The arrival of Two-Face in the new Batman sequel bodes well for a doom-filled morality saga film

TThe arrival in Gotham City of Harvey Dent, also known as Two-Face, is rarely without consequence in the Batman sagas. Tommy Lee Jones’s loud, neon-soaked iteration of Batman Forever turned the character into a breakaway identity slot machine, pulling its own lever endlessly, while Billy Dee Williams’ performance in 1989’s Batman was a promise of future devastation. In Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, the downfall of public defender Aaron Eckhart is a signal of the dangers of placing too much faith in a single individual’s moral flexibility, especially in a city where the very idea of ​​justice is already under existential pressure.

With news cautiously announced this week in the Hollywood Reporter that Sebastian Stan will play Dent in Matt Reeves’ highly anticipated sequel to The Batman , it’s very likely that the new installment will be less interested in the compelling theatrics of the 20th century big screen, and more interested in the idea that the very concept of justice is about to slowly disintegrate. In “Stan,” Reeves plays an actor who excels at playing men whose morals are worn away like wet plaster, which beautifully fuels his vision of Gotham. In Reeves’ view, it’s a city politely rotting on the inside, not a city ruled by a carnival of nerds desperate for the spotlight. So it’s hard to imagine a weak, doom-filled Gotham City giving birth to a Dent who goes down the rampant path of extreme, landscape-chewing theatrics.

There’s even potential here to move on from the Nolan era, with its emphasis on symbolism and high-stakes moral thought experiments. Eckhart’s turn is one of the greatest performances in any comic book movie, but by tapping into the madness of grief to turn him into Two-Face, rather than relying on the ever-increasing and ever-justified slide into brutality seen in the best comics or the great ’90s TV show Batman: The Animated Series, something has been lost. When he is at his best, Dent does not “explode”, so much as he works his way into villainy, seeming to convince himself step by step that the law no longer works and that only he is strong enough to replace it. This double-face is not chaos dressed as madness (like the Joker), but justice devoid of empathy, clinging to the illusion of justice—the near-destructive currency he still pretends represents due process. His descent into villainy seems almost inevitable in a city as violently degenerated as Gotham City, and his arrival on the scene simply underscores just how impossible Batman’s mission is.

It might also be nice to see a new Two-Face hanging out in Gotham for several films, like some kind of ongoing corruption designed to keep reminding Robert Pattinson’s crusader hero that he can’t really win in a world where doing the right thing and doing the wrong thing often looks identical from a distance. Nolan’s films have had Cillian Murphy’s Scarecrow as the last rat to leave Gotham’s ever-sinking ship, while Colin Farrell’s Penguin seems likely to be the resident cockroach in Reeves’ saga. That’s not to say there isn’t room for another famous member of Batman’s rogues gallery to forever lurk in architecture.