Batman has come a long way since the primary-colored pop art of the 1966 “Batman” to the dark brooding Batman sequel “Gotham” that begins with some anticipation on Fox this fall.
Dark and brooding and starring Ben McKenzie as James Gordon before he became the bat-signal wielding Commissioner, it’s meant as a pre-story for all manner of nascient criminal lives from the Penguin to Catwoman.
“The show is all about: how do you deal with crime of this level when there are no superheroes, when there’s just ordinary, mortal men and women trying to solve these issues?” producer Bruno Heller said at a session at the TV Critics Association summer press tour this week. “It’s as much about the hope and the struggle that they’re engaged in as waiting for a savior. It’s about men and women, not about superheroes, and to me that’s the more interesting story.”
It’s an odd story, though, since it seems set in a time when there are cell phones, for example, but no computers.
As McKenzie explains it, “it’s in Gotham in a time that is neither the present nor the past, or both at the same time.”
Say what?
“It’s a mash up, to use the modern phrase,” Heller says. “To the degree that if today Batman exists, then this world is the past. But it’s everybody’s past: an 18 year old’s past and a 54 year old’s past.”
Still scratching my head. He goes on.
“So in your memory the past is all mashed up together,” he goes on. “So in this ‘Gotham,’ it’s a kind of timeless world. It’s yesterday, it’s today, and it’s tomorrow all at the same time, because that’s the world that dreams live in.”
So set your watches.