Before The Dark Knight Rises: 10 Baffling Decisions By Batman Directors

5. Making Two Face The Joker #2 (Batman Forever)

Super-villains require certain identifying characteristics - they are fundamentally supposed to be super-natural, or exaggerated in other terms, but they are also, rather crucially supposed to be wholly individual. If any new villain appears who is too obviously a reprint of an older classic, fans tend to be somewhat unforgiving - after all, what is the point of copying if the objective is to create an unforgettable character? Unfortunately for Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever - which was otherwise quite enjoyable (particularly the cruelly underrated Riddler performance offered by Jim Carrey) - neither the director nor Tommy Lee Jones seemed to understand the importance of that individuality, and the version of Two Face that made it onto the screen was little more than a Joker variant in a funny suit. Crucial for Two Face's character development is the idea that he is completely at the mercy of his coin-flipping, and cannot make any decisions counter to those chosen by the coin. That is his part of his idiosyncracy, and the other is his split personality - one side reasonable, the other insane, but Jones' Two Face ignored both of those key foundations completely. In Batman Forever, Two Face is an irredeemable lunatic, wholly insane and wholly ridiculous (in the same way Batman 89's Joker was), and even worse, at one point he flips his coin until it brings the result he wants. Way to completely misunderstand the character there.
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