The Penguin (Danny DeVito)

The Penguin was portrayed by Danny DeVito in Tim Burton's Batman Returns.

Batman Returns Timeframe
Around Christmas time in Gotham City, the aristocratic Cobblepots give birth to a baby boy. Because the child is deformed, they lock him in a box, where he shows his first sign of homicidal tendencies when he kills the family cat. They drop their deformed infant baby in the sewers, abandoning him because of his ridiculous look. 30 years later,a man named Max Shreck is kidnapped by the Red Triangles and is brought to their leader, a short, deformed man known as "The Penguin." Penguin blackmails Shreck with incriminating evidence of his more dubious activities, prompting Shreck to agree to help Penguin run for Mayor of Gotham. Shreck arranges for the Penguin to "rescue" the mayor's infant child from his own gang members. The plan works, and Penguin becomes a hero to all except a suspicious Bruce Wayne (Batman's alter ego). After finding out his original birthname of Oswald Cobblepot, (as well as many other names, which are for unknown purposes) Penguin eventually wins the approval of citizens of Gotham and intends to run for Mayor. When the subsequent plan is put into action, Batman is framed for kidnapping and murder and finds himself trapped in the Batmobile under Penguin's control. Catwoman and Penguin's alliance falls apart when she rebuffs a sexual advance from him, and Penguin tries to kill Catwoman himself. However, she succesfully escapes with the use of his air bound umbrella before accidentaly letting go, falling into a greenhouse but she once again miraculously survives the attempt, counting as her third of nine lives. The Penguin's campaign to oust the current mayor is quickly destroyed when Bruce Wayne plays selected comments he made insulting the people of Gotham while controlling the Batmobile at one of Penguin's speeches, the most prominent phrase being, "You've got to admit, I played this stinking city like a harp from hell!" The people of Gotham get angry, forcing Penguin to defend himself with his gun umbrella. The police chase after him, but Penguin flees into the sewers, and reveals his original plan: to kidnap and kill the firstborn sons of Gotham's most prominent families in revenge (comparable to King Herod in the Bible).

Bruce meets Selina at a ball hosted by Shreck, where she reveals to him her intentions to kill Shreck. While dancing, the two subsequently discover the other's secret identity, but before they can leave to discuss this development, Penguin storms the hall with a shout of "You didn't invite me, so I crashed!" and tries to take Max's beloved son, Chip. Max successfully pleads with Penguin to take him instead. Batman attacks Penguin's Red Triangle Circus goons and puts a stop to the kidnappings. Penguin then dispatches an army of rocket-armed Penguins to bomb all of Gotham. Batman manages to jam the birds' control signals and turn them around so that they attack Penguin's base instead, apparently killing the Penguin and what is left of his gang inside.

Batman then discovers that Catwoman intends to kill Shreck inside Penguin's base. Shreck tries to bribe Batman, but Batman simply rejects the offer, and tries to talk Catwoman out of her planned murder. He promises they could live happily together, but Catwoman refuses to listen, and scratches him on the cheek with her claws. During this argument, Shreck draws a gun he took from a Red Triangle clown and fires it at Batman. Catwoman then starts to approach Shreck, who shoots her four times, knocking off four more lives, leaving Catwoman alive but wounded. Catwoman then exacts her revenge of Shreck by inserting the stolen stun gun into her mouth, activating the spark, and pressing her lips to Shreck's, while also ripping a cable out of Penguin's electrical generator with her free hand, sending the electricity everywhere. A huge explosion follows, and as the smoke clears away, Batman finds the charred corpse of Shreck. However, Selina/Catwoman is nowhere to be found. So preoccupied with finding her, he doesn't notice a gravely injured Penguin emerging from the water, ready to kill him. Ultimately though, he collapses from his wounds and dies, and six large Emperor Penguins emerge from the shadows and pull his body back into the water which becomes his grave.

Behind the Scenes
Danny DeVito as Oswald Cobblepot / The Penguin: Abandoned at birth due to his hideous appearance by his aristocratic parents, he spends his life living in the sewers of Gotham City. He eventually rises and thickens a plot to take over Gotham as its new Mayor. However, his real intentions are to dispose of every first born son in Gotham City out of vengeance against his parents for abandoning him as child.

Director Tim Burton, inspired by the film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, re-imagined the character not as an eloquent gentleman of crime, but a physically deformed lunatic with a childhood trauma. While this Penguin retained a number of trademarks, particularly the variety of trick umbrellas and the use of a monocle, he was given a huge visual makeover. His hands were now flippers, with a thumb and index finger, and the remaining three fingers fused together. Where the comic version had varied between a full head of hair and varying degrees of thinning, this Penguin was bald, with his remaining length of hair long and stringy. Instead of a tuxedo, he wore a more gothic, Victorian-style outfit, with a jabot as opposed to a bow tie. Other instances show him in black boots, a bib-like cloth around his neck, and something akin to a child's blanket sleeper, or the old long john-style underwear of the 1800s. Combined with his long dark coat/robe, the full white front of the bodysuit gave him an even more penguin-like appearance. One visual aspect that remained fairly intact in this re-imagining was the familiar top hat. Another new touch was his large yellow duck vehicle, which had the triple functionality of being a boat, a car, and an elevator-like lift.

Wesley Strick was solely brought in to come up with a solution with "Penguin's lack of a master plan". The writer claimed he was presented with "the usual boring ideas to do with warming the city, or freezing the city" (the latter ended up in Batman & Robin). Strick pitched an alternative approach, inspired by the Moses parallels of Walter's prologue, in which the infant Oswald Cobblepot is bundled in a basket and thrown in the river where he floats helplessly until he's saved (and subsequently raised) by Gotham's sewer denizens. He came up with Penguin's "master plan" to kill the firstborn sons of Gotham City. Both the studio and Burton were impressed with the idea, though Strick claims the toy manufacturers were worried. Strick went uncredited for his work. Strick also deleted the idea of Schreck turning out to be the Penguin's brother.

Universal's Stage 12 housed the Penguin's underground lair, an enormous tank filled with half-a-million gallons of water and a simulated ice floe island. To create Penguin's bird army a combination of techniques were utilized including men in suits, computer-generated imagery, robotic creatures and real life penguins.

Everyone involved was required to sign a document guaranteeing that they would not specifically hold interviews with news sources. About midway through filming, however, a few test shots of DeVito in costume found their way into an American entertainment magazine. Warner Brothers hired a group of private investigators to track down the source, though the ploy ultimately failed.

In Batman Begins, the opera attended by Bruce and his parents feature characters similar to Tim Burton's penguin tugging at the ropes.