As “Gotham” barrels toward its series finale, a lot of things are changing. And, we’re promised, we’ll actually see Batman in the last episode of this “Batman” prequel.
One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is the level of violence in the Fox series, in which James Gordon (Ben McKenzie) is a cop; Bruce Wayne (David Mazouz) is a teenager; and the cast includes young versions of the Penguin, the Riddler, Catwoman and many more villains.
Shootings, stabbings, beatings, maimings and more are a staple of the series. “The Walking Dead” might be more gruesome, but ... maybe not.
We’ve seen characters burned to death. Disemboweled. Thrown from rooftops. There were all those cops who were murdered, with pigs’ heads placed over the corpses’ heads. Hundreds were killed in an explosion earlier this season. And there was that time when Fish Mooney (Jada Pinkett-Smith) scooped out her own eye with a spoon.
“Gotham” airs Thursdays at 7 p.m. MT on Fox/Channel 13. On any number of occasions, I’ve thought — whoa, I can’t believe they got away with that.
“Neither can we,” said director/executive producer Danny Cannon.
There are, quite clearly, no plans to cut back on the violence in the final few episodes. (The finale is scheduled to air April 25.) And nobody on “Gotham” is making any apologies for it.
“Well, violence should be violent,” Cannon said. “I think violence is only bad when you desensitize yourself to it.”
And the gruesome content on “Gotham,” he said, is “a really theatrical, operatic violence.”
“The way we treat violence on the show [is] kind of like you’re watching the violence of ‘Richard III’ or the ‘Game of Thrones’ time period,” Cannon said. “It’s an otherworldly thing, but it’s all character driven.”
Ben McKenzie, who stars as Jim Gordon, was in complete agreement about that. He pointed to the Season 4 episode “The Demon’s Head,” which he wrote himself. In that episode, 16-year-old Bruce Wayne (David Mazouz) became friends with a younger boy, and witnessed his death.
“The young boy had to die violently, brutally, in front of Bruce,” McKenzie said. “His throat was slashed in front of Bruce by Ra’s al Ghul (Alexander Siddig).
“It was quite gruesome, and we had to shoot many different versions of it ... to make sure that what made air was acceptable to the powers that be,” he said.
What’s important, McKenzie said, “more than the violence, is what Bruce is going through. Bruce is seeing ... a true innocent murdered brutally in front of him. And this hardens his resolve against Ra’s.”
What McKenzie has learned as a writer is that “you only have certain tools from your toolkit when you’re on network TV.” And while sex is verboten, violence is OK. “God forbid, you can’t show a breast,” he said.
Clearly, the “Gotham” producers have been given wide latitude by both their studio, Warner Bros., and by Fox. But there have been times when they have “pulled back” of their own accord, according to executive producer John Stephens. He recalled a Season 2 episode when the Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor) and Butch (Drew Powell) were torturing a guitarist by cutting off his fingers.
“You don’t even really see it, but the sound of those fingers hitting this metal pail was so awful,” he said. “And we were sitting in the editing room going, ‘We can’t. That’s too many fingers.’ We took one finger out, and Fox said, ‘Maybe two fingers.’”
That was “one of the few times” network executives stepped in and asked for the violence to be dialed back.
“I think we edited ourselves even more,” Cannon said. “It was just to show that these guys were ruthless.”
By the way, McKenzie also wrote the series finale, titled “The Beginning.” It flashes forward 10 years, and, yes, we will see Bruce Wayne don the costume and the cape. Sort of.
Seventeen-year-old Mazouz is 5-foot-10, and the “Batman suit is for someone who is 6-4,” Stephens said. “And yet the face that you see under the cowl is 100 percent David Mazouz’s face. And we’ll hear David’s voice as well in his own Batman-y growl.”
“Which I learned from Ben McKenzie, by the way,” Mazouz said.
