Gotham: The Complete Series [DVD] [2014] [2019]

Reviews

Carnol

My review will focus on the Import UK edition of the full seasons 1 to 5. Characters like Barbara Keane or Jérôme Valeska do not hesitate to sink into madness, while Edward Nygma struggles to maintain her mental health and reveals himself on the brink of the precipice. Created by Bruno HELLER, the series features a modern and dark replay of Batman's origins, long before he becomes the hero everyone knows.

As Jim Gordon faces many obstacles to bring back a semblance of stability to Gotham, criminals are more determined than ever to cause chaos. One night, the billionaire couple, Thomas and Martha Wayne, enter an alley and get murdered in front of their son Bruce. But even more, it is well through his gallery of villains, all more original than the other, that the Gotham vigilante manages to be born, in the midst of the chaos that is coming, without respite for a city where corruption reigns in control. Important villains such as Ra's Al Ghul, the Scarecrow or Solomon Grundy bring permanent danger, while the Joker sow terror, Gotham finds himself in chaos.

A dark event that will revolutionize its future. Jim Gordon and the police are struggling to take back the city.

Season 4 starts in a troubling atmosphere where the Penguin took power and organizes crime licenses, in agreement with the Mayor, in order to maintain a very fragile balance. From there, we follow with a certain pleasure, all the successive twists and other turns of situation, which lead to assembling the various pieces of a puzzle, in order to see the complete plan planned. Telling an origin story is always very complicated, especially when inspiration comes from several sources, between the 80 years of comics that served as the base, the series of the 60s, the 90's Tim Burton films and Christopher Nolan films of the 2010s, there is a lot to do in order to capture the different incarnations that make up the mythology of the black knight. A concrete scenario and very eventful intrigues where turnaround abound, lead to a surprising and spectacular final: the gang war rages and leaves no one unscathed, while caids are falling abruptly, outsiders emerge to continue their ascent to power, while others than the we thought they were safe, change their destiny.

Seasons 2 and 3 accelerate the movement to set up the different protagonists. Ambitious series in its concept and entertaining in its way of approaching stories from a new angle, it also has a separate status, since unlike most shows that first of all put a main hero in the foreground, here it is the bad guys who dominate.

Oswald Cobblepot aka the Penguin continues its irresistible social ascension and masterfully assures its construction as a future major villain. New opponents like Ra's Al Ghul and the Court of Owls emerge in Bruce Wayne's life, with dark plans for the young man.

Other key elements necessary to understand the birth of the bat man are his relationships with his loved ones and natural allies, such as Butler Alfred Pennyworth, who resumes his education alone after the tragedy, Lucius Fox, who guides him through the meanders of his family business and to his project to do justice, Inspector Harvey Bullock and Detective René Montoya in the Gotham Police and of course her special relationship with Selina Kyle, presented as a very talented young thief, who oscillates between her desire for justice and her need for survival, which foreshadows her future alias as Catwoman, where she will hesitate often between escaping him and becoming one of his very close allies, or even much more. As he decides to investigate his parents' crime, he meets Selina Kyle, a young thief, the only other witness on the scene. The showrunner was able to sort intelligently and took over the founding element, which was used to create the famous cloak vigilante: the murder of the parents of a child Bruce Wayne, which he witnessed, at the bottom of a dark alley, by a vulgar thief.