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Batman: Caped Crusader (Prime Video)

I finished the Two-Face episode last night and thought it was probably the biggest misfire of the series so far. Two-face being a vigilante with a (hardly depicted) split personality (and the coin being a non-issue) might have been an appealing idea in the writers' room but it simply wasn't Two-Face. It was more Raimi's Darkman. Further, Batman/Bruce was portrayed poorly, as someone who cared more about solving a mystery than helping a friend, to the point where they all but said he "created" Two-Face through manipulation of Harvey. I understand he's "new" to the crimefighting game in this series but Bruce usually has more humanity than this.
 
the G-man said:
Two-face being a vigilante with a (hardly depicted) split personality (and the coin being a non-issue) might have been an appealing idea in the writers' room but it simply wasn't Two-Face.
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I wouldn't go that far. The idea that Two-Face has a split personality is relatively recent, not emerging until the late '80s or '90s and portrayed inconsistently thereafter. Originally, Two-Face was just bitter about his life being ruined by a random act, and thus became obsessed with randomness and chance, the duality of the flip of a coin, and duality in general by extension. He only had one personality, but it was a pointedly amoral one, favoring neither good nor evil and choosing between them purely on the basis of a coin flip.

As for this version of Harvey, he was portrayed throughout the season as straddling a moral fence, sometimes acting corruptly but broadly trying to do what he believed was good. Not a split personality, but a moral duality that his scarring only externalized. So he basically ended up at the same place as the Golden Age Two-Face, but he was already inclined that way beforehand. So yes, it is Two-Face, just not the usual modern idea of Two-Face.

As for the coin, it's basically a gimmick, so I don't mind the deconstruction of downplaying it. I liked the reversal of having someone else taunt Harvey by flipping the coin to decide his fate (if I remember the scene correctly).
 
Christopher said:
Originally, Two-Face was just bitter about his life being ruined by a random act, and thus became obsessed with randomness and chance, the duality of the flip of a coin, and duality in general by extension. He only had one personality, but it was a pointedly amoral one, favoring neither good nor evil and choosing between them purely on the basis of a coin flip...As for the coin, it's basically a gimmick, so I don't mind the deconstruction of downplaying it. I liked the reversal of having someone else taunt Harvey by flipping the coin to decide his fate (if I remember the scene correctly).
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I don't think this Harvey ever really got to that point of obsession with randomness, duality, etc., either. It was much more just he wanted revenge on the guys who scarred him, with a bit of hating humanity for shunning him (or thinking they were shunning him) in thrown in.

As for the coin, it may seem like a gimmick, and often is, but handled correctly it is the heart of what makes Harvey insane as opposed to just malevolent: he is driven by a mental-illness-produced irresistible impulse, which is manifested by the coin toss.
 
the G-man said:
I don't think this Harvey ever really got to that point of obsession with randomness, duality, etc., either. It was much more just he wanted revenge on the guys who scarred him, with a bit of hating humanity for shunning him (or thinking they were shunning him) in thrown in.
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It's not exactly the same, no, but that's the point. It's good to take the basics of the character and put them together in a fresh way. Two-Face has been portrayed in a lot of different ways over the past 82 years (yay, a multiple of two). This is just one more to add to the list. There is no single "correct" version.


the G-man said:
As for the coin, it may seem like a gimmick, and often is, but handled correctly it is the heart of what makes Harvey insane as opposed to just malevolent: he is driven by a mental-illness-produced irresistible impulse, which is manifested by the coin toss.
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I am deeply uncomfortable with the tendency of Batman comics from the 1970s onward to assume his rogues are "insane." That perpetuates a false, damaging prejudice that stigmatizes mental illness. In fact, mentally ill people are far more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators, largely because of the cultural prejudices perpetuated in fiction. Also, very few Batman villains actually meet the legal definition of insanity (a term that has no medical definition). They know the nature of reality and understand that their actions are criminal, so they are legally sane and competent to stand trial. Characterizing their personality disorders, neuroses, or compulsive behaviors as "insanity" just worsens the stereotype. So I welcome any Batman story that retreats from that deeply problematical and ableist trope.

In the Golden and Silver Ages, few of Batman's rogues were characterized as insane, just criminal. The closest thing to a mental illness was Catwoman turning out to be an amnesia victim and having essentially an alternate personality from her original Selina Kyle identity. The Riddler had a compulsive need to leave clues for Batman to solve, but that was OCD, not madness. There was even a 1950s story where the Joker faked insanity to get access to a counterfeiter (I think) in an asylum and Batman & Robin foiled his scheme by proving him sane. As for Two-Face, his dependence on the coin could be seen as a fixation, but as originally portrayed, it was more of a conscious embrace of moral nihilism -- if random chance made him what he was, then he'd embrace random chance. It was a response to trauma, but no more so than Bruce Wayne responding to trauma by fixating on fighting crime.
 
Christopher said:
I am deeply uncomfortable with the tendency of Batman comics from the 1970s onward to assume his rogues are "insane." That perpetuates a false, damaging prejudice that stigmatizes mental illness. In fact, mentally ill people are far more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators, largely because of the cultural prejudices perpetuated in fiction. Also, very few Batman villains actually meet the legal definition of insanity (a term that has no medical definition). They know the nature of reality and understand that their actions are criminal, so they are legally sane and competent to stand trial. Characterizing their personality disorders, neuroses, or compulsive behaviors as "insanity" just worsens the stereotype. So I welcome any Batman story that retreats from that deeply problematical and ableist trope.
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I don't disagree with much of the above. Personally, I think the "they're all insane" trope arose out of authorial laziness (everything from "it's easier to set everything in Arkham" to "I don't want to do research" to "why didn't the Joker get the death penalty") as well as prejudice.

In fact, that's why I linked to the article I did, which also argued that very few Batman villains actually meet the legal definition of insanity but that the two who generally are correctly depicted that way from a legal standpoint are Joker and Two-Face.
 
the G-man said:
In fact, that's why I linked to the article I did, which also argued that very few Batman villains actually meet the legal definition of insanity but that the two who generally are correctly depicted that way from a legal standpoint are Joker and Two-Face.
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As for the Joker, I disagree strongly. The behavior that the essayist describes as delusions of grandeur reads more to me like malignant narcissism. The Joker knows perfectly well that his actions are wrong and harmful to others; he just doesn't care. He's an antisocial bully who gets off on the power trip of hurting and humiliating others.

As for Two-Face, the essayist seems to be basing his argument on the character's Golden Age history, which is quite different from the several distinct versions of his origin in the ever-shifting post-Crisis multiverse. So even if what he says were true for that particular version of the character, it's incompetent to claim it applies to every version. (And the essayist's claim that Harvey's fixation on duality was caused by brain damage in an explosion is definitely not true, because that fixation arose in his original story, years before the explosion the essayist mentions.)

As I said, there is no single definitive version of Two-Face, any more than there's a single definitive version of Batman or Catwoman. Caped Crusader is evoking the 1940s in a lot of ways, so its makers are entirely within their rights to make their Two-Face closer to how he was portrayed in the 1940s than how he's been portrayed since the 1980s. It's not a choice they've made in every case -- as I think I mentioned, the show's depiction of a corrupt Gotham City government and police force is based on the post-Crisis continuity -- but it's a choice they were entitled to make. It's a lot less radical than their changes to Penguin or Harley.
 
Christopher said:
I am deeply uncomfortable with the tendency of Batman comics from the 1970s onward to assume his rogues are "insane." That perpetuates a false, damaging prejudice that stigmatizes mental illness. In fact, mentally ill people are far more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators, largely because of the cultural prejudices perpetuated in fiction. Also, very few Batman villains actually meet the legal definition of insanity (a term that has no medical definition). They know the nature of reality and understand that their actions are criminal, so they are legally sane and competent to stand trial. Characterizing their personality disorders, neuroses, or compulsive behaviors as "insanity" just worsens the stereotype. So I welcome any Batman story that retreats from that deeply problematical and ableist trope.
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I appreciate you pointing this out. While I know that IRL mentally ill people are more likely to be victims, I'd never really applied that to the Rogues.
 
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Tuskin38 said:
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Reusing designs, backgrounds and stock footage to save time and/or money isn't "easter eggs."
 
Christopher said:
Episodes 9-10: An interesting, fresh take on Two-Face, mostly eschewing the usual gimmicks like the coin flip and the duality obsession, and focusing more on his inner mental conflict. I'm not sure the portrayal really quite came together, though, since he seemed to jump rather randomly between violent rage and contrition. Also, the character design was kind of strange --
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A flipped Dorian Gray…here, the scarred half was the more noble, the perfect hair and teeth? That’s the villain.
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If you want a menacing, coin-flipping figure—that’s Anton Chigurh:
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