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The big screen’s controversial Batman-to-be, actor Ben Affleck, has revealed he turned down the coveted role in the upcoming blockbuster Batman vs Superman when it was first offered to him.
Speaking for the first time about the almost unprecedented fan backlash that greeted the news he was to play Batman, Affleck said his first reaction was to say no.
“I told them I didn’t see myself in the role and I was going to have to beg off,” the Oscar winning actor confessed.
However, he changed his mind.
“They…asked me to look at what the writer-director, Zack Snyder, was doing. The stuff was incredible. It was a unique take on Batman that was still consistent with the mythology. It made me excited. All of a sudden I had a reading of the character. When people see it, it will make more sense than it does now or even than it did to me initially,” Affleck said.
As for that initial Internet reaction to the casting announcement — which was nuclear, and overwhelmingly negative — Affleck said he’d been prepared.
“I expected that…Warner Bros. told me, ‘You should know what you’re getting into.’ They showed me the reactions to other folks who had been cast in these roles. They said this is how it tends to play out initially,” he said.
Candidly, the star copped to a frequent slight made by the fanboy set: that he already did a disservice to a different comic hero, Daredevil in a 2003 film of the same name.
“I understand I’m at a disadvantage with the Internet,” the Argo director explained.
“If I thought the result would be another Daredevil, I’d be out there picketing myself,” Affleck laughed. “Why would I make the movie if I didn’t think it was going to be good and that I could be good in it?”
The actor’s portrayal of “The Man Without Fear” apparently still haunts him as much as the fanboys online.
“The only movie I actually regret is Daredevil,” Affleck said. “It just kills me. I love that story, that character, and the fact that it got f**ked up the way it did stays with me. Maybe that’s part of the motivation to do Batman.”
There was one saving grace of the film, he said: his co-star Jennifer Garner, now his wife and the mother of their three children. Incidentally, the pair met on another critically panned film, Pearl Harbor.
“We fell in love on Daredevil,” Affleck recalled, before joking, “By the way, she won most of the fights in the movie, which was a pretty good predictor of what would happen down the road — my wife, holding swords and beating the living sh*t out of me.”
And will the couple ever re-team on the big screen? Don’t hold your breath, the Oscar winner says.
“Well, my wife and I made Pearl Harbor and Daredevil. With our track record, I don’t know if anyone’s looking for a three-quel,” Affleck quipped.
Agencies
