10 Best Live-Action Batman Characters (Who Aren't The Dark Knight)

4. The Penguin - Batman Returns (1992)

Danny DeVito€™s Oswald Cobblepot is at once an astoundingly fun character to watch growl and sleaze his way throughout Batman Returns and also majorly responsible for Warner Bros. steering the franchise towards to the neon-lit, lighter-to-digest pair of sequels that followed. The Penguin is a nightmarish creature quite removed from his comic counterpart and yet, against all odds, it works. If Tim Burton€™s first film was a generalised look at the twisted carnival that is Batman€™s world, his second film drags the audience straight into the carnival€™s freak show, with Penguin as the ringleader. He€™s disgusting, oddly charming and darkly hilarious, but his character is pitiable to the point of earning sympathy. From the moment he€™s cast away by his parents in the film€™s opening moments for simply being €œa little different,€ Penguin€™s desire to reclaim what he€™s lost is understandable. In fact, he has every right to stake a claim in getting the life he was denied. Even as he schemes to kidnap the children of Gotham and murder whoever he wants, it€™s tough not to feel sorry for him when he gurgles his final breath at the end of the film. Unlike most of Batman€™s cinematic villains across the years, this incarnation of the Penguin is a twisted victim of circumstance rather than someone who outright chooses to engage in villainy. His motivations are plausible, if obviously flawed, and DeVito€™s perfectly-balanced ability to chew the scenery around him without ripping the proceedings down is wildly entertaining to watch. While we owe the majority of audiences and critics in 1992 who couldn€™t wrap their heads around what they were seeing for forcing Warner Bros. to lose the stones to let Tim Burton continue to do his own thing, at least we got one of the franchise€™s most entertaining villains out of it all.