Warner Bros.
With the release of The Flash in 2023, Ben Affleck’s tenure as Batman officially came to an end, as the DCEU was officially ended just a few months later with the release of Aquaman 2. Now that Batman is behind him, Affleck is beginning to reflect on his time playing the iconic superhero, particularly what went wrong.
Ben Affleck was first cast at Bruce Wayne/Batman for the 2016 film Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, a sequel to 2013’s Man of Steel that was designed to launch DC’s version of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There’s been plenty written on how and why that never came to be, with Warner Bros. now starting from scratch with the James Gunn-helmed “DCU,” which officially launches in July with the release of Superman.
According to Affleck — whose plate is full these days with acting, directing, and producing gigs — one of the issues with the DCEU’s version of the Dark Knight was that he was, well, *too* dark.
“It started to skew too old for a big part of the audience. Like even my own son at the time was too scared to watch the movie. And so when I saw that I was like, ‘Oh s—, we have a problem,’” Affleck said in a recent cover story with GQ ahead of the release of his new film The Accountant 2.
“Then I think that’s when you had a filmmaker that wanted to continue down that road and a studio that wanted to recapture all the younger audience at cross purposes. Then you have two entities, two people really wanting to do something different and that is a really bad recipe.”
As far as being “too scary” for younger children such as Affleck’s son, the Academy Award-winning writer/director/actor certainly isn’t wrong, as the introduction of Batman in Dawn of Justice plays like a scene out of a horror movie.
What’s ironic about Affleck’s take on his version of Batman, however, is that — at least as far as 2016’s Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice was concerned — many fans felt his performance was the highlight of the film. Despite this, 52-year-old was plenty self-critical of his own performance.
“A lot of it was misalignment of agendas, understandings, expectations. And also by the way, I wasn’t bringing anything particularly wonderful to that equation at the time, either. I had my own failings, significant failings, in that process and at that time,” he said.
“I mean, my failings as an actor, you can watch the various movies and judge,” he continued. “But more of my failings of, in terms of why I had a bad experience, part of it is that what I was bringing to work every day was a lot of unhappiness. So I wasn’t bringing a lot of positive energy to the equation. I didn’t cause problems, but I came in and I did my job and I went home. But you’ve got to do a little bit better than that.”
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice was released in 2016 and filmed in 2015, meaning Affleck was 43 years old at the time of production and was portraying a Dark Knight who had been on the job for decades. Comparatively, Robert Pattinson, the current Batman actor, was 34-years-old when The Batman was filmed and played a version of the Caped Crusader that was in just his second year on the job.
As mentioned above, James Gunn’s Superman, the first film in the DCU, will hit movie theaters on Friday, July 11. You can check out the official teaser trailer below.
Content shared from brobible.com.