A Tommy Lee Jones Two-Face with a better director in the 90's would have been something special instead of what we got with Batman Forever

I cannot sanction his buffoonery in this film.

I am still sad that we never got to see the Billy Dee Williams Two-Face that could have been.

I still never understand how they took Two-Face, one of Batman's more serious villains, played by Tommy Lee Jones, an actor who's known for serious no-nonsense roles, and somehow decided to make him act like that.

The mandate for that film and it's sequel were to be more kid friendly after Burton went too dark. Sadly it was never meant to be.

If you think a serious two face would've been better I think you've misunderstood what tone that movie was going for. They wanted goofy camp and that's what Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carey delivered.

He’s actually really creepy in his introduction until the camera zoomed in on his face and he starts laughing goofy, followed by a terrible wise crack about pizza. If they kept him on that track, it would’ve been really great.

The first scene with him is a glimpse of what could have been. He actually plays the two sides of Harvey vs Two-Face in that first scene. Calm and measured, speaking quietly at first in the Harvey Dent persona... and then it's not until he says "luck" and then turns his head around in the "zippity doo dah LUCK!" outburst that he switches to the Two-Face persona, and then from that point on, we never see Harvey Dent again. He never brings that duality back in any other scene. Kevin Smith went over this in the commentary he did with Marc Bernardin for the movie (which you can find on youtube). He described it as "Once he says 'luck', the movie is fucked." But that one scene at the beginning shows how Jones would have played it, and it definitely could have been fascinating to see more of that.

That's not the director's fault.  The director followed the instructions from the studio who wanted a kid friendly movie with more sidekicks and villains so they'd have more toys to sell, not deep character studies with character development.  The movie you want would never have been greenlit and funded.

Hell, a better script and director would have made a Jim Carrey performance much better.

The. Camp. Is. The. Point. We have totally lost the idea of a "fun" campy movie since the 00s. It's like it's embarrassing to have a movie just be out there and silly, so we got 20 years of "gritty, realistic" reboots of all these franchises. Batman for 40 years was campy as shit. This is just an extension of that.

Transitioning from Tim Burton is ALWAYS going to be a disaster. WB shat the bed. Joel Schumacher is not a horrible person or Director. The transition could not have been more of ripping off the duct tape though

I always thought Charlie Sheen would’ve been an amazing Harvey Dent.

Than what we got? You mean one of the greatest movie soundtracks of all time.

Tommy Lee Jones was wasted in that flick for sure. The man can do serious psychological drama like nobody's business but they had him cackling like a maniac instead of exploring the internal conflict thats supposed to define Two-Face. schumacher basically turned every villain into a cartoon character which completely missed the point of what makes Two-Face interesting in the first place

Better director? I think Joel Schumacher was actually fit for the job there even is a better/darker cut of the movie that only a select group of people have seen. Tbh though its just a workprint and I think the movie is pretty good. Very underappreciated.

Joel Schumacher is not a bad director. He’s made plenty of good films. The Batman movies he made were purposefully shlocky and campy, trying to take things in a different direction. It failed and they are absolutely bad movies, but comic book movies were absolutely not taken seriously back then.

I was 12 so to me it was a great movie. I won’t rewatch it. It would ruin my memory.

I’ve always said his first 33 seconds on screen as Two-Face was near perfect, there are very few moments like that in the movie, the part at the end where he called Bruce a good friend was also a glimmer of what we could’ve had.

Nah, I think TLJ was totally miscast on that one.

I remember a moment in the film that he actually got to play the character and reverted to Dent, and it seemed believable. Pretty sure they immediately killed him afterward.

Akiva Goldsman is a f****** hack. I can't believe he has an Oscar.

Two Face was the best part of that movie

Maybe it’s just childhood nostalgia but I swear there is a good movie in there somewhere. I think the Tommy Lee Jones bigger d*** wacky off with Jim Carrey was obviously a mistake. Also Val Kilmer was backwards. Just a completely morose Bruce Wayne, and a pretty light silly Batman. And maybe that would be an interesting thing to explore, but it just wasn’t the right movie for that.

it probably would have required even the studio abandoning the campiness element, not just the director

Tommy Lee Jones is the same in every movie. It doesn't matter the director.

Batman Forever *is something special.*

Joel Schumacher is a fine director. He just had goals for that movie that didn’t align with what the fans wanted.

I was a teen by the time Batman Begins came out and was into the Year One comic book and all the Batman comics since then and was all in on grim and serious Batman hating the Schumacher films and the Adam West stuff. But then I got older and Morrison was doing their run of Batman and I learned to enjoy and embrace the Silver Age absurdity even though it was forced on the comic book industry at the time because of government pressure the writers and artists still made cornball stories and Adam West 60s Batman brought that camp to life. Even when Burton took on Batman and just because Keaton had a black suit and Gotham had a gothic aesthetic didn't mean it was a grim dark Batman there was still camp to it especially with Returns. Schumacher just went back to it with Forever and B&R and I don't think they are as bad in hindsight. Yes they are dumb toy commercials with flashy colors and corny dialog but I have found it to be a bad good kind of thing. They at least have a unique perspective and aren't trying to be hyper real and make everything make sense or call to attention how absurd everything is like Marvel has been doing. Is a more serious Batman better? Sure, Batman TAS and that whole run is still my favorite Batman. But there's also merits to campy Batman and I like Batman Brave and the Bold just as much and it's camp is a bit more earnest whereas Schumacher's did also come from studio meddling.

Seems like he was playing joker more than 2face

If Dukakis had won the election, his presidency would have been different than Bush Sr.

What makes you think it wasn't all an acting choice on TLJ's part? Or perhaps part of a directive by the studio? It doesn't have to all fall on Schumacher (The visual design of the film on the other hand....that's our Joel all day long lol).

No shit.

I have always said the problem with Batman Forever is it's half a good movie.

Or just enjoy Batman Forever for what it was: a fun, campy, comic-booky movie. Could it have even been what they wanted in the first place and got what they wanted?

I love Batman Forever. It was the Batman I grew up with. It was fun. Now everything is so dark and dour, which I also like but he suited that version of Batman just fine.

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Blame Joel Schumacher, he turned that series into saturday morning cartoons

Batman Forever was already over stuffed, but I agree Jones was wasted. Carey did a good job as Riddler, but his character just wasn't sinister because Jim Carey isn't sinister. I thought Kilmer did a decent job as Batman. Don't get how people like Batman Returns.

'90s *

Almost everyone in that film was giggling and laughing, as was most of the audience. It wasn't meant to be serious.

It seems like a lost cause. He was literally just doing a Jack Nicholson Joker impression. But he’s not as engaging on screen.

This made pause and think about how unconventional of a leading man Tommy Lee is. Dude has had a run

I don’t think it’s the director’s fault. He can only shoot what’s been written in the screenplay, after all. Same for TLJ, he’s gotta do what he’s told (barring any minor improv bits) Of that era of Batman movies, Forever is my second favourite (89 > Forever > Returns > B&R) despite Pfeiffer’s Catwoman awakening something unexpected in 10 year old me. The deleted scenes that expand on Bruce’s psychological issues are great too, and Kilmer does a pretty good job of playing a damaged Bruce Wayne. Yeah, the film is campy compared to 89 and especially Returns, but that is what audiences wanted in the 90s after the stupidly dark Returns. Batman is campy by nature — he’s a guy who dresses up as a bat and fights crime! — they just went too far in that direction for B&R.

I’ll never understand why they spent so much time on the Riddler’s origin and handwaved away Two-Face’s, when *Two-Face actually has an interesting origin.*

What makes this even more frustrating is that Jones apparently hated Jim Carrey the entire shoot. There's a famous story where he told Carrey at dinner: 'I cannot sanction your buffoonery.' He was trying to play it straighter and the whole production was pulling in the opposite direction. He was fighting a losing battle from day one.

A Billy Dee Williams Two-Face would have been even better since it was already set up by Burton Even has the same basic name scheme of nickname for classic older name ending in y, middle name that rhymes with see, last name ends in an s

No it was always shit. That's not Harvey Dent or Two Face lol. That movie is an absolute bastardization of the character and Batman in general.

>with a better director I will not take this Joel Schumacher slander. The guy's entire body of work speaks for itself. He directed movies like Falling Down and Lost Boys, both of which are beloved, do not have a common tone, and both are great. He was a great director and his two Batman movies are only proof of that. The tone was a throwback to Adam West's Batman. Whether or not that was a mistake is a subjective opinion, but it has nothing to do with the quality of his work.

I will die on this unpopular opinion hill but I believe *Batman Forever* is the best of the original 4 movies.

He should’ve been Billy Dee Williams but he would’ve been better if he played him serious instead of like the Joker.

It was something special.

It’s because Batman was camp for far longer than it ever was “serious”. The tonal shift in the late 70s/80s was not the comic book style people expected. Batman Forever and Batman & Robin are the two most comic-accurate Batman movies made. Granted it was a choice to be more reminiscent of the TV Batman, with cackling villains and utterly ridiculous plots to take over Gotham, but golden and silver age comics were always that. Burton was moody as hell, but not very serious either. Everything about Penguin was goofy, just with a black color palette compared to the green Riddler suit. It wasn’t until Nolan that we realized superhero movies could drop the camp and use a visual style that is about as exciting as concrete.

Iirc, TLJ didn't want to play K straight in MiB, he wanted to match Will Smith's energy, but they convinced him. I gather also he disliked playing Two-Face opposite Jim Carrey's Riddler as he felt in direct (losing) competition to be funny each time they were both in a scene, which suggest to me he probably pushed for T-F to be funny, if that wasn't already the plan. TL;DR, TLJ is probably the reason we tragically have a wacky Two-Face.

Because it fit the tone of the film? Batman Forever was very far on the side of camp. Given that, the performance was perfect. It’s honestly my favorite Batman film since it’s just so much fun.

I liked Batman Forever.

Yall are crazy - the movie is way too much fun as it is.

Absolutely a lost opportunity in time. The look was awesome. We did at least get one scene to see what it would have been like and that's the opening scene with the guard on the floor....."blind doo dah luck"....it was downhill from that moment. All the ingredients were there for an all time villain, and no one told Tommy to tone it down. The opening scene and the end before his death when he thanks Bruce were pretty much the only glimpses.

I don’t know if a Batman villain has ever really worked besides Joker. Maybe Penguin, but it’s a bit too silly.

Michael Keaton would have been an amazing Two-Face!

I don't agree. TLJ was a weird choice to begin with. I'm surprised he sorta tried and we got what he did. It was off, just like most of the casting and production of the Schumacher Batmans. He was wrong for that part.

Two-Face is such an iconic Batman villain, and all Schumacher did with him was “I must kill Batman” and opposite puns.

Yeah they basically turned Two Face into Joker lite and called it a day. Tommy Lee Jones had the range for a way darker, conflicted Harvey Dent but the movie just went full camp. Feels like wasted potential for real

Yeah Batman Forever went full neon chaos instead of letting Two Face be tragic and grounded. Tommy Lee Jones could have absolutely nailed a darker Harvey Dent arc, but the writing had him acting like he was in a different movie entirely. It’s one of those casting wins wasted by tone mismatch

Auteur filmmakers were reluctant to take on these big budget popcorn movies during the 90s because they could be doing better/more artistic movies. We were lucky to have Joel Schumacher. It's also the reason why Lucas struggled getting good filmmakers to make the Star Wars prequels.