I’m reading a lot of hate for Gotham in various spaces of the internet. It’s too campy, they say. The characters are too broad, they say. And they just dislike Fish Mooney on general principle. However, the very things they dislike about Gotham are what I like the most. I like a subtle, well turned plot as much as the next guy, but I understand this is not the place for that. I don’t mind that the characters are cartoonish (it is, after all, a comic book). The people with such strong negative opinions are often DC fans, while I have read maybe five comic books in my whole life. This I suspect, is the difference. They’re invested in the mythology, I am not.
I don’t condemn them. I am a die hard Trekkie from way back (grew up on TOS), and I have many strong opinions on the JJ Abrams movies, so I get where they are coming from. Enjoying something means buying into it totally and we don’t like when someone else’s interpretation of it messes with established canon (or even our head canon).
We complain a lot about remakes, mostly that they come too close together, but this wasn’t a big deal back in the day when popular stories were remade frequently with the movie star de jour. Just check and see how many versions of Sherlock Holmes there have been. I think maybe we need to chill. Remakes and reinterpretations don’t diminish our favourite versions.