Wiz­ard Uni­verse have had a sit down chat with Aaron Eck­hart (Har­vey Dent). This inter­view reveals a lot of juicy bits about Two-Face and Har­vey Dent’s role in The Dark Knight — direct from the Horse’s mouth. As a warn­ing, this inter­view does con­tain spoilers!

WIZARD: Direc­tor Christo­pher Nolan said he saw Two-Face and Har­vey Dent as the back­bone of “Dark Knight.” Did you draw inspi­ra­tion from the comics or the older movies?
ECKHART: Chris [Nolan] comes at this with such a dif­fer­ent take on Bat­man, so I didn’t feel that I had to be true to any other actor play­ing this role. Of course, I read the comic books. His rela­tion­ships with Lt. Gor­don and with Bat­man, with Gotham City, those really helped me the most.

There are a lot of dif­fer­ent ways that you could go with the Two-Face per­for­mance, […]Where will you take it when the film opens July 18?
I believe that it’s stronger if you have a heart. If you can relate to a char­ac­ter who’s a vil­lain, or not, it’s always bet­ter. If I can help you to relate to my char­ac­ter, then I think that I’m more likely to keep your attention.

In terms of the heart of the char­ac­ter, Har­vey has gone through a large arc. Will we be see­ing Harvey’s full arc here or will it play out in, say, another movie?
I think with the other [films], you’re look­ing at the cli­max of a character’s arc. Where does he go after that? I think that right now we’re show­ing who Har­vey was before he was scarred, and it’s an inter­est­ing role that he plays. We’re look­ing at Gotham City try­ing to get out of its dark­ness. That’s why Har­vey is important.

Does Har­vey get scarred in this movie or will we have to wait until the next one to see that?
Har­vey Dent turns into Har­vey Two-Face in this movie. So that answers your ques­tion bet­ter. [Laughs]

Have you filmed a lot of scenes in makeup?
I have done scenes as Har­vey Two-Face. It’s inter­est­ing. I won’t tell you exactly what we’re going for, but I think that I can say that it will use all of today’s tech­nol­ogy to cre­ate this char­ac­ter. He’s going to be inter­est­ing, and I think that’s what makes this char­ac­ter impor­tant in the movie—you get to see him as he was before, as in the comic books. Har­vey is a very good guy in the comic books. He’s judi­cious. He cares. He’s pas­sion­ate about what he loves and then he turns into this char­ac­ter. So you will see that in this film.

[…]

There are cir­cum­stances that cre­ate the darker side of his per­son­al­ity…
It’s inter­est­ing to show that there are rea­sons for his behav­ior. It depends on which [of Harvey’s per­son­al­i­ties] you think is more attrac­tive and excit­ing. Obvi­ously a guy who goes out and mur­ders peo­ple, that’s vig­i­lante jus­tice. It’s prob­a­bly more cin­e­mat­i­cally excit­ing, but I think that know­ing why he got there and that he was a cool dude before is impor­tant, as well.

Are you say­ing you see Two-Face as more of a vig­i­lante in this as opposed to his clas­sic por­trayal as a bank-robbing, blow­ing sh– up kind of thug?
Well, I mean, in terms of vil­lains and movies, in anyone’s moti­va­tion in a movie you’re always try­ing to improve your lot in life and to exact your own code in life and I think that Har­vey Two-Face has a code, and his code is killing peo­ple for rea­sons that…will remain secret.