Because here’s the thing: All we literally know about this situation is that a good actor has been cast as Batman. That is not an opinion. One does not get to argue about that. It is simply a statement of fact. That does not mean you have to personally like Ben Affleck, or be a crazy devotee of every single movie he has ever made, but when performances like his work in The Town or Argo or To The Wonder or State of Play or Hollywoodland exist, and are readily accessible and objectively solid-to-excellent pieces of acting, you do not get to claim Affleck is a less-than-good actor. Because he isn’t. He had a stretch in his career when he made an awful lot of bad decisions about which movies to star in and how to approach those roles, but pretending that this is still the status quo for the man is just that: pretending. Such an insistence has no basis in reality.
And on the flipside, people trying desperately to convince the rest of the Internet that Affleck is the right choice are also overreacting and wasting our collective time. If I see one more person go “Well the Internet complained about Heath Ledger as the Joker at first too,” I am going to throw my computer through a wall. That’s not the point, and in its own way, that argument is just as bad as insisting Affleck will be terrible, because it is using the example of one of the most inspired casting choices in modern cinematic history, and therefore connecting a performance that has not even been given to an endlessly iconic piece of acting. I get what people are trying to say with that statement – never count someone out until you see the finished product – but I still find it overly presumptive. People arguing this point should instead be saying that “the Internet complains about everything no matter how much information they are or are not given, so everybody shut up and wait to see the movie.” That is a counter-argument I can get behind.
Affleck could be a great Batman. Or he could flame out spectacularly in the role. There is absolutely no way to know which one will be the eventual outcome because again, at this point, all we know is that a good actor has been cast. And good actors can be wrong for certain parts. People defending and decrying the choice alike are ignoring the fact that we have no way to know whether or not Affleck will be a good fit, not only because we haven’t seen the movie, but because we lack even a mildly clear indication of where Snyder, David S. Goyer, and the team at Warner Bros want to go with the character this time around. That, to me, is a much more important part of the equation than who has been cast – interpretation has to come first when building a character, and that is especially true when reestablishing an icon.
If Snyder wanted to go in an Adam West direction, for whatever reason, Affleck obviously would be a dreadful choice. If he wanted to go down a more Animated Series-esque route, in which Bruce Wayne is a strong, decisive businessman and Batman a confident but vulnerable superhero, Affleck is probably a tad too deadpan. But if Snyder is envisioning a take similar to what Frank Miller or Tim Burton did in the 1980s, with a dark, brooding Batman and a visibly detached Bruce Wayne? Sure, Affleck’s specific skill set fits that interpretation. And if they are simply going to try recreating Christopher Nolan’s take, with tortured playboy Bruce Wayne and impossibly dark Batman, they should stop right now and reevaluate, because Christian Bale already did that, and no one else could do it as well.
