With all of the talk surrounding the latest casting of Gotham City’s masked crusader, it’s interesting to reflect on what might have been if Ben Affleck had stuck around and played Batman for just a little while longer. While it’s impossible to know exactly what the studio had in mind, fans now have somewhat of an idea of what that future could have looked like thanks to David Betancourt.
According to the reporter, Affleck’s first standalone feature as the superhero would have pitted Bruce Wayne against Deathstroke. Batman’s dreaded foe was also supposed to have a standalone movie of his own, but that appears to have stalled.
It remains to be seen whether or not this same idea is used for the next Batman film now that Robert Pattinson has been cast as the billionaire vigilante. More likely than not, though, the studio will decide to go in a different direction entirely.
Perhaps they’ll even pit Joaquin Phoenix, fresh off the Joker origin story, against Pattinson. This will likely depend on how audiences receive Phoenix’s performance. If critics and fans aren’t kind to his portrayal of the iconic villain, then the actor could end up being a one-and-done like Jared Leto.
Though Affleck’s work was not one of the worst Batman performances ever seen, it definitely was incomparable to those of Michael Keaton and Christian Bale. And when all is said and done, the Academy Award winner’s time under the mask will probably be remembered mostly as a disappointment.
If certain things had gone different, though, the DCEU might be ramping up for the next Batman project with Affleck, as well as preparing that scrapped Deathstroke standalone flick. Instead, fans will just have to speculate on what it might’ve looked like if the two adversaries had gone toe to toe on the big screen.
