Batman the animated series, possibly the best version of the Harvey Dent/Two face story arc

Batman the animated series, possibly the best version of the Harvey Dent/Two face story arc

We have seen plenty of versions of the Harvey Dent/Two Face in several different form of media, but I feel that the best version we have gotten was from the Batman: animated series.

Editorial Opinion
By icecooljr - Aug 21, 2017 11:08 AM EST
Filed Under: Batman
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Forthas
Forthas - 8/21/2017, 2:55 PM
I completely disagree. The animated series does not have a catalyst for his evil turn. It is just presented as him fighting to maintain his good persona. But that is a shallow interpretation. It assumes that people want to be bad or that it is the result of purely some kind of mental illness. The Dark Knight film utilizes a progression toward evil as Dent becomes frustrated when things happen that he feels is unfair, first with the threats he makes to Thomas Schiff when he thinks the Joker killed Gordon, then his full blown transformation to two-face when he thinks that Rachel was unfairly taken from him. I think the Dark Knight is the superior version because it sets out to establish Dent as the purest and most upright of persons who can be brought down the path to a dark side. The way the animated series portrays him, it essentially criminalizes mental illness which we as a society DON"T necessarily associate with being evil (ie. making choices). When someone is haunted by internal demons then the answer is that they seek treatment or they are not held completely responsible for their behavior. In the case of the Dark Knight, he makes choices that put him of the road to madness thus evil is something that can't be explained as just being mental illness but rather trying to impose a sense of one's own self centered justice. In the animated series - if he begins as someone fighting against an evil tendency - then it tells us nothing as to why he has that tendency versus other people. What makes him different from Jim Gordon, they both face the same challenges. While the Dark Knight version of Dent ultimately becomes insane, where the animated series fails in my opinion is making evil an inherent a state of mind that he must fight against, rather than the Dark Knight's version being a progressive consequence of selfish choices.










RobGrizzly
RobGrizzly - 9/3/2017, 8:04 AM
I agree with this. But that's a given- Batman the Animated Series has the best versions of just about every character. The only expections I might say are Lucius Fox (Nolan takes that) and Alfred (which I actually think FOX's Gotham has the best version).

Back on topic, some people complain that Two-Face, was tacked on at the end of The Dark Knight, but I LOVED that Nolan delivered this because the fall of Harvey Dent is the entire point of TDK as a film. My only qualm is that Aaron Ekhard played him a little awkwardly.

There's a quick moment in Batman Forever, that encapsulated how wrong they got the Harvey character: When the villains break into Wayne Manor, Riddler tells Dent to wait, so he is impatiently chomping at the bit to kill someone. So he flips his coin over and over until he gets the result he wants. TWO-FACE WOULD NEVER DO THIS. The coin is law. It is final.

BTAS explored the psyche of Harvey/Two-Face waaay better than the others, and even though Batman Forever would rip off the same ending from this, they still botched it because Harvey went down because of clumsiness and he fell. In the cartoon, the fact that the villain is defeated with a mental breakdown instead of a physical beatdown is one of its crowning achievements. It is one of the all-time best episodes of the series.
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