Exclusive: Harvey Dent Is In The Batman Part 2
Harvey Dent will appear in The Batman Part II, but no actor has yet been cast.
The upcoming film The Batman Part II will bring fan-favorite character Harvey Dent aka Two-Face into Matt Reeves’s new vision of the Dark Knight. According to our trusted and proven sources, Gotham City’s former District Attorney/criminal mastermind will be part of the sequel to the hit 2022 film, though no actor has yet been cast in the role. Harvey Dent has appeared in numerous previous Batman films in both pre- and post-facial scarring, so it will be interesting to see how The Batman Part II approaches the character this time.
Harvey Dent has been portrayed in live-action films by three different actors so far: Billy Dee Williams, Tommy Lee Jones, and Aaron Eckhart. Williams briefly portrayed the Gotham D.A. in Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman, vowing to take down the city’s organized crime syndicates; he was originally intended to reprise the role in Batman Returns, but his character was rewritten as evil industrialist Max Shreck and portrayed by Christopher Walken.
The character was next portrayed by Tommy Lee Jones in Joel Schumacher’s 1995 film Batman Forever as a maniacal, colorful villain accompanied by two female molls played by Drew Barrymore and Debi Mazar. Famously, Tommy Lee Jones did not like co-starring with Jim Carrey (who portrayed the Riddler, who would be played by Paul Dano as the primary villain of 2022’s The Batman), allegedly telling the Dumb and Dumber actor that he would not “sanction [his] buffoonery.”
Most recently, Harvey Dent was portrayed by Aaron Eckhart in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (2008), the first film to depict the character’s transformation from idealistic D.A. to murderous criminal (albeit one focused on eradicating the remaining elements of Gotham’s criminal underworld). Harvey Dent briefly reappeared in 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises through archival footage, as well as the lingering effects of his death and the cover-up of his actions on the city.
Perhaps even more than Christopher Nolan, Matt Reeves seems to be portraying a more grounded, gritty version of Batman, so it will be interesting to see how Harvey Dent will appear in his next film. The depiction of Two-Face has varied wildly in the decades since his debut in a 1942 issue of Detective Comics, as is typical of almost all comic book characters. However, in recent years, Harvey Dent has increasingly been portrayed as a tragic figure constantly at war with his own fractured psyche and warring impulses toward justice and violence.
One of the primary themes of The Batman was the depth of corruption in Gotham City and how neither the city government nor the Wayne family’s fortune was above being tainted by it. It seems almost certain that a large part of The Batman Part II will involve Harvey Dent struggling against the criminal culture of Gotham, but it will be interesting to see if his disfiguration is depicted on screen at all.
