How did he knock it out of the park?
By capturing the spirit of Harvey Dent and Two Face perfectly in his performance. The transition is near flawless. His Harvey is someone who believes in the law.
This article sums it up better than I can:
You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
These words, spoken by Harvey Dent in the film and its trailers, portend the inevitable corruptibility of heroes in the Batman universe. At the beginning of the film, Dent represents absolute good, a goodness thats so pure, that has so much potential to change Gotham, that even Batman is thinking of hanging up his spurs.
Dent is referred to frequently as Gothams White Knight, a term used throughout the course of the film. I was speaking with a friend about this movie today and he pointed out that when he went to see the movie he did not anticipate The Dark Knight could actually also refer to Dent, a clever yet profound subtext to the film (and thats not even mentioning the night/knight pun, which I will choose never mention again after this sentence). Indeed, Dents journey from light to darkness is handled plausibly and adeptly in the film, which makes his story arc monstrously tragic.
Many people have remarked on how depressing the film is and I would say that I mostly agree: The Jokers ability to destroy that which Dent loves and turn him to the evil that he becomes is sad in a way that can only be experienced by seeing the film. But the apparent relative ease with which Joker does this is what makes the Dent storyline strike so close to home: The film makes us realize that we, as humans are limited, and that our capacity to be good is subject to the vagaries of fate and whatever the hell else decides to destroy what we love. Dent is not just a proxy for hope, hes a proxy for us as well, reminding us of the duality that lies within each of us.
http://www.slashfilm.com/assessing-the-themes-of-the-dark-knight/
To me, he's got this wide eye hollow look on his face. Granted, he's got a good jawline and all, he looks like Dent if we only had a photo, but there's not a hint of darkness to him. Again, I've mentioned this in the past, but the guy looked like he walked from the set of "Thank You For Smoking" and over to TDK's set. The only difference is that he's reading off two different scripts. He never transformed into Harvey.
Wide eyed hollow look?
http://screenmusings.org/TheDarkKnight/pages/tdk_0267.htm
http://screenmusings.org/TheDarkKnight/pages/tdk_0409.htm
http://screenmusings.org/TheDarkKnight/pages/tdk_0827.htm
http://screenmusings.org/TheDarkKnight/pages/tdk_0940.htm
http://screenmusings.org/TheDarkKnight/pages/tdk_1360.htm
No offense, but you're talking nonsense, man.
Yeah, but all it felt mechanical. I believe someone else with more range would have done a better job than Eckhart (a gritty Jon Hamm maybe?).
It felt organic and very natural to me. I don't know what kind of standard you expect from actors if you felt his performance was mechanical. It's one of the best performances in a comic book movie.
He's got so many greats scenes but my favorite is the final one with Gordon and Batman where Eckhart raises the roof. His pain and anger at Batman and Gordon felt so real and genuine. You could see he was a man pushed over the edge.
When people think about BR, they think of Michelle and Danny. When they think of TDK, Heath's Joker comes to mind a mile before Eckhart. I bet in the hive mind of the public, most people probably don't recall the details of Eckhart's performance. They'd say "Eckhart, who? Oh? That's the guy who played Two-Face right?" Eckhart is not in the same league as Heath, or perhaps a few other choice actors, but that's just my own opinion.
When people think of The Silence of the Lambs they think of Hannibal Lecter, despite the fact that he only has about 18 minutes screen time and Jodie Foster is the leading character who also won an Oscar.
The fact that Heath comes to mind before anyone else doesn't diminish the effectiveness of Eckhart's performance at all.
I just don't buy that the goody two-shoe Dent we saw up until the "abduction" was actually a man who tosses a coin. There's no hint of Dent's dark side prior to that scene.
So what? That scene was all you needed to see he DID have a dark side. He did that just when Rachel was threatened. Imagine what he'd do if she was murdered.
What preludes to Selina Kyle's dark side did you see prior to her going loopy and deciding to sew herself a skin tight cat suit? What about her before that fall made you think this is a woman who would be involved in blowing up buildings, abductions and murder frame ups?
He suddenly turned from good to half-bad in a moment's notice. That's not very convincing.
No, he didn't. There was several preludes to it. First and foremost is the aforementioned scene involving abducting and terrorizing the Joker accomplice.
Second is the scene with Gordon after the scarring. Before the Joker even visits him and adds fuel to the fire. Dent expresses extreme anger and hate at Gordon for the betrayal he sees at Gordon's men being involved in what happened to him and Rachel.
Gordon: "I'm sorry, Harvey"
Dent: "No. No you're not. Not yet"
Again, perhaps it's just a matter of taste.
It clearly is in your case.
That's another problem that I had: we're SUPPOSED to care for Nolan's Dent when he and his girl were in danger. But I really didn't give two bits about this whole "suspense". Rachel Dawes V1 from Begins and V2 from TDK is nothing more than a token romantic interest that's always been written for Bat-films; they're hollow to the core and unrealistic.
That's your own preference. I can't tell you that you're right or wrong for not caring any more than you can tell me I'm wrong for not caring about Selina Kyle prior to her being turned into Catwoman.
But there is nothing hollow or unrealistic about a guy who is driven mad with grief over the loss of a loved one. It's the foundation for so many characters. Batman being one of them.
Did you give a flying fudge about the Waynes? I sure as heck didn't, yet Batman's whole foundation is based on him losing them.
It is also difficult to convince normal people, as complex as we become with time, that such a "white knight" like Dent actually exists. We have little to no background story on him, he's dropped into this film like soap in a bucket. A few short court scenes with laughable secondary actors are supposed to weren't enough to show what made him the greatest DA of Gotham.
You're really being silly now, man. Dent locked up half of the city's criminals. He wasn't dirty. He believed in Batman. He believed in saving Gotham.
In a City like Gotham, that is the best thing they've seen since sliced bread. You try and convince me that in a city as hopeless as Gotham, people would not put a great guy like that on a pedestal as a beacon of hope and virtue.
I can certainly buy it more than a city believing a bird man freak who's lived in the sewers all his life is the best candidate to run their city as Mayor
My "vision": To really amp up Dent's story a bit more, you'd need more interaction between him and Bruce Wayne (not as Batman). Not just Bruce praising Harvey but perhaps some dialogue that reflect more conflicts of morality and hints of their double-life, split minds and differing ideologies. You know, more than just a dinner scene with a lifeless Rachel Dawes, a Russian dancer and reliance on Zimmer music.
Maybe a subplot of Dent planting evidence against the crooks would make him a truly tragic hero, some sort of false prophet. Rather than just pointing a gun at a mental patient and flipping a coin (cops in pop culture use force in interrogation all the time), why not have him flip a coin so he picks whether or not to play dirty?
Have Harvey do the dirty deed then have him hint to Rachel in a bed scene about what he has done, to gauge her reactions, to see if she understands or sympathizes. Maybe this way we could really see Dent as a moral man who eventually bends the rules to win an un-winnable battle. The end justifies the means sort of Harvey who is not sure about his choices.
If Rachel is dead by the time Harvey becomes Two-face, then have him grieve about his lies.
Or turn it around, keep Rachel alive and have Two-Face violently come clean with the truth so Rachel sees that her lover is not that simple.
That would completely diminish the effectiveness and tragedy of the character by portraying him like that. The brilliance in the tragedy of Harvey Dent becoming Two Face is that he wasn't a false prophet or a guy who relied on breaking or cheating the law in any way. The law failed him. Not the other way around. In the comics as well as in TDK, it is ultimately the corruption in the law that leads to Harvey's downfall.
He was a good guy who tried to play by the rules and do the right thing and he lost everything because of it. The power of that line he says in the final showdown "You thought we could be decent men in an indecent time. We were wrong. The only morality in a cruel world is chance. Unbiased. Unprejudiced. Fair".
So with all due respect, I hope your version of Dent is never used. I prefer noble and honest Harvey who loses everything.
The best take on Harvey has yet to come. Nolan did what he needed to weave a Harvey Dent/Two-Face arc into TDK. But Two-Face deserves a more careful and intricate treatment, at least to the degree that they had put into Heath's Joker.
He got a careful and intricate treatment. It is the best take on Dent we've had so far. It's probably the best villain Nolan has done because he's so fleshed out and well rounded.
Joker was great, but he was a total mystery regarding his background, which is the way Joker should be. But he was not given the level of attention Dent was, which is as it should be. Joker is an absolute. He is what he is and knows what he wants to do.
Dent has to be shown to go from a rise and fall from grace, which Nolan captured brilliantly.