It’s easy to get caught up in Gotham City’s flashier personalities. Matt Reeves’ The Batman is set to feature Robert Pattinson’s vengeance-obsessed take on the Dark Knight, Paul Dano’s Zodiac Killer-inspired Riddler, Colin Farrell’s brutal new Penguin, and Zoë Kravitz’s femme fatale Catwoman.
But there’s a lot more to Gotham’s criminal underworld than costumed freaks. For example, John Turturro is playing mob boss Carmine Falcone in the movie and, and the latest TV spot offers one of our first real glimpses of the crime lord in action.
Falcone doesn’t seem particularly bothered about being menaced by a guy in a suit of bat-inspired armor, dismissively saying “You think you’re gonna scare me with that mask and that cape?” I suspect he’ll be eating those words by the time the credits roll, once the action seen in other trailers is all said and done.
We know that Turturro’s Falcone will be the boss to Farrell’s Oswald Cobblepot, who has been described as similar to Fredo from The Godfather movies. That indicates Falcone is a cut above your average gangster, and a key conduit for crime in Gotham.
In a recent interview, Turturro spoke about how much he enjoyed stepping into the Bat-universe.
“It was a terrific experience. I really, I really, really enjoyed it. Matt Reeves was a very collaborative director, so it was great. I’ve really liked the comic books. I like Frank Miller and my oldest [son] Amedeo works for DC Comics, and I’m a Batman fan. And a Zorro fan, too, before [that]. That was a lot of fun, but it was kind of strange, but in a great way.”
There are a number of spinoffs confirmed, with Reeves working on an HBO Max series about Farrell’s Penguin/Oswald Cobblepot, along with a police procedural set within the film’s universe. If Carmine Falcone survives this movie, it’d make sense for him to appear in both of those, so he could be a menace to the good people of Gotham for years to come, or previously given that the Gotham City PD show is set a year before The Batman.
The Batman hits theaters on March 4.
