Oswald Cobblepot a.k.a. The Penguin

The Penguin, whose real name is Oswald Cobblepot, is a wildly popular Batman villain. While he's usually portrayed as a short man with a tuxedo, a top hat, and a monocle, some of his other common traits differ from portrayal to portrayal. Sometimes he's an aristocratic mobster or thief, and sometimes he's a deformed outcast. He often has an affinity for birds, especially penguins, and often has penguin-like mannerisms. Many times he has various kinds of umbrellas that are also gadgets. Umbrellas that hide blades, shoot bullets, transform into propellers, etc. In some of his appearances in the comics and other media, Oswald Cobblepot owns a nightclub called The Iceburg Lounge. Several other criminals regularly spend time there, and the club is often a front for whatever criminal activities Cobblepot is involved in.

The Penguin is probably best known from his live-action portrayals. He was played by Burgess Meredith in the 1960's Batman television show and movie, and was played by Danny DeVito in the Tim Burton directed movie Batman Returns. The character has also appeared in many different animated movies and shows. One of the other things I grew up seeing him in was a Scooby-Doo Meets Batman And Robin VHS I had when I was a child, where he was teamed up with the Joker. Like Hugo Strange and The Riddler, he was also featured in the video game Batman: Arkham City. Unfortunately, I think the designers of that game went overboard trying to make it dark and gritty, and a good example of that is that the Cockney accented Penguin appeared with the bottom of a broken glass bottle wedged in his face covering his eye rather than having a monocle.

There are a lot of people who really want The Penguin to be the main villain in a Christopher Nolan Batman movie. I mostly don't understand his appeal as a main villain. Maybe it's just that those people grew up with The Penguin, seeing Burgess Meredith or Danny DeVito play him, or maybe seeing him in Batman: The Animated Series or that Scooby-Doo cartoon like I did. The Penguin is really cheesy though. If he was portrayed how he traditionally is, he wouldn't fit in Nolan's Gotham City at all. Even if they tried to go dark and gritty like in Arkham City, a portrayal which was really cheesy in its own way. Nolan has also expressed no interest in including The Penguin in one of his Batman movies. He explained why in 2007 during a Q&A with Esquire:

                    CHRISTOPHER NOLAN

          There are certain characters that are easier to mesh with the more 

          real take on Batman we're doing. The Penguin would be tricky.

The problem is if he's changed to be more realistic, he becomes too uninteresting to be a main villain. That's why if he was in a Nolan movie, I don't think he should be the main villain, but instead have a much smaller role. A lot of people are in love with the idea of Philip Seymour Hoffman playing Oswald Cobblepot. I do love Philip Seymour Hoffman. He's an incredible actor, who is especially chilling in movies like Mission: Impossible III and Punch-Drunk Love. However, he doesn't really fit my idea of Cobblepot. I would much rather see the character played by Edward Hibbert.

Edward Hibbert has the right look for the character. He's perfect to play a man who fancies himself a gentleman. He even has vaguely birdlike facial features. (No offense, Mr. Hibbert.) He previously had a small but very memorable role in Christopher Nolan's movie The Prestige. Nolan seems to like working with many actors he's already worked with in the past. Maybe he would be interested in working with Hibbert again.

In the movie, Cobblepot could be more of a crooked businessman than an outright villain, and could own The Iceberg Lounge, where many members of the mob hang out. He could maybe be shaken down by Batman for information. They shouldn't go down the grotesquely deformed route with him. They shouldn't give him a monocle, and probably not even a top hat. Gotham City could be having a rainy season throughout the movie, giving Cobblepot reason to carry around an umbrella when he's outside. He shouldn't have any gadgets in the umbrellas, aside from an umbrella where the handle comes out, revealing a knife, kind of like Joker's shoe knife in The Dark Knight. I'd love to watch a scene where he pulls the knife out of his umbrella and threatens or fights either some thugs or Batman with it.