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“Well, you know, I put a lot of work into it,” Turturro said. “I was reading all the comics that had inspired that, I took it seriously, and I went to the source material. I told [Reeves] — I said, ‘I’ll do it if I can wear these glasses,’ because, I said, ‘everyone else has a mask, and I want a mask too. I don’t have, like, really cold eyes, I know that. So when you have that shield, that helps you. Sometimes one thing — it can be something physically, or a costume piece — it can free you, in a way.”
Turturro’s Falcone
Now that Turturro has pointed it out, it’s easy to see how this one creative choice helped set off the entire movie and this version of Gotham as we know it. The logic is sound — The Batman is full of flamboyant characters with masks, prosthetics, and affectations. Turturro was already playing one of the most straightforward characters in the ensemble, an organized crime boss who could conceivably exist outside the world of costumed heroes and villains. Giving him a subtle “mask” helps him fit in better and makes him a part of the setting, rather than an outlier.
