MovieChat Forums > Batman Forever (1995) Discussion > People hating on TLJ for Two-Face, why?

People hating on TLJ for Two-Face, why?


What was so wrong with Two-Face. I saw this movie as a child and he really terrified me. He seemed so unhinged and ruthless. Watching it as an adult I still see him as being fairly savage. He killed Robin's parents on screen. He didn't hesitate to attempt killing someone by drowning them in acid (the same acid that maimed him,) having another die buried alive, and disguising himself as an old woman.

Yes he acted wild, but wasn't that what the character called for?

This was my first Batman and I am unfamiliar with the comics original portrayal of the character.

In the Nolan iteration of Batman, I found him to be boring and a bit of a disappointment.

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I have been defending Batman Forever for years. While I feel that this movie gets more hate than it should, I do feel that James Earl Jones was channeling Joker or some other over-the-top villain when he shouldn't have. Then again, I think that Aaron Eckhart gave a very good performance but it could have been a bit edgier in a more comic-oriented film. I guess what I'm saying is that neither version quite got it right but aren't terrible either.

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I do feel that James Earl Jones was channeling Joker or some other over-the-top villain

Wow! First actor ever to play both Batman and Darth Vader! 😊

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Or, y'know, Tommy Lee Jones. :)

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This is a great Batman movie -- just enough campy villainy from Jones and Carrey, along with serious psychological drama for Batman and Robin and Chase.

I thought Carrey stole the show and Jones seemed to be playing a cartoon character, but they needed a loose cannon to balance out the methodical (but over the top) Riddler.

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Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey made an awesome duo

You actually got the impression that you have two buffoons who are in way over their heads in taking down Batman, but somehow they achieve some success together

You don't get that with de Vito's Penguin and Pfeiffer's Catwoman: the movie portrays them as legitimate threats with solid diabolical schemes

And then in Batman & Robin you have Schwarzenegger and Thurman and the duo is absolutely ridiculous. It isn't campy but amusing, it just a complete trainwreck that you enjoy for being a trainwreck, not for anything related to their chemistry or the plot of their characters

None of the Nolan duos of villains shared much onscreen chemistry. You had one great scene with Ledger's Joker and Eckhart's Two-Face, but that's just one scene

So with Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones you had something unique. It's like watching two naughty children planning some fucked up prank. Their chemistry is my favorite part of this movie

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Because he acted absolutely nothing like Two-Face. Two-Face is supposed to be more of a tragic figure, in BF he was just a clown. Also he kept flipping his coin until he got the result he wanted which essentially defeats the purpose of the coin. If you want to shoot Bruce, then don’t bother flipping the coin, just shoot him.

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In fairness, they really didn't give Tommy Lee Jones much to work with. We got a brief recap of how his face got scarred but from there, he's pretty much a generic, one-note gangster. Two-Face is practically a Dick Tracy villain with his gruesome face and over-the-top, hammy mannerisms. He's like Jack Nicholson's Joker but without any real depth or character arc.

We're never really given much insight that Harvey Dent was once an honest to goodness and genuine "good guy" (like with how Billy Dee Williams portrayed him in the 1989 movie) until the very end, where Two-Face refers to Batman as "Bruce" and tells him that he's always been a good friend.

TLJ's Two-Face otherwise, doesn't have any real human qualities for him. You can easily argue that Two-Face is generally, more of an anti-villain like Mr. Freeze or Catwoman than a straight up embodiment of evil like Joker. Any hope that he could've been a redemptive or sympathetic figure was lost when they had Two-Face kill Dick Grayson's family in cold blood.

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Two-Face to me, is basically the Batman version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Tommy Lee Jones' interpretation doesn't really go too far into the idea that "Harvey Dent" (the good persona) and "Two-Face" (the bad persona) are two distinctively different personalities. He practically comes across as a one note bad guy with little if any ounce of humanity buried underneath. He's actually how I would imagine Two-Face if he was actually allowed to be on the 1960s show with Adam West. That's why it always annoyed me seeing Two-Face flip his coin repeatedly so that he could get to the scarred side, thus he would be able to shoot Bruce Wayne. Normally, doesn't Two-Face accept the first outcome of the coin-flip?

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Exactly. It seemed that After they brought in Carrey Jones' role must have been cut or changed to give him more screen time. But really it should have been just Two Face as the villain. They could have explored the friendship between Bruce and Harvey and then the conflict Batman and Two Face. Maybe throw a reference to Robin near the end of the movie. So no Riddler or Robin and Schumacher taking it completely serious.

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I would have totally been down for that. Both Forever and Batman and Robin have too many characters. I think Batman and Robin would have been a lot better had it just been about Batman, Robin and Mr. Freeze. Hell I actually thought the movie was at least entertainingly stupid until Poison Ivey came into the picture. Poison Ivy and Batgirl didn’t need to be in the movie.

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To tell you to truth, Two-Face is really just there as a plot device to get Dick Grayson into the picture. Other than that, you can argue that there was little justification for him to be in that movie other than to give Batman another villain to fight. Two-Face in the comics actually isn't the man responsible for killing Dick's parents, it was a gangster named Tony Zucco. But like with the Joker in the 1989 movie being the one who gunned down Bruce Wayne's parents, they again had to mess around with the previously established mythology.

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because the whole film is over the top camp neon garbage

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RIDDLER [ disingenuously] Was that over the top? I can never tell! SMIRK

This whole cluster fuck was over the top. Batman was NEVER supposed to be "camp," which means "exaggerated and sarcastc" for those of you whose father did not have your sperm in his seminal vesicles when this movie was made. The fuckikg Batmam TV travesty introduced "camp" to the Batman lsgend, and all for the worse.

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Because my first introduction to Two Face was Batman The Animated Series and Tommy Lee Jones' Two Face was nothing like him. Two Face was a bad choice for this movie as he was not part of the era that this movie was imitating. Frankly they should have just brought Joker back as that was who he was acting like most of the time.

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As I said on another thread, in some of their scenes together, Jones looked like he wanted to strangle Carrey.

Carrey played everything over-the-top and totally camp, forcing everyone who had scenes with him to do the same or be completely overshadowed by the crazy man, and well. Jones is a master of subtlety, underplaying, and deadpan humor, and I think he'd have liked to do something other with the role than play deliberate camp at top volume. I also think Jones knew that the director was letting Carrey run away with the film, and the result of all that was a weak performance from Jones and scenes where he looked like he wanted to strangle his scenery-devouring co-star.

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I saw it in theaters when I was 13 and loved it. There were certainly cartoony moments, but it was really a Batman movie for kids. I don't revisit it more than once a decade or so, but it's similar to the Adam West Batman series.

We're all so used to the dark and brooding Batman, but there were decades where the comic was just like adam west series.

If it's not your thing, fortunately there are at least eight versions of Batman to pick from. The early movies, Adam West series, Tim Burton, Joel Schumacher, Animated series (my favorite), Christopher Nolan, Zach Snyder, and the upcoming version.

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You are on what is exactly the right site for you.

That’s not a good thing.

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