Two Face portrayals

*Originally published on 1/8/09



Having multiple actors take on the role of a character is not uncommon, especially in comics. Batman has had many people don the cape and cowl as has his arch-nemesis, The Joker. In this article, I'm going to examine the faces of Harvey Dent. He is Batman's third greatest opponent behind Mr. J and Ra's al Ghul. In the last 20 years, three actors have taken the role.

It started with Billy Dee Williams, Lando Calrissian himself took on the role in Burton's '89 Batman movie. It was a small role. He's portrayed as the dedicated District Attorney who's crusading to purge Gotham of the organized crime that plagues the city. Williams took on the role, knowing of the character's eventual transformation and signed a pay or play contract so that if they did recast the character in the future, he would still get a check. We never did see how he would've played the character, and never will. I kind of wish that we had the capability to jump to parallel dimensions because even after 20 years I'm still curious to see what direction Burton and Williams would've taken the character after his transformation.

In the original draft for Batman Returns, the character of Max Schrek was supposed to be Dent. The "electric kiss" Catwoman gives him at the end was what was to burn half of Dent's face I'm glad that they changed it as that particular story doesn't fit the character. However, it would've been interesting if they had Dent in the movie. They could have fleshed out his back story, touched on his rough childhood and shown the monster that lurks beneath the surface of Harvey's psyche.

While Batman Forever takes place in the same continuity as the two Burton films, Harvey Dent/Two-Face was re-cast and the role was given to Tommy Lee Jones. How Dent went from an African American to a white guy is never explained. Actually, the character of Harvey Dent doesn't really appear here. Aside from a brief video showing Moroni throwing acid in Dent's face we get pure Two-Face. If you're a comic reader than this portrayal is going to make you shudder. It's campy and goofy, a throwback to the Adam West age. I defend that series as being great for what it was, however I have also seen what Two-Face is capable of as a character and this movie kind of destroys all of it.

Like Constantine, if you make your brain separate this from the source material you may be able to enjoy this film. Don't let it be the backbone of your understanding of the character of Two-Face however. A lot of elements are only given lip service to, his friendship with Bruce gets one mention and their time as allies fighting crime are not mentioned at all. Even his coin seems to be a gimmick as he flips it repeatedly to get the result he wants. Unless you can enjoy it for what it was, this portrayal is most likely best forgotten.

The final, and most recent portrayal came in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. Aaron Eckhart takes the role and nails it as Gotham's White Knight. It's in this film that we get the most fully fleshed out Dent to take to the big screen. There is no rough childhood (though the line about his father's lucky coin is a nice wink to fans) or damaged psyche here. Dent is very much the White Knight that the media has hyped him up as. We see Dent teaming up with Batman and Jim Gordon to take out the mob once and for all.

It was widely believed that the second movie would end with Joker's arrest and in the third movie, Dent would get scarred during Joker's trial and that would lead to the transformation of Two-Face. Such is not the case, Joker's responsible but there is no day in court. To date, this is the best live action portrayal of both Harvey Dent and Two-Face. It had its problems (which I will talk about in a future article) but by and large it got the character right.