There appears to be a debate over the fate of Harvey Dent at the end of the movie, with some mischievous fanboys refusing to accept that the Gotham DA is dead. All this despite the following:
• We see his corpse. It’s not moving. Or breathing. So it's a corpse.
• We see his funeral. Funerals tend to be held when people are dead.
• The Dark Knight script, which is now online if you know where to look, states, quite categorically, that Dent is dead. Finished. Kaput. He’s shuffled off the mortal coil. He’s run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible. He is an ex-Two-Face.
But still the conspiracy theories keep coming… about how Dent’s ‘death’ is a smokescreen. How he’ll come back in the third Batman film and wreak merry havoc. But that’s not going to happen. Officially. Sez who? Sez Aaron Eckhart, the guy who played Dent, that’s who. And if anyone should know, it’s him.
“He is dead as a door nail,” Eckhart told Coming Soon, while unwittingly contining our Monty Python’s Dead Parrot Sketch theme. “I asked Chris [Nolan] that question and he goes, "You're dead" before I could even get the question out of my mouth. "Hey Chris, am I?" "You're dead!" Alright, cool.”
Here is the direct quote:
Is Harvey Dent alive?
Aaron Eckhart: No. He is dead as a door nail. I’m nobody. I’m a cog. I have no say over this sort of stuff. I’m sure that there’s so many other characters that they could whip together. I heard Angelina Jolie was going to be Catwoman or something like that. I thought that was a great idea. I’d like to be in that one.
So he’s not coming back?
Eckhart: He ain’t coming back baby!
I was hoping he would.
Eckhart: No. I asked Chris [Nolan] that question and he goes, “You’re dead” before I could even get the question out of my mouth. “Hey Chris, am I?” “You’re dead!” Alright, cool.
That’s not a problem in comic book movies. You could still come back.
Eckhart: I think in contract negotiations it’s a problem.
So you were never signed on for another film?
Eckhart: No, I’m not coming back. I think unfortunately, Heath [Ledger] was supposed to go on and that didn’t So that settles it. Two-Face is now strictly in the past tense. Which is ballsy, but then again, Nolan did kill off Ra’s Al Ghul in Batman Begins, so he clearly cares not a jot for keeping bad guys alive.
But all this continues to beg the question: if – and when – he returns to the Batfold, who will be the bad guy, or guys? Yes, it probably will be The Riddler and Catwoman.