6 Reasons The Internet Is Wrong About Ben Affleck As Batman
1. Ben Affleck is a box office draw, and there’s no realistic way Batman vs. Superman will fail to do good box office business with Affleck on board. Affleck’s last two wide-release films took in nearly $400 million combined worldwide. He regularly starred in movies that made hundreds of millions of dollars. He was and remains a movie star with a worldwide fanbase, and his casting as Batman is going to be another instance of his star power helping an already high-profile project pull in even larger box office, as it has done for other projects in the past and present. A look at Affleck’s box office tallies makes all of this abundantly clear — films with him in a lead role have combined for $2.7 BILLION worldwide in 16 years. That means Ben Affleck’s lead-actor career has basically brought in an average of about $168 million every single year to Hollywood for 16 straight years, even years he wasn’t in a movie.
Batman vs. Superman is already going to be successful if it is remotely similar in writing and directing quality to Man of Steel (and chances are, it’ll be superior to the previous film, due to reasons I’ll get to momentarily), so adding Affleck’s name brings instant additional hype and financial benefits. And for Warner Bros., they’ll not only get those benefits for the film’s bottom line — this deal is pretty obviously part of a larger agreement that will put Affleck into the bat-suit in additional films for added financial gain for the studio, while also securing him as a filmmaker who can deliver more of his other critically acclaimed box office hits down the road. It’s almost irrelevant whether or not Affleck performs well as Batman, since the film has built-in box office potential based on the concept and rest of the film around Affleck, and due to the other incentives the deal seals for Warner with Affleck in the future.
2. Becoming a director gave Ben Affleck additional insights and perspectives about acting, and his direction of actors clearly demonstrates extreme awareness and understanding of acting and filmmaking. I don’t care what else you think about Affleck, if you claim that Gone Baby Gone, The Town, and Argo don’t demonstrate terrific directing talent and fantastic ability to pull top-notch performances out of actors, then you are either lying or blind.
As Affleck’s insights and perspectives about acting grew and matured, his own performances — especially in movies where he had a hand in the writing and/or directing — are even better. It’s likely he will bring all of that experience to bear on his performance as Batman, especially since he is well aware that he’s going to be judged against Bale’s beloved performance and since his own career really depends on his not having another negative experience in a costume that undoes all the good will he’s built up over the last several years.
3. Watch The Town and Argo, and you should be able to grasp that Affleck is not a terrible actor. I don’t care if you don’t think he’s a great actor, and I don’t care whether you like him personally or not. Just at the very least, if you are being remotely reasonable and honest, you can’t watch him in those two films and deny he’s capable of delivering at minimum an acceptable performance. I think he was great in those movies, but that’s not the issue — great or not, he was not bad, and his performances were perfectly acceptable and did not ruin either film in the least.
So right off the bat (heh), even if you don’t love the guy or think he’s a great actor, it’s time to stop pretending that you can’t even see him as being at least a capable actor who doesn’t ruin any film in which he’s a lead performer. But if the minimum margin for rational assessment is that Affleck doesn’t ruin films and can give acceptable performances, then the more accurate and informed assessment is that he is at least able to give actually good performances, since there’s strong evidence proving that to be the case.
Ben Affleck’s acting has been nominated for awards from many of the biggest and most prestigious, informed, serious organizations in the world, including but not limited to: BAFTA, Broadcast Film Critics Association, Chicago Film Critics Association, Golden Globes, National Board of Review, Screen Actor’s Guild, and the Venice Film Festival. So if you still claim that Ben Affleck can’t act and isn’t even an okay actor, there are thousands of highly educated and informed professionals who likely know a lot more about acting than you do who would tell you that you’re wrong. And that kind of critical acclaim creates buzz that translates into dollars for movies, and provides lots of good marketing messaging to promote Batman vs. Superman, too.
Affleck has turned in plenty of good performances, several very good performances, and several great performances. Again, you don’t have to agree he’s done anything “great” or even “very good;” but if you insist he cannot even deliver at least a “good” acting performance sometimes, then your claim just isn’t very credible and contradicts the demonstrable opinion of some of the most reliable, trustworthy experts on the matter.
4. Fanboys and fangirls have an uncanny knack for being the most angry over casting where the anger turns out to be least justified. And when it comes to crazy over-the-top fan reactions that turn out to be glaringly wrong in hindsight, the stand-out examples are in fact from the history of the Batman franchise. Remember back in the late-1980′s when Michael Keaton was cast as Batman? I remember it vividly. Fans went absolutely nuts, threatening mass boycotts and starting petitions to reverse the casting, and the mainstream public laughed and assumed it was going to be a satire or a complete disaster. It was called the worst casting of all time. The Mr. Mom jokes went on and on right up until opening day, and then everyone shut up really fast.
Likewise, when Heath Ledger was cast as the Joker, remember all of the gay jokes and slurs about him? Do you recall all the people pointing to A Knight’s Tale and 10 Things I Hate About You as proof this was the worst casting decision in film history? Yeah, that didn’t turn out as bad as everyone said it would, either. Then just a two years ago, fans went into a rage over the casting of Anne Hathaway and insisted she wasn’t really Catwoman, couldn’t pull of the role, and said her casting was going to ruin the film. Instead, she was one of the most popular things about the film and everyone doubting her had to eat a lot of crow.
Talented actors getting cast in Batman movies and causing a negative uproar, only to eventually prove the angry fans ridiculously wrong, is almost an established tradition for the franchise at this point. I feel pretty confident that come 2015 when we finally see Ben Affleck as Batman, we’ll discover the tradition remains alive and well.
5. Accepting the role of Batman almost certainly means Ben Affleck will have a hand in developing the Batman character and maybe even writing some of the screenplay for Batman vs. Superman, and he’ll probably be the new director for the Batman solo franchise. We’ll have to wait and see just how much Affleck is involved in the writing of the upcoming team-up film, but I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that part of the deal includes Affleck helping to shape the new incarnation of Batman on film, and I think there’s a very good possibility he’ll be credited as a writer on the film as well. Perhaps he’ll just do uncredited writing, but I can imagine the PR boon (every bit of which helps nudge up the box office results) that would come from the marketing of the film as “written by David Goyer and Ben Affleck.” Affleck won an Oscar for his screenwriting once before, and will probably eventually win another one in light of how great he is at it.
If you doubt that previous sentence, look at Good Will Hunting (for which he won an Oscar), Gone Baby Gone and The Town. And if you don’t think those were great examples of screenwriting, go tell that to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and to the Writers Guild of America, for starters, both of which have nominated and/or awarded Ben Affleck for his amazing writing abilities. So that’s some serious motivation to let him get involved in some of the writing.
Another reason is that David Goyer is at his best when he collaborates with other great writers. I think Goyer is the kind of writer who gets more inspired and creative when he’s going back and forth with someone else who gets the story and the ideas and whom Goyer feeds off of, and when he is linked up with the right directors who are part of the writing process it can become magical (as with the Christopher Nolan Batman films, for the most obvious example).
With Zack Snyder helping Goyer draft the story for the Superman sequel, there is already someone with a clear vision and sense of the characters collaborating with Goyer to help create that kind of positive situation. The addition of Affleck in the creative process, helping craft the new Batman, would be awesome. Part of the danger of doing a team-up film to introduce a new Batman was that whomever came along to direct and write the new solo Batman films would have no part in the casting choice or the initial development of the character. Well, Affleck’s casting takes care of those concerns, since as a writer-director as well as actor his input will be exactly what was needed to maintain consistency from one project to another. Which brings up the sixth point I want to make…
6. Ben Affleck is probably going to direct some Batman movies, and that is the greatest thing to happen to Batman movies since Christopher Nolan was hired to direct some Batman movies. I wrote an article many months ago in which I named Ben Affleck my absolute top choice as the best option to take over the Batman franchise after Nolan left. I think Ben Affleck is already one of the best directors working in cinema today, and I cannot imagine any scenario in which Warner Bros. made a deal with him that didn’t include a gold-plated director’s chair on the set of a Batman solo movie. As I said the other day in discussions about the possibility of an Affleck-directed Batman flick, just imagine a Riddler story with all of the mysteries and twists and detective work of Gone Baby Gone, and an intricate realistic final villainous plot as exciting and hyper-realistic as the heist from The Town.
If Ben Affleck starts directing a few Batman films, they just might do something we all imagined was impossible just a few days ago — have the potential to match the greatness of the Nolan Batman movies. That’s a pretty bold statement and it’s early to start speculating too much, I know; but if Ben Affleck is destined to helm Batman films, then having him involved in Batman vs. Superman just turned that project into something on a whole other level with regard to setting up the future of Batman in cinema.
So there you have it, dear readers, the six reasons the Internet is wrong about Ben Affleck as Batman. But wait, I’m not actually done yet! I have a bonus SEVENTH reason that the Internet’s rage against Ben Affleck is wrong, and it’s a doozy. Are you ready?
7. Ben Affleck is a a really nice guy, a good person who works his butt off not just at making movies but as a father and husband and on social issues that he cares about very deeply. And all the nasty insults and ugly behavior toward him over the last few days is rather shameful, and makes those responsible look small, petty, and rude. It’s one thing for some folks to good-naturedly rib him a bit about a past film here or there, or to make puns and jokes that aren’t mean-spirited. And it’s fine for people to disagree with the casting due to uncertainty about the direction the series is going and/or because they think there were other performers who would’ve been a better casting choice. But there was a great deal of cruel and downright mean behavior directed at Affleck, and besides his actual talent and all the other reasons those insults are ignorant and mistaken, those things were wrong because they treated a good person very shabbily indeed.
And in case you haven’t noticed, Internet — Ben Affleck’s real life? It’s Bruce Wayne, people! Not the “aloof playboy who secretly broods at home” version that Christian Bale played so wonderfully in the previous trilogy, but rather a different interpretation more akin to the 1970′s O’Neil-Adams Batman who was still a bit of a popular media-star playboy but also a philanthropist and smart, respectable public figure.
So please, seriously, give the guy a break.
Warner Bros. knows what a great deal they’ve made with Ben Affleck, and all the reasons it’s going to turn out well for everyone involved. Ben Affleck likewise knows it was a great deal, and that it’s going to go very well for him and for the studio. And soon, in July of 2015, fans and regular mainstream audiences around the world will find out that things are going to go very well for all of us, too, and for Batman on film.
