Sep
9
You might want to see “The Dark Knight” before reading this article if you haven’t already; and if you haven’t already, shame on you. Spoilers lie ahead!
For weeks after the release of “The Dark Knight,” fanboys endlessly debated the fate of Two-Face. CHUD.com has recently gone to the source, actor Aaron Eckhart, and the revelation is none too surprising. Two-Face bought the farm in the filum. So why was there all the breathless debating among fanboys? I thought it was made pretty clear within the context of the film. I didn’t walk out thinking Nolan was being ambiguous or anything. TDK doesn’t have an ending like “Friday the 13th.” But I guess it’s a superhero movie at the end of the day, and with that in mind, you never can be too sure if someone’s really dead or just faking.
Take Jim Gordon. He fakes his death in “The Dark Knight” to protect his family. It’s sort of a dodgy bit of plotting considering that he isn’t on the Joker’s radar until he becomes Commissioner later in the film, but whatever. At any rate, fans were divided about the Gordon being allowed to die and come back, but not Two-Face. What they don’t understand, or refuse to understand is that Gordon’s character arc isn’t completed when he takes a bullet for the mayor. Remember, he gets promoted to Commissioner after the Joker’s arrest, after he fakes his death. It’d be like killing off Anakin Skywalker before he turns into Darth Vader, a plot twist I wouldn’t have minded actually when I look back on the prequels. What I’m saying is, you can’t kill Commissioner Gordon before he becomes Commissioner. His death and resurrection makes sense in the context of the hero’s journey. A hero must “die” and visit the underworld before he returns to the land of the living and kicks some ass.
So why can’t Two-Face come back? For one, he’s not a hero. His character arc is pretty much complete when he falls to his death at the end of the film — another victim of Batman’s “I don’t have to save you” policy regarding badguys. Hell, Harvey Dent (before becoming Two-Face) foreshadows his own fate earlier in the film with this line: “You either die a hero, or see yourself live long enough to become the villain.” He doesn’t die heroically in the warehouse explosion that disfigures him. Rather, he survives and goes on a villainous rampage, ultimately holding Gordon and his family hostage until Batman comes along.
Chris Nolan’s too smart a writer to bring Two-Face back for “Batman 3.” The character’s story has been told. There’s nothing more to see here. Move along.
A character’s death — I don’t care if it’s in a movie, a comic book, or a movie based on a comic book — should have a profound impact on the story. It should have lend gravity to the caper. And it often does. Check out some of my favorite contemporary heroes in film, television and comics, and how their careers have been shaped by personal tragedy:
Batman: His parents were murdered in front of him by a mugger when he was a child. In the comics, Robin (Jason Todd, not Dick Grayson) was later brutally murdered by the Joker.
James Bond: His double-agent girlfriend, Vesper Lynd, committed suicide. Later, his wife, Tracy Bond, was killed by his nemesis, Blofeld.
Spider-Man: His beloved Uncle Ben was murdered by a thief he’d refused to apprehend. In the comics, his girlfriend, Gwen Stacy, was later killed during a battle with the Green Goblin.
MacGyver: A childhood friend was killed in a gun accident that was partly his fault.
The Incredible Hulk: On the TV show, David Banner’s wife was pinned inside their car after an accident, and he wasn’t strong enough to free her, resulting in her death.
Harry Potter: His parents were killed by Lord Voldemort when he was an infant.
Superman: His entire alien race died when the planet Krypton exploded. In the first film, his adoptive Earth father, Jonathan Kent, dies of heart failure.
RoboCop: His own death at the hands of bank robbers makes Alex Murphy a “volunteer” for the RoboCop Program, transforming him into a law enforcement drone with fragmented memories of his previous life as a father and husband.
So, suffering at least one tragic death is clearly a common denominator in the early stages of any hero’s journey. But imagine if any of those deaths were reversed. Imagine if Batman’s parents showed up at the doorstep of Wayne Manor one day — alive and well. Imagine how undoing a character’s personal tragedy would destroy his motivation and lessen the impact of his story. You can still have death and rebirth in drama — it’s baked in to the hero’s journey, in fact — but it can’t work at cross-purposes with a given character’s arc.
If Two-Face were to inexplicably come back from the dead, it would work against the new reality that’s created at the end of “The Dark Knight,” one in which Batman is wanted for Two-Face’s crimes and Harvey Dent is remembered as a hero. It’d be the death of good storytelling, and you can’t come back from that.
-Brad Lohan
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