Half-face
Thursday, January 15 2009
I saw Dark Knight a few weeks ago at last, and meant to mention it – specifically because of the treatment of Two-Face. This is one of those situations in which a little medical knowledge was maybe a bad thing.
Sure, it’s a comic book – but obviously Christopher Nolan goes to some length to make these movies grittier and more realistic. For example, crazy as it looks, the “Sky Hook” system is based on real military hardware. Usually that sort of deus ex machina has nothing to do with reality whatsoever. I appreciate that Nolan didn’t do so here, and it helped me get into the film.
So it was a disappointment when the whole thing derailed in the third act: once I saw Two-Face’s half-face, it lost me.
There are a lot of complications of third-degree burns that Nolan ignored, but what killed it for me was the eye. There is no way that eye would have survived intact, much less be able to function without a lid and tear ducts. Every time I saw that eye, I just couldn’t get over it. I don’t even remember what happened to Two-Face; I quit paying attention. I hope he’s dead (that sounds right), because I won’t pay to see the next movie if he reappears – and I’d pay to see just about anything with Aaron Eckhart in it.
On a related note: I seem to remember some mumbling in the film about Harvey Dent refusing pain meds. True, in situations of acute pain a person can get by without pain meds – some women in labor, for example. But the idea that someone could suffer Dent’s injuries, be in that kind of pain, and still be capable of coherent thought is just plain BS. It makes for great character development, I’m sure, but it’s ultimately absurd.
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