This could be an interesting look at a Batman villain that’s been seen in a couple of different ways. One thing Matthew McConaughey has going for him is that he has played the part of a lawyer a couple of times before and seeing as how Harvey Dent is a former DA that could be a bonus for the upcoming Batman movie in terms of how easy McConaughey could slide into the role. It’s also interesting since Aaron Eckhart kind of paved the way for a much more menacing version of Two-Face given that, in The Dark Knight, he was a lot more reserved and had a much more sinister growl to him than Tommy Lee Jones did in Batman Forever. You can go on and admit that Jones was more of a buffoon in Batman Forever, which is ironic since, as Ryan Parker of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, he accused Jim Carrey of being so out of control that he couldn’t work with him. But seeing Matthew take on this role leads one to believe that it might actually get even more serious, hopefully, than anything that’s been done before. It’d be hard to top Eckhart’s performance with anyone else though, and even so it would seem that the bar has been raised quite a bit since Aaron created a character that, despite being killed off too quickly, could have been a true terror had he been kept around. Can you imagine a Gotham in which the Joker, Two-Face, Bane, and Scarecrow were free to run wild? Now that would be a live-action movie to strive for, if only because it would be utter chaos and might even facilitate the emergence of Nightwing, Robin, and perhaps even Batwoman or Batgirl. Just for fun, Eric Joseph from We Got This Covered has a picture of how McConaughey might look as the scarred villain and it’s pretty cool.
But getting back to the meat of things, this version that’s coming up has already cast its Catwoman, Zoe Kravitz, and might have Colin Ferrell as the Penguin. Jeffrey Wright from Westworld is set to take on the role of Commissioner Gordon, while it’s been rumored that Andy Serkis is being looked at for the role of Alfred. Of course it can’t be left out that Robert Pattinson will be doing what he can to bring another note of pride to the suit, but at this point a lot of us are simply hoping that it will be another hit, and not just a miss. As much as some people loved Batfleck it just wasn’t made to be a sustainable idea and as a result it crashed without fail. Batman is an iconic character and has only ever been played perfectly by a couple people, one of whom I kind of hesitate just a bit to add since he was great, but he was still hard to take with that growling voice. Christian Bale, if you were wondering who I was talking about, played a great Batman, but at the end of the day Michael Keaton was able to do Batman and Bruce Wayne equally well without resorting to a throaty growl, so honestly he gets the nod as one of the absolute best. When it comes to the villains though, Two-Face has had a lot more representation in the animated movies than live action and that was likely for the best when Batman Forever came out. Not only did Tommy Lee Jones look absolutely nuts in his getup and facial prostheses, his acting was so over the top that it made the character into more of a loose cannon than he’s ever really been.
The thing about Two-Face is that he is kind of nuts, but he also still has a rational side that he does utilize on occasion. He’s not some nutso killer that just goes around flipping a coin to see who he’s going to whack and what he’s going to do next. The coin is his gimmick obviously, but the real danger of his character is that he does leave things to fate and he does fly off the hook at times thanks to his insanely scarred psyche. His origin has changed a bit in just about every representation but the gist of it is that upon losing half of his face to either acid or fire the damage to his psyche is so great that he turns his back on the system he once served, becoming a villain where once he was a white knight-type that sought to put criminals away. To think that it took so little to turn him into a villain is kind of hard to believe, but it did make him into one of the more deranged villains that Batman has had to deal with.
How McConaughey is going to portray this character is hard to say since he’s not really known for going nuts all that often, but given that he’s such a celebrated actor and has proven his worth many times over, it’s not hard to think that he’s going to come up with a way to make it work.
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