One thing that always bugged me though, was the handling of Harvey Dent. For the longest time, I thought it was the result of movie reaching for too much, being too ambitious for its own good.
Now though, I realize that the problem wasn't Nolan's ambition but his rejection of mythic storytelling.
One of the key selling points of Nolan's Batman was its commitment to realism; that is, providing plausible explanations for how some one like Batman could exist. That didn't stop from the movie from stretching things out for a more heightened reality but it did so in the way that was acceptable for action movies.
This move away from the more comicy aspects of the form didn't hurt the main story so much since it replaced those with the genre conventions of cops and robbers movies to great effect. But that only covers the conflict between the Joker and Batman- the genre conventions leave Harvey out in the cold which Nolan and screenwriter Drew Goddard didn't quite know how to reconcile.
So why would Harvey throw such a wrench in a grounded, realistic narrative? Well, it's because Harvey is drawn from a more theatrical, operatic tradition that isn't meant to be cut down to a more naturalistic setting.
Dent is made up like a modern Greek tragic hero; he's an exceptional figure who's prowess and competence has led him to the zenith of his world. But, because of an inescapable flaw, his world will come crashing down until it inverts around him- everything that created his success will be what traps him in his misery.
What makes Dent such a pitiable figure is that he is trapped in his dichotomy- he is forever completely good on the one side and an utter sadist on the other. His sides have no way of communicating or reconciling, he is nothing more than two absolutes forever warring for dominance. The trait he's meant to warn us about is thinking that there are only the guilty and the innocent, the good and the evil, with nothing in between, so that we learn to navigate the gray in the world or drown.
To pull this off, you have to lean into the more mythic elements of the comic form and be willing to go for those more operatic notes even it does risk making things feel a bit silly.
But, Nolan doesn't do this until it's too late.
When Dent makes his transition to Two-Face, he becomes a one-dimensional villain obsessed with vengeance the we've seen a million times before. The movie reduces him to a coin flip gimmick that it removes all meaning from. The point of the coin flip is that, because he is nothing but absolutes, he can't make a nuanced decision. He doesn't know how to handle ambiguity or decide which extreme he needs to engage with.
So he flips the coin, letting fate decide for him. Flipping the coin is a surrender, the final pathetic act of a man who's will has been completely crushed inside of him. In the movie, it's just the vehicle for the whims of your everyday murderer.
This refusal to engage in the more mythic aspects of Two-Face's character is part of why the ending doesn't land the way Nolan wanted it to. The end of The Dark Knight hinges on the audience accepting that the legend of Harvey Dent is so important that if it's compromised by the revelation of his actions, then the entire project of reform dies with him. So the idea that if you push Dent's crimes onto Batman, then the people of Gotham believe they can solve their problems within the law and don't need someone like Batman to do that work for them.
The whole speech of "the hero we deserve, but don't need right now," is about how there are larger stories people need to believe about the world they live in. It's a very mythic approach to the characters and the world they live in. It's also the very thing Nolan has been doing his level best to make sure his audience ignores. The tonal whiplash that comes from this shift is why so many people left the theater thinking "The fuck was that ending on about?"
It's a shame, really. The success of The Dark Knight convinced the industry that for comic book movies- and fantasy action movies in general- to be successful they had to match Nolan's hyper realistic style, so they removed all traces of the any mythical origin. Do you remember the Russell Crow Robin Hood? Or that Hercules movie The Rock did? Probably not. Because, shock of all shocks, if you divorce characters from the things that make them interesting and compelling, they turn out boring more often then not.
Thankfully, this trend is starting to buckle. The Guardians of the Galaxy series and especially the success of Into the Spiderverse has shown that studios can make money by leaning in to the more fantastical and sillier elements that comics have to offer.
There's a reason comic books haven't died out, even though they have come very close over the decades. So, maybe, just maybe, there's something about these characters and how their stories are told that keeps audiences engaged and coming back for more decade after decade. And, I don't know, maybe there's something to learn from that.
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