Harvey Dent is the focus of The Dark Knight?
If this LA Times piece with Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan is correct, then Harvey Dent is a major component of the next Batman movie, with Heath Ledger’s Joker only weaving in and out of the story to cause occasional chaos and damage.
If that’s really how the movie is setup, then what the hell is with that trailer that was released a couple months ago? Dent appears absolutely nowhere in that.
The answer, of course, is simple. The casual fan – and even some of the hardcore fans – has been anxiously awaiting the appearance of The Joker in the franchise, especially since such an appearance was teased at the very end of Batman Begins. And Ledger’s broad but complex performance provided footage that was ripe for the picking as trailer material. It was flashy and brilliant and would, the studio likely thought, completely and unquestionably suck people in.
It’s not just the trailer, though. It’s the whole online WhySoSerious campaign that Warners has engaged in that’s led the audience to believe that the Joker will be the central opposition figure in the movie and that it’s his story as much as Batman’s that the movie is going to tell.
Harvey Dent, especially if the reports are true about him not spending much if any time as Two-Face in the movie, does not provide such bang for the buck. Aaron Eckhardt’s performance isn’t likely to be as showy or scene-stealing and so did not provide much usable footage for a trailer that needed to explode with an immediate impression on the audience.
If this is really the way the movie is going to net out then I think Warner Bros. needs to be careful about the potential reputation damage they’ve set themselves up for. They created a fully interactive campaign that was all about the mayhem created by the Joker, leading implicitly if not explicitly to the expectation that The Joker would be doing likewise in the movie.
If that turns out not to match up with the reality of the film the studio risks having word-of-mouth turn against them as disgruntled audience members that first weekend leave the theaters and immediately start telling their networks that the movie did not contain as much Joker as they thought.
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Now that the movie has been released we can see that Harvey Dent was an important character but didn’t detract from Ledger’s Joker performance one little bit.
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I would anticipate that the Joker will indeed be a force to contend with throughout this movie, wreaking havoc and being Batman’s main foil. I’d guess that Dent becomes Two-Face near, if not right at, the end of the film, and likely as a result of some act of the Joker.
Nolan – again, I would guess – is merely referencing the main dramatic arc of this story. He’s a director, crafting a piece of art, and he believes – and not unjustly – that the drama here is as important as the pyrotechnics. He doesn’t have a Batman origin story to tell, so he’s going to track Dent’s progression from honorable do-gooder to double-visaged freakshow. That will provide the story’s drama – which you are right on the money about; it does NOT a good trailer make – while Bats and the Joker duke it out throughout.
Ultimately, I wouldn’t worry about the fans. I’ve got a lot of faith in Nolan and I think this movie will deliver.