Five Reasons To Give Ben Affleck A Chance As Batman

When news broke yesterday of Ben Affleck's casting as the Dark Knight in 2015's follow-up to Man Of Steel, it was not what you would call a universally-liked decision.  It made a fair chunk of the internet a pretty negative, or entirely ambivalent, place to be for a while there. But to those people: hey, come on, now. Maybe it's not so bad. Yes, yes, I aggressively hate the choice as much as the next person, but I mean, we have to at least give the guy a chance, right? The movie's not even in production yet and there's already a petition calling for Affleck's removal with thousands of supporters. That just seems… excessive, to me. It might be hard to see right now because you're caught up in how often Affleck is completely fucking average on-screen and the fact that he looks like he's about to drown in his own smugness like all the time, but he might be able to pull it off. Everyone needs to calm down a little bit. Let's think this through together.

He's played a superhero before and he wasn't completely awful, I guess...
Don't get me wrong. Daredevil was a train wreck. It was poorly shot and horribly written and the soundtrack is just so 2003 it hurts, and there's that whole super-rapey martial arts fight with Jennifer Garner in a New York playground that happens while a bunch of youths all stand around and cheer about it. But, somewhat surprisingly, Daredevil's director's cut was actually kind of good, not least of all for the whole subplot involving Coolio that never made it to the theatrical edit.

"I think my blind lawyer may be killing people."

And the parts that did still suck terribly weren't really Affleck's fault. He's totally acceptable in the role. He's not amazing, sure, but neither have been any of the live-action Batmen, not really. Christian Bale came the closest, in Batman Begins, to adequately filling the roles of both Bruce and Bat, but became increasingly farcical over the course of Nolan's trilogy. Either way, when Affleck says, “Justice is served”, he's a paintjob and a black cape away from being to pull off the exact same line as Batman with at least some measure of competence. Plus, he's taller than Michael Keaton (the “short” Batman/eccentric Bruce Wayne), and he's not George Clooney. Hey, that reminds me…

He's not George Clooney (but, also, he sort of is)
George Clooney was a terrible Batman, so at least we can rest assured that Affleck won't be as bad as that. We might end up going backwards, but surely it won't be that far backwards. That's what I want to say, with confidence, at least. But I don't know if I can.

See, it wasn't just that Batman And Robin was laughably awful – and believe me, that film is even worse than you remember it being – it was that Clooney was just… Clooney. He did the thing that Clooney does in like 95% of his films and gives it his breezy, affable best, but he does it as both Bruce Wayne and Batman. So the entire time he's playing the latter, it's impossible to forget that you're not watching Batman fight criminals; you're watching George Clooney mince around in a Batsuit looking genuinely uncomfortable for two hours.

Just... don't say it. We all see them.

The point is – Affleck kind of has that going on, though admittedly to a lesser degree. Credit to the man for his directorial work on Argo and other films, but his acting, even there, was effective to the point that I only stopped thinking of him as Ben Affleck and started to see him as his character in the context of the movie because he looked super different with a beard. But hey – maybe I'll believe him this time. He deserves the benefit of the doubt. After all…

The internet hated the casting of Heath Ledger, too
Let us not forget just how terribly fickle the online world can be. When Heath Ledger was announced as the Joker for The Dark Knight, the reaction ranged from completely bewildered (“I can't possibly fathom Heath Ledger as the Joker,” said one commenter with an apparently no-longer-functioning imagination) to blatantly homophobic, for some reason.

Bravo, internet. Bra-vo.

Of course, you all know how that turned out. Ledger took that pre-emptive criticism and he beat it to death with its own shoes, laughing hysterically the whole time. Yes, he had the significant advantage going in of actually being a markedly better-than-average actor, but as soon as he was cast, he was immediately chained to his earlier roles and set upon by the internet's most entitled nerds. So, it would be kind of dumb to do the same thing to Ben Affleck. Or anyone, I guess. But mostly Ben Affleck, right now. Besides …

He's a comic-book fan
But, then again, so is Nicolas Cage. So, actually, scratch this one. Not a good precedent.

"Sorry, all out of mercy." Yeah, no shit, Cage.

But it does raise a good point:

As long as the movie's okay, he'll be okay, probably
Let's face it – often, how we perceive someone's performance in a comic-book movie is inevitably influenced by the whole package. If the film strikes the right tone, the cast is likeable, believable and able enough, and the story is engaging and highlights its comic book origins while capitalising on new dimensions that only cinematic translation can afford it, we'll be happy. But if a film misses the mark, then nerds' scorn seems to get really personal, really quickly. Ghost Rider was a bad movie, and by association I think Nicolas Cage was bad in it, whether or not he actually was. It took the director's cut of Daredevil for me to acknowledge that Affleck was actually the least of its problems. And when Chris Evans was cast as Captain America, my loathing for the Fantastic Four films made a skeptic out of me until I was in the cinema.

But unlike with Evans, it's been 10 years since Affleck played a comic book role, and I've convinced myself (and hopefully you) that he wasn't that bad at it.  Also in Affleck's corner is the fact that he's assuming the cowl as a more mature Batman, so he won't have to burden himself with too much depth anyway. He just has to show up, look menacing, dominate some people, scowl “I am the night” and call it a day. Job done. Add to that the fact that comic-book movies have come a long, long way in the decade since Daredevil, and we just might be pleasantly surprised by 2015's team-up flick yet.

Or not. (Cinemablend.com)