The camera pans around the room, and for the briefest moment, we see a glimpse of a newly maimed Dent, the flesh on half of his face burnt and exposed in grisly fashion. As if there was any doubt that this was Folie à Deux‘s way of introducing Two-Face to its world, here’s confirmation from director Todd Phillips: “Yes, of course” it’s Two-Face, he told Entertainment Weekly. “All we’re doing is saying, let’s use this lore as a foundation, but run it through a realistic lens … to make it our own.”
Dent/Two-Face isn’t seen or mentioned again in Folie à Deux, and given Fleck dies at the end of the film, it seems pretty clear that this was always intended as the second, final part of the Joker series. (Phillips has since confirmed that he is not making a third Joker or a spin-off for Gaga’s Harley Quinn, which was staggeringly unlikely anyway, given how badly Folie à Deux has flopped at the box office.) So, what was the point of introducing him in the first place?
On the one hand, it would perhaps feel strange to have Dent without at least alluding to his villainous alter ego. Maybe there would be an air of omission. And, with the explosion, you can see the argument that it’s simply a nice way of smuggling in a little fan-service — even if the rest of the movie, which flips the Joker formula that went down so well with comic book fans totally on its head, is seemingly built from the ground up to do anything but make them happy.
Two-Face’s inclusion wasn’t “out of disrespect to the original material, not out of rejecting some other person’s idea,” Phillips told EW. “[It’s] just out of, how do we make this our own?” It’s hardly disrespectful, but it is a bit redundant, further speaking to the Joker movies’ odd cherry picking of their source material. Does Arthur Fleck have more in common with Batman’s traditional Joker, or with Rupert Pupkin, and Joaquin Phoenix’s other unhinged late-career roles? What is it that makes Gaga’s character Harley Quinn, or Lawtey’s character Harvey Dent, besides sharing names and a few minor traits?
Call it a throwaway easter egg, but the Two-Face cameo is emblematic of how the Joker movies are simultaneously avoidant of and reliant on the lore. As such, it’s tough to work out what they’re trying to be: out-and-out Batman universe movies, or films that have borrowed elements of a lucrative comic book IP to sell tickets. This is especially true of Folie à Deux, and perhaps goes some way in explaining why the sequel was laughed out of the box office. Beyond being, well, weird. And a musical.
This story originally appeared in British GQ.
