comic Con and there was a technical difficulty … the audio completely shut off,” says Bicondova, “and everyone was screaming because they were mad that they couldn’t watch the rest of it.
“Of course, they were upset, but that was good for us because we knew they were at least enjoying themselves.”
