Aaron Eckhart’s ‘The Dark Knight’ Performance Deserves More Recognition

‘The Dark Knight’ had not one, but two of the best supervillain performances of all time.

It’s hard to believe that The Dark Knight was released almost two decades ago. Since Heath Ledger‘s untimely passing, the late actor has become all but inseparable from his performance as the Joker in Christopher Nolan‘s thrilling Batman epic. There is no denying he truly stole the show in an already phenomenal movie. However, when one considers The Dark Knight‘s cast beyond Ledger, one likely thinks of Christian Bale‘s iconic Caped Crusader or the slew of supporting veteran actors such as Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, and Morgan Freeman. While all of these actors deserve their praise, one gripping performance often goes overlooked, and it just may be the second-best performance in The Dark Knight — and dare we say, second by not so great a margin?

Aaron Eckhart might not be a household name, but his face is recognizable (especially on the right side) and his depiction of Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight is nothing short of fantastic. Throughout the course of the film, he plays both a hero and a villain. For the first two acts, he is a charismatic politician who aims to be the hero that Gotham deserves. A foil to Batman, he fights crime from the top-down, cleaning up the city through transparent and legal processes. In The Dark Knight‘s third act, though, after the Joker kills Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and leaves half of his body horrendously scarred, Dent becomes Two-Face and begins the methodological quest of gambling for the lives of those who let Joker off the leash.

The Dark Knight

When the menace known as the Joker wreaks havoc and chaos on the people of Gotham, Batman must accept one of the greatest psychological and physical tests of his ability to fight injustice.

Aaron Eckhart Gives Two-Face Depth in ‘The Dark Knight’

Unlike Ledger’s mesmerizing Joker, Eckhart’s Two-Face is more complex, nuanced, and human. The Joker is a walking embodiment of pure chaos from the film’s beginning to end, but Harvey Dent follows a distinct and believable arc from beloved public figure to broken serial killer. Rather than a pure villain, he is more of a tragic hero. As a result, viewers can sympathize with him through and through. When he is the good guy, the audience cheers him on, and when he is the bad guy, their hearts break for what he’s lost and what he’s become.

Much of the intrigue surrounding the character is thanks to Christopher and Jonathan Nolan‘s daring The Dark Knight screenplay, which elevated so many Batman characters and concepts to new, realistic heights — and made it possible to successfully make a multi-villain superhero movie that elevates not one, but two villains. Nevertheless, it is Eckhart’s performance that ensures Dent’s believability. The character has genuine humanity, and Eckhart plays the part accordingly. One can easily imagine how the third-act of the so-called realistic Batman movie could easily fall back into Adam West levels of camp when introducing a villain who has half of his face burned off. Rather than play the role with manic energy, though, Eckhart doubles down as the straight-forward man, turning a comic book villain into a down-to-earth figure.

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Because of the intricacies of Dent’s character, one could even argue that it is a more challenging role to play than the Joker. The Joker — at least as depicted in the highly-regarded The Dark Knight — acts over-the-top and irrationally antagonistic throughout the course of the film. His only major development is that his actions become increasingly chaotic and violent as the plot moves forward. Dent, on the other hand, demonstrates an authentic evolution, with elaborate motives and a teetering breaking point that he eventually hits. While Ledger’s Joker is certainly the most pronounced performance in The Dark Knight, Eckhart’s Two-Face might be the most complicated one, and yet the actor still delivers it with due precision.

Aaron Eckhart’s Two-Face Is Overshadowed by Heath Ledger’s Joker

Despite this strong performance though, Aaron Eckhart’s contribution to The Dark Knight hardly gets the recognition it deserves. After the film’s 2008 release, The Dark Knight was nominated for dozens of awards in nearly every category. However, for all of the movie’s accolades, Eckhart only received three major nominations. One of those was an ensemble award given to the entire Dark Knight cast at the People’s Choice Awards. The other two were nominations for Best Villain at the Scream Awards and Best Supporting Actor at the Saturn Awards, both of which Eckhart lost to Ledger, who would go on to win a posthumous Oscar for his Joker.

Fans often speculate how Ledger’s career could have taken off post-Dark Knight. However, many ignore that Eckhart delivered a similarly compelling performance in the film, and yet the actor’s career has been largely static for the past fifteen years. His only major leading roles have been in Battle: Los Angeles and I,Frankenstein, both notorious blockbuster flops. Otherwise, he had a supporting role in the first two Has Fallen films, played side characters in Clint Eastwood‘s Sully and Roland Emmerich‘s Midway, and appeared in television shows such as The Romanoffs and The First Lady. While Eckhart never fails to deliver in these performances, none of them seem to tap into the potential he proved back in 2008.

Aaron Eckhart Carries Some of ‘The Dark Knight’s Most Powerful Scenes

Consider specific scenes in The Dark Knight where Eckhart absolutely nailed his character’s emotions. His muffled scream upon waking up in the hospital to find Rachel dead and his body half-charred is haunting, his exchange with the Joker disguised as a nurse is one of the most intense in the entire film, and his final standoff with Commissioner Gordon and Batman is the story’s true climax. Moreover, although Ledger received the film’s taglines with “Why so serious?” and “Let’s put a smile on that face,” Eckhart’s lines are perhaps more relevant to the actual plot. “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain” and “You thought we could be decent people in an indecent time” speak more directly and consequentially to The Dark Knight‘s themes of order and chaos, and Eckhart delivers them impeccably. Additionally, these line have consistently reverberated beyond the movie’s mythos, earning relevance in real world dynamics, which has led the movie’s director, Christopher Nolan, to reveal in a conversation with Deadline that it “kills” him that he didn’t actually write Eckhart’s “You either die a hero” line.

Ultimately, although Ledger’s Joker deserves all of its praise, Eckhart’s Two-Face has gone criminally unsung as The Dark Knight‘s second villain. While the character’s appearance is instantaneously recognizable, rarely do fans commend the acting for what it is: a close contender for the best performance in The Dark Knight, one of the best live-action Batman villains (and perhaps live-action supervillains in general), and perhaps among the greatest antagonists in all of cinema.

The Dark Knight is available to stream on Max in the U.S.