David Goyer, who wrote the screenplay for Batman Begins and co-wrote the story treatment for The Dark Knight, reflected on the changes that were made about how Harvey Dent became Two-Face. While he could not recall the specific reasoning for the change, he did provide some insight into what the creative process is like when the stakes are high.
Backstory Magazine publisher Jeff Goldsmith spoke with Goyer in a panel titled "The Art of Adapting Comics to the Screen" for Comic Con@Home 2020. On the topic of Goyer's work on The Dark Knight, Goldsmith brought up how Two-Face's traditional origin was changed for the film, asking, "At what point did you realize you wanted to get away from the typical courtroom scene that everybody knew so well?"
Laughing and pointing out that The Dark Knight came out in 2008, Goyer admitted, "I don't remember exactly when that decision was made." However, he remarked that his experience tinkering with Harvey Dent/Two-Face was an example of what he called "the perils of success."
"There were a lot more eyes, both in terms of the world and the studio on that film than there were on Batman Begins," Goyer explained. "And it's harder to take risks and it's harder to subvert expectations in success because people want to protect against failure or they want you to do what you did the first time, but just a little bit different."
Goyer also added, "One of the scariest things to tell most film executives or even TV executives after having had success in something is, 'Yeah, we're not going to do that again. We're going to do something different'."
Goyer's experience with adapting comics to the silver screen or the small screen was hardly limited to director Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy. Goyer also wrote the Blade trilogy, the movies that arguably inaugurated the current superhero movie boom, and was a co-showrunner for FOX's Constantine series and co-wrote the screenplay for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Currently, he is working on Netflix's The Sandman adaptation.