If we can’t have Batfamily movies and all Batman movies must be set in the early years before Robin, at least let us have one about the Gotham Justice Triumvirate. With Harvey Dent in the central role. Here’s my pitch:
Badass DA and wonderful person Harvey.
Harvey and Jim Gordon and Batman’s friendship. Jim and Harvey are friends! They’re two normal humans hanging out with a vigilante/living shadow cryptid who has no concept of normal human interaction! Think of the in-jokes they must have! Near the beginning, after Batman pulls his trademark disappearing act on them Harvey asks if Jim thinks he’ll ever say goodbye to them. Jim’s reply is some form of “when hell freezes over”, maybe even “Yeah - when he’s seeing you off to Arkham and me to Blackgate.” They laugh.
Harvey and Bruce Wayne’s friendship.
The fun and dramatic irony of writing Bruce and Batman as completely separate characters.
Depending on the timeline, possibly a cameo of newly fostered little Dick Grayson! To whom Harvey is like an uncle.
Gilda’s character being fleshed out. Exploring her side of the marriage and views on her husband’s career and mental decline and alliance with the Bat.
Harvey and Gilda’s relationship. And her and Two-Face’s relationship! He doesn’t care for Bruce, but he does love her equally while she apparently doesn’t even know he exists prior to him killing people. That’s an interesting dynamic.
Mafia intrigue and drama as the heroic trio finally bring down the previously untouchable Maroni empire.
Judicial, political and police force intrigue and drama as Harvey and to a less examined extent Jim fight to preserve their moral integrity in and reform their deeply corrupt institutions.
“For Gotham” is a key phrase, and may be the title. It’s said by each member of the triumvirate at different points when demonstrating or discussing how far they’re willing to go and how much hope they have for their city and its people.
Accurate, in-depth DID representation with Harvey and his protector alter not yet named Two-Face, who, reasserting himself after years if not decades of repression, resentment and ingratitude by the person he’s only ever wanted to protect slowly grows into a persecutor. Now Harvey’s wary, dismissive treatment of him is very understandable because of how terrifying DID can make life when you don’t understand it/your alter(s), and the need for control and excessive responsibility his childhood of abuse and neglect has cemented in him. But it’s still damaging. Other than lash out sometimes at people making Harvey feel threatened (Pre-)Two-Face hasn’t really done anything wrong before the events of the movie. They’re two sides of the same badly scarred coin each just trying to survive and make sense of their pain, equally sympathetic and valid… at least at the start. An element of the tragedy is that Two-Face could have healed and been a true friend to Harvey, if different choices were made and different chances were given. But the pressure of the Maroni case, a lifetime of unresolved trauma and post-traumatic stress from their father and each other, some plain bad luck and some mistakes lead to him becoming another abuser and a supervillain besides.
Music! Harvey has a theme, Two-Face has a theme. They hit opposite beats and parallel each other a lot yet never quite harmonize well. The coin (and the destruction and despair it represents) has a leitmotif that slowly rises to prominence in both. This motif is also associated with Christopher Dent. Harvey and Gilda have a love theme. Bruce and Batman have distinct themes that complement each other perfectly when played together, and when Bruce’s emotions shine through in Batman or Batman’s grimness peeks out of Bruce elements from the other piece are mixed in. The concept that Gotham’s ‘soul’ can be saved and humanity is worth fighting for has an uplifting theme, the main theme of movie and an antithesis to the coin’s, that has sections and elements woven into each member of the triumvirate’s themes and is repeatedly reprised in different tones.
Harvey’s external plot is making Gotham a better place, specifically via dismantling the Maroni crime family. The structure of most of the movie builds up to the climax of the trial of Salvatore Maroni himself. Maybe there are even recurring shots of Harvey’s calendar with an increasing number of days crossed out, to really drive the countdown home. To the main characters, it’s a beacon of confidence; a chance to prove law, and law for the good of the people, does hold power in Gotham, to send a message to everyone that things can and will get better. Nothing (and no one) is beyond redemption. To the audience, it’s a doomsday for Harvey we’re helpless to stop that taints every victory and happy moment on the path toward it.
His internal plot is grappling with his severe psychological issues rooted in his nightmarish childhood. He goes to therapy, he’s in a good place right before the start. But the first scene is… rough.
He visits his alcoholic father Christopher in the cheap hotel Chris, reduced to a pathetic old man, is staying in. Though he still calls him Dad and wants to try to reconcile, it’s clear he understands his regular, brutal beatings and otherwise generally neglectful parenting style (at least half the time) were wrong and he’s uncomfortable and tense. Chris solemnly presents him with a coin. The coin he would flip every night to ‘decide’ to beat him or not, which always, always came up heads for punishment. He said it was fair and that paradigm - that that his desires and actions don’t matter, he was just always bad inside and always deserves to suffer, in short that Harvey’s fate isn’t in his control - shaped the system’s entire personalities and worldviews, Harvey striving to prove it wrong and over years of bearing trauma and triggering experiences, his much more cynical protector internalizing it. With trembling fingers Harvey picks up the coin and looks at both sides. Two heads. The music cuts out. Dolly zoom on him that makes the room appear to close in around him, as a boy’s pleas, cries and screams of agony echo and he dissociates. Two-Face, who always acknowledged the flip was rigged, switches in. He smiles ruefully and says in a calm, quiet voice, “I understand.” Then he lunges to his feet, punches Christopher to the ground, grabs him by the throat and slams him against the wall, right fist raised to strike. He is now anything but calm. “Why? Why did you do it? Not the beating, that was just because you’re a sick bastard and took your anger out on the person least able to do anything about it. But why use the coin, why make it a game? Why lie? To shift responsibility even more? Just for fun? Tell me! Why would you bother to put a little spark of hope into your son’s eyes only to crush it? Answer me!” Instead of answering, Chris notes he’s bleeding; his right fist is closed so tight his fingernails have punctured his skin and the coin inside it is cutting into his palm. The shock of seeing that damn coin literally, physically hurting him brings tears to Two-Face’s eyes. He looks back up at his father, full of only raw grief and sadness for himself and his alter. His voice breaks. “Why, Dad? Did you really… not feel anything good when you looked at me?” “Did you really believe every time?” is all his father can say. Two-Face’s expression hardens, his fists clench again and he squares his shoulders. “Only half of me did. Goodbye, Christopher,” he says bitterly. The second he slams the door his facade of strength crumbles. He falls to his knees, sobbing and heavily dissociating. Cradling his head in his hands and raking them through his hair smears blood on and in the right half of his face and hair. Cue title card!
So yeah, there are only a couple of months between that day and the Maroni trial. He can’t bring himself to throw away the coin despite knowing he probably should. Gilda can’t understand why and urges him to leave it behind. He says it’s “too important” and “a reminder”, although of what, he can’t verbalize. The coin eventually ends up being habitually fidgeted with and kept on his person like a lucky charm. He’s trying to ‘redeem’ his trauma, turn it into something good, by drawing on it to motivate him to fight for justice, but the coin in practice is just a trigger. His PTSD, guilt complex and self-worth and control issues are dragged to the forefront and he dissociates more frequently. He falls further and further into obsessive workaholism. Loses sleep. Misses therapy sessions. All that matters is giving the absolute most he can to his city. Rest can wait, quality time with his wife and friends can wait, Harvey Dent the person can wait until the case is closed. Until after the trial. Everything will be better after The Trial.
The Trial happens. Everything is not better.
Maroni unscrewing his flask occurs in the background of the shot out of focus. When the acid is thrown, it sprays through the air in slow motion. We see Harvey and the witnesses’ (including Gilda and Bruce) shock transitioning to panic and horror as he flinches away too slowly, the coin in his hand flung into midair revolution and a wayward drop of acid approaching it. With a last close-up on his wide left eye reflecting Maroni’s smirk, cut to black. The most tortured screams you can imagine ring in our ears. No music in any of this.
Harvey and Two-Face’s mental health sinks to rock bottom during their hospital stay. Gilda, Bruce and Jim’s visits comfort Harvey little, especially since Batman duty calls Bruce away at a critical point (remember, nowhere in the script does it say Bruce is Batman). They’re given the coin back and discuss that life isn’t fair, but it should be… if they played their dad’s game now, it would be fair. All that work, all the blood and sweat and tears Harvey put into Gotham and this is how Gotham thanks him. He was never going to change things. Not playing by the rules of a rigged game, at least. It was never up to him. He never had it in him to be good, to be someone not worthy of punishment, let alone to improve other people’s lives. Flipping the coin, Harvey whispers with shattered eyes, “I understand.” Of course, seeing their scars is the last straw. Two-Face switches in, literally locking an anxious Harvey in a dark repressed chamber in their inner world to stop him getting in his way, and escapes hospital. Gilda, on her way to his room, begs him to stop and he hesitates but, genuinely sorrowful, decides his quest for justice takes precedence and runs into the stormy night, the shadows and rain obscuring his trail. She calls him, phone in a death grip. Fade out to its continual ringing.
This might be too weird and artsy but what if from the Fuck My Life I’m Listening To A Coin Now toxic epiphany onward, the shot composition is roughly pretty much symmetrical? Within shots or with shots mirroring each other. Not perfectly, obviously, but like. Rewind looking for it and it’s there.
The penultimate scene is another rooftop rendezvous and this time Harvey isn’t present; we and his friends feel his absence. Batman regretfully tells Jim and shows him footage of a new criminal taking the underworld by storm: the fledgling Two-Face. Jim is first disbelieving, then devastated and turns his back so Batman won’t see him cry. He angrily tells Batman not to comfort him, and to leave now that he’s given him the shitty news, because that’s all he ever does for him. We pull back to show Batman is staying, pained, guilty and truly having no idea how to proceed. Jim assumes he’s already silently vanished. Once he collects himself and goes inside to inform his subordinates, Batman lingers in front of the Batsignal where they took their shared vow. “Goodbye, Harvey,” he says softly.
The epilogue is Two-Face’s confrontation with Maroni. Several months later, the Mafia don’s out of prison already thanks to the, again, incredibly corrupt legal system. Two-Face acts venomously calm and civil while holding him at gunpoint. He remarks how long and hard Harvey worked just to bring Maroni to court, and how now with some broken laws and spilt blood here Maroni is in front of him in a fraction of the time. Helpless, like he was in that courtroom. He explains his “fair” game to kill him or not in a speech clearly quoted from Christopher, shows him both sides of the coin, tosses it and stares at the unseen outcome in his hand. “Lucky,” he announces, making Maroni slightly relax - a little spark of hope put into his eyes, you could say. Suddenly Two-Face shoots him twice in the heart. “For Gotham, not you.” Harvey switches in (implicitly his alter’s guilt is a positive trigger for him as his anger is for Two-Face) to find his alter has committed murder, with a smoking gun in his right hand and flecks of blood on that hand and his suit. He staggers back in horror and drops the gun and coin. A pang of practically physical pain interrupts his calling Jim to turn himself in, because he can’t choose that, can he? He falls to his knees. With trembling fingers he picks up the coin and, pleading under his breath to just have this one chance, flips it. It comes up scarred. Two-Face resumes control. He smashes the phone under his heel and stands. The final shot is him walking purposefully toward the camera so it zooms in on the vertical divide of his suit jacket.
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