Batman fans there have been many animated shows and films based on the character but there have been so few live action shows based on Batman. While that may be changing in the coming years with a cop show based in the world of the upcoming Matt Reeves film "The Batman" let us not forget that there already was a cop show based in the world of Batman just a few years ago and so here is my review of the pilot episode of Gotham with the episode being simply called "Pilot" enjoy the review everyone.
The plot of the episode after Thomas and Martha Wayne are killed infront of their son Bruce Wayne it's up to young detective James Gordon and his partner Harvey Bullock to solve the case. In my opinion while the whole angle who the Thomas and Martha Wayne being shot has been seen so many times i've lost count showing it from the police's point of view offers a new perspective on things and because of that the story for the episode I feel works very well or at least in my opinion it does anyways but that's just me.
Starring in the episode is Ben McKenzie as James Gordon , Donal Logue as Harvey Bullock and David Mazouz as Bruce Wayne. Also starring in the episode is Zabryna Guevara as Sarah Essen , Sean Pertwee as Alfred Pennyworth , Robin Lord Taylor as Oswald Cobblepot , Erin Richards as Barbara Kean , Camren Bicondova as Selina Kyle , Cory Michael Smith as Edward Nygma and Jada Pinkett Smith as Fish Mooney.
In terms of what I thought about the acting in the episode it was honestly a lot better then what I thought it was going to be and bare in mind I saw this episode when it first aired in 2014. I honestly feel that alot of the actors in this episode were the best choices to play these versions of these iconic characters and the actors do a really good job in this episode which to me is a good thing because if the acting in the premier episode is good then chances are the acting in the rest of the show will good as well.
Now I touched on this before but this opening episode tells the same story that we've seen told in dozens on Batman media that being the deaths of Thomas and Martha Wayne. However to this episodes credit it does somethings new with the concept like adding Selina Kyle aka Catwoman to the scene which now gives her and Bruce a connection and by telling the story from the point of view of the police which is something that I don't think we've seen before but at the same time it's still the same scene that we've seen hundreds of times told in the exact same way and so it looses all impact because you know how it's going to play out.
I honestly feel that making a Batman show without actually featuring the Batman character is honestly a brave move to make. Since it's something that has never been done before be it in animation or live action and I can kind of see why it's never been done since having a Batman show without Batman in it would be very hard to market to people since let's face it know one is going to know who any one in the Gotham City Police Department is and so making a show based around them doesn't make that much sense but the makers of this show did it and they made it work.
Now I have very mixed feelings about the the fact that this episode and the show as a whole features younger versions of classic Batman villains. Simply the show is a prequel and with those characters being used it now means that we know that there going to make it out of the show alive and well because we know that those characters go on to become villains for Batman to face and so all suspense revolving around those characters is lost.
I honestly feel that the show could have got around this simply by not including those characters and creating new characters. However if they really wanted to use the classic Batman villains then they should have been saved for the final season since then it would feel like we are getting closer and closer to the Batman that we all know and love but by featuring them here while it does give us more of a chance to get to know and fall in love with these characters it also means that we know that those characters are going to make it out alive and like I said all suspense is then lost when it comes to those characters.
This episode is fifty minuets long which for any cop show is two long a running time in my opinion simply because nothing interesting happens. The same is true here nothing of interesting happens in the episode which can make the episode hard to sit through because there are times where the episode is honestly pretty boring to watch and because of that I found myself going on the internet while the episode was playing.
In terms of it being a cop show i'd say this is one of the more better ones simply because the characters in it are interesting and the script for this episode is so good. However as an actual mystery the episode fails hard simply because it doesn't do anything that a good mystery should do and so you the viewer really aren't given a chance to work out who killed Thomas and Martha Wayne and solving the mystery is half the fun of a cop show.
Now then since this is technically also an action show and there is some action in this episode that does mean that we have to talk about the action that's in this episode. Which I do feel that given that this is was show made for Fox the action pretty decent im not going to say that its was great because it wasn't but for a show on Fox the action was passable altho some scenes weren't as violent as they perhaps could and more importantly should have been in my opinion.
Overall this was a really good episode and I can see why alot of people watched this show however the show didn't hold my attention for very long infact I stopped watching just before the ed of the first season. The same is true for this episode it just didn't hold my attention and alot of the reason why comes from the fact that there's nothing that interesting happening in this episode and from the fact that this is a prequel with alot of the same characters who appear in other Batman media as such this episode gets a 7.5 out of 10 from me.
All and I do mean all of the images that I used in this review were gathered from the official Gotham TV series fandom wiki page and nowhere else. Since I only went to the official Gotham TV series fandom wiki page for the images that I used in this review I have no choice but to recommend that you use that website for images from either this show or this episode because not only is there a huger verity of images but at least from the one's that i've seen they are all very high quality and high definition which for me at least is a huge plus.