Danny DeVito stepped into the role of the Penguin in 1992’s Batman Returns and made a splash–pun intended–as the avian-inspired villain thanks to an intense makeup regimen and a genuinely creepy take on the character. Colin Ferrell brought the character to life on the big screen for the first time since then, and DeVito spoke to The Wrap to offer up his opinion on Ferrell’s version of the character.
“I thought Colin did a great job,” DeVito said. “Certainly a different milieu. I think it was a more edgy, serious, gangster-y Batman. Of course, there’s three Italians who are bad guys in it, the Falcones (laughs). But I feel like, in terms of the performances, I thought Colin–who is a good buddy of mine–I think he did a great job in that. You take your hat off to anybody who sits in the makeup chair that long. I did it with The Penguin and loved it.”
Even so, DeVito still prefers Tim Burton’s take on Batman overall.
“My feeling of comparing the two movies, I’m like a Tim Burton fan,” he continued. “I like the whimsical, the operatic, the disaffected Pee-Wee Herman throws me off a bridge. That makes me smile. So it’s a different situation, but I did watch the movie.”
The Batman hits HBO Max on April 18, followed by Blu-ray on May 24. The film surpassed $500 million at the global box office in March. Our review commends the performances of Paul Dano, Jeffrey Wright, and Zoey Kravitz but says that the film “only succeeds as a story a little less than half of the [film’s three-hour run time].”
