when everyone on letterboxd loves a movie i hated i feel like jesus on the cross. you’re telling me you liked this movie. what are you an incel? christ alive

What is the 'Two-Face problem' regarding his stories? What can be done about it?

That he’s locked into a setup that forces him to tell one of, appropriately, two stories. This has been covered in better detail before by others, but in short: the only stories to really tell about him are his origin, because it’s so full of dramatic potential, or an attempt to cure him, because he’s Batman’s noble former ally in the war on crime laid low by a demon within, so any story of those two clashing that isn’t about Batman trying to save him is going to seem trivial. Even the recent My Own Worst Enemy, which went as far afield of traditional stories for either of them as having him on shotgun to Batman wrecking his way across the American South with a chainsaw while being pursued by KGBeast - and I definitely liked the idea it introduced of Two-Face intentionally bringing out the worst in others, something I’d like to see be a sticking element for his character - it’s still ultimately a story about whether he can be cured, and whether one side of him can overpower the other. And the answer to both is of course “no”, because then you can’t use Two-Face anymore.

Here’s a dirty little secret about Batman’s villains, at least from my perspective. Yes, he unquestionably has the best rogues gallery in comics, but they’re not THAT much better than most other major characters’ rank-and-file. Not that they’re bad by any means, but they’re absolutely artificially inflated by circumstane. By Batman’s nature as a weird solver of elaborate puzzles who’s easily put in physical danger, it’s easier for them to provide a serious and distinctive threat to him even in a ‘serious’ context than it is for a guy with a flamethrower or boomerangs to reasonably challenge a nerdy cop who can outpace light. And since Batman’s more concretely and popularly defined psychologically and symbolically than probably any other superhero, it’s tremendously easier for creators to at least nominally parallel him in some meaningful fashion than it is for Superman’s guys - if most writers can’t think of anything to show Kal-El as other than Nice and Good, they’ll have a hard time coming up with a contrast for him other than Mean and Bad. It’s a triumph largely by contrast that lets even simple Bad Guy V Good Guy stories by average talent coast by on atmosphere and basic observations. Hence why the likes of Penguin struggle after all these years, since his ability to parallel Batman isn’t nearly so immediately obvious and simple (it’s absolutely possible, but it’d require more thought and effort than most are willing to put in), while even the usually pretty flat Scarecrow can easily carry a comic because hey, he relies on fear too, there’s probably something in that.

Harvey has been able to coast in largely the same way most of the time. Harvey’s good, Two-Face is bad, and he reflects the most obvious, banal aspect of Batman possible, that he has a dark side represented visually. And truth be told, I think that vein has well and truly been bled dry. Even aside from whether or not it’s a good idea for a villain in the first place - sensitivity towards mentally ill people has never been Batman stories’ strongest suit, and the modern Harvey Dent is the most stereotypical example possible in that regard, an abused child who grows up to be a gruesome freak with a dangerous, violent alternate personality that emerged or even developed in a single moment of highest drama - there’s not that much to it. You get Harvey and Two-Face arguing and never winning, he feels bad but sometimes doesn’t, Batman feels bad, everyone feels bad, we get to ponder about the darkness hidden inside the human heart and that, sit down for this one, Batman kind of has two faces too, you guys. Like I said, it’s banal, the most facile of observations on Batman as a character that ultimately tracks back to the idea of him as ultimately mad himself and driven above all by vengeance and violence, an interpretation pretty much every Batman story worth its salt moved on from over a decade ago.

It is absolutely fixable though, largely because there is of course a second Two-Face out there, the original, and he’s always worked better. People just tend to forget about him because the aesthetic leans more easily towards the guy I talked about above. And it’s a GREAT aesthetic, from the face to the suits to any bisected hideouts or getaway cars he might bring into play. But that’s all that stuff is, same as Riddler’s question marks or Joker’s playing cards; all that, even his face, is an expression of his pathology, not the core of it.

That’s the coin.

The coin’s turned into a pretty insignificant part of his character over the years, a simple compromise between the two identities over who gets to drive that’s often forgotten, but really think about that thing if you take away the identity divide. Harvey Dent is a man so at odds with the world around him and alienated from any recognizable principles, so unable to make decisions or make a distinction between the value of good or evil under his own power, that he’s surrendered his very decision-making capabilities to this thing. The coin decides his soul, the coin decides who lives or dies, the coin is horrifying on a level the split-personality take can’t even begin to compete with. A million arguments between the DA and the Mob Boss could never so brutally and simply capture the sheer brokenness of Harvey Dent’s soul as him showing the part of him that can understand or care about consequence is just gone, and that he’s replaced it in the most chaotic, meaningless way possible.

I tend to think Batman’s villains work better when they oppose his philosophy or aspects of his overall narrative rather than his psychology, especially since the bedrock observations about his psychology in play there are like I said generally pretty simple. Riddler’s not interesting because He’s Obsessed Too!, but because he threatens to tear down the idea of Batman as unstoppable and always one step ahead of crime. Maybe Joker also Had A Bad Day, but he’s endured because at his best he threatens the basic logistical and moral assumptions Batman’s world is built on. My terrible (but surprisingly popular, thanks guys!) take on Mr. Freeze is rooted in the idea that he’d be more workable long-term as someone who finds security and power in becoming something bigger than an ordinary man after a tremendous loss, rather than him ‘just’ also being sad about losing his family. And while I don’t really care that much about Which Face Is The Real One, the idea of Two-Face as a man who in spite of devoting his life to fighting chaos and forcing the world to make sense just like our hero ultimately completely succumbs to that chaos on the most fundamental philosophical level imaginable, whether in defiance of the justice he once served or as a theoretically purer version of it (which the coin can stand for either way), really does it for me. 

He can still have the face and accompanying visuals and gimmicks as Gotham-level realizations of said philosophy and representations of the defilement of the good man he once was. Rather than locking him into a rigidly defined paradigm of which side is stronger (though you can still do that too, directly over good and evil!), he becomes inherently unpredictable and therefore infinitely more dangerous and dynamic. He becomes a threat to Batman’s entire approach to life rather than a walking problem to be fixed, putting them on a much more even footing for a back-and-forth rivalry and letting more standard confrontations between them be as charged with drama as whether or not Harvey can overcome the worst in himself, opening up far more possibilities for him as a supervillain. The alternative may have gotten more play as of late, but exhibit A for my preference: it’s the take The Dark Knight went with, the objectively most critically acclaimed story that guy has ever been in. I Believe Harvey Dent and Two Face Hate Each Other has had its day and run its course. Harvey Dent Believes In Chaos.