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The arrival of Two-Face in the new Batman sequel bodes well for a doom-laden moral epic

The arrival of Two-Face in the new Batman sequel bodes well for a doom-laden moral epic

Sebastian Stan is being eyed as district attorney Harvey Dent and his supervillain alter ego – can Gotham residents expect an improvement in the city’s patchy justice system? The arrival in Gotham City of Harvey Dent, AKA Two-Face, is rarely without consequence in Batman sagas. Tommy Lee Jones’ shrieking, neon-splashed Batman Forever iteration turned the character into a dissociative identity slot machine, endlessly pulling its own lever, while Billy Dee Williams’ take in 1989’s Batman was a promise of future ruin. In Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, the downfall of Aaron Eckhart’s crusading district attorney signalled the dangers of placing too much faith in the moral resilience of a single individual, especially in a city where the very idea of justice is already under existential strain. With the news this week cautiously announced in the Hollywood Reporter that Sebastian Stan will be playing Dent in Matt Reeves’ highly anticipated forthcoming sequel to The Batman, it’s quite possible the new episode will be less interested in the masked theatrics of the 20th-century big screen caped crusader, and more in the idea that the very concept of justice is about to slowly disintegrate. In Stan, Reeves has an actor who excels at playing men whose morality erodes like damp plaster, which feeds beautifully into his vision of Gotham. In Reeves’ worldview, it is a city that is rotting politely from the inside, not one ruled by a carnival of freaks desperate for the spotlight. So it is hard to imagine this languid, gloriously doom-drenched Gotham giving birth to a Dent who goes down the rampant route of extreme, scenery-chewing theatricality. There is even the potential here to move on from the Nolan era, with its focus on symbolism and high-stakes ethical thought experiments. Eckhart’s turn is one of the greatest performances in any comic book movie, but by utilising the madness of grief to transform him into Two-Face, rather than relying on the incremental, constantly self-justifying slide into monstrosity seen in the best comics or the excellent 1990s Batman: The Animated Series TV show, something was lost. When he’s at his best, Dent doesn’t “snap”, so much as reason his way into villainy, seemingly convincing himself step by step that the law no longer works and that only he is strong enough to replace it. This Two-Face isn’t chaos dressed up as madness (like the Joker) but justice stripped of empathy, clinging to the illusion of fairness – the semi-ruined coin he still pretends represents due process. His descent into villainy feels almost inevitable in a town as violently decayed as Gotham, and his arrival on the scene simply confirms how impossible Batman’s job is. Continue reading...