During a recent interview with Vanity Fair in which he was hooked up to a lie detector, Batman Returns star Danny DeVito couldn’t help but joke about how his take on Penguin was better than what Colin Farrell did with the role in The Batman. While the reaction was clearly in jest, DeVito did express his passion for Michael Keaton and what he did with the character in two films, so it shouldn’t come as much surprise that, even when hooked up to a lie detector, DeVito would share that he preferred what director Tim Burton did with the character as compared to Matt Reeves.
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“I love Colin, he’s a terrific guy. My Penguin was better,” DeVito joked with the outlet. He added, “It’s my opinion. Good man, though. Colin’s a good guy.”
Previously in the conversation, he expressed his admiration for Keaton.
“He’s my favorite, this is my favorite. This is Michael Keaton. He was the Batman when I was the Penguin,” DeVito recalled. When his daughter Lucy DeVito offered to show him photos of other Batman actors, he replied, “I don’t know what they look like because they’re behind the mask … This is the Batman, for me.”
Despite his facetious remarks in the video, when The Batman actually landed in theaters, DeVito shared a much stronger endorsement of Farrell’s performance.
“I thought Colin did a great job,” DeVito told TheWrap back in April. “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. 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.”
He added, “My feeling of comparing the two movies, I’m like a Tim Burton fan … I like the whimsical, the operatic, the disaffected Pee-wee Herman throws me off a bridge. That makes me smile.”
Farrell is expected to reprise his role of Penguin in an upcoming spinoff TV series for HBO Max. However, following recent troubles regarding scrapped projects at the streamer, some fans are concerned about whether this TV show will also be cancelled.
Stay tuned for details on the future of The Batman.
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