It’s been nearly two years since Ben Affleck last appeared as Batman in Zack Snyder’s DC Extended Universe. The Oscar winner has moved on from Gotham City after a polarizing run as Bruce Wayne.
In a recent GQ profile, Affleck surprisingly had a positive outlook about playing Batman.
“I had a really good time,” Affleck said. “I loved doing the Batman movie. I loved Batman v Superman. And I liked my brief stints on The Flash that I did and when I got to work with Viola Davis on Suicide Squad for a day or two. In terms of creatively, I really think that I like the idea and the ambition that I had for it, which was of the sort of older, broken, damaged Bruce Wayne. And it was something we really went for in the first movie.”
Despite poor reviews, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice became a box office hit ($874.4 million worldwide). However, things began to crumble for Affleck and Batman in the much-maligned Justice League. Affleck believes his age and the idea of a darker Batman played a part in the character’s downfall.
“What happened was it started to skew too old for a big part of the audience,” Affleck explained. “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.’ 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.”
Warner Bros., 2016 / Warner Bros.Affleck also struggled with alcoholism while filming Justice League, which became an “excruciating experience” for him. However, that’s not the main reason why Affleck will not play another superhero.
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