Bale or Batfleck? For comic book legend Kevin Smith, there’s only one answer.
During a recent episode of his popular Fat Man on Batman podcast with co-host Marc Bernardin (h/t ComicBook.com), Smith admitted that he initially hoped Christian Bale would reprise his role as Gotham’s Dark Knight for Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, the Zack Snyder franchise-starter that drafted Ben Affleck into the equation.
The former Man Without Fear is still attached to Warner’s DCEU franchise (that we know of), though Smith initially hoped that Bale would transition from the Nolan era over to Batman V Superman, where he would’ve shared the screen with Henry Cavill’s Man of Steel. Alas, it wasn’t to be.
Number one, I like your movie a lot more. It feels like, I mean, was that, they weren’t saying that Ben was Christian Bale, but they were saying like ‘oh he’s been around for years he’s not that guy anymore.’ I think I would have preferred it, and I’m not, this ain’t sh**ting on Affleck, but as a guy who loved the Nolan trilogy when they announced like hey they’re making Man of Steel and Chris Nolan’s a producer on it, ‘I was like “oh f**k man, so that means like his Batman and his Superman will coexist’ and then ultimately it wound up being Zack Snyder’s Superman… Batman instead.
I would have preferred the Christian Bale version just as a continuity freak of like yeah, all these f**kers… and also it would have been like, what does everyone b**ch about DC movies doing? Oh, they’re trying to be like Marvel and catch up to Marvel. They had it right there. They were like making these f**king Batman movies forever so now we’re just going to connect them, so we’ve got a universe but instead, they launched a brand-new universe.
And though Bale’s involvement in Batman V Superman may have upset the underlying continuity – or, worse, undermined the bittersweet finale of The Dark Knight Rises – co-host Marc Bernardin presented his own theory as to how the two franchises could’ve been linked. And yes, it involves the Caped Crusader dusting off his Batsuit one last time…
And not only that, but then it becomes an emotional story, it becomes what makes this guy give up happiness like what does Superman do … we won’t discuss the fact that Batman retired because Batman doesn’t f**king retire, but had he retired, what’s enough to pull this guy away from the dream he’s always had of having the girl, of having the paradise, of having to be able to not be haunted and tortured by his parents’ death what brings the guy to put the suit back on?
After Justice League‘s dire performance – critically, if not commercially – the future of Batfleck remains uncertain. But what do you make of Kevin Smith’s opinion on Batman V Superman? You can, as always, drop your thoughts below.
