Zack Snyder Says Casting Ben Affleck As 'Batman' Was A "No Brainer"

I was with it from the start. I loved the casting, especially after his work on Argo and The Town. Affleck stepped up his game since Daredevil.

@Kr08

Yeah, Dev7 is right, you're doing a splendid job here lately with all the DC news - kudos!

@Kyos @Dev7 Thanks guys

I originally wanted Joe when I heard he was in the running, but seeing they wanted a more washed up and older Bruce Wayne paves the way more for Ben.

I was sold right on, do to his recent movies. If this had been 2004 when Nolan was doing his, i would understood the critic.. But now ^o)

@OmegaDaGr0dd Actually that line is very Batman like. The one thing that has been alluded to in many comics is the fact that he probably cusses a lot. In year one he straight up says "Fvcking amateur" . We have the famous "I'm the goddamn Batman " from TDKR. And since this Batman is inspired by that, it wasn't far fetched.

@Emjeed "I'm the goddamn batman" comes from AllStar Batman & Robin not TDKR just saying....

I'm probably in the minority who thought Daredevil was ok. I insist the director's cut is gold.

I don't think Affleck will be winning any acting awards anytime soon (prefer his work behind the camera much more), but I do think he'll make a fine Batman. I'm even keeping an open mind about Gal Gadot. It's Snyder I don't trust.

I'm fairly confident Ben will do a good job with this. Now that he's hit his stride as an actor and director I doubt he'll slip back into his poorer quality from the 2000s. I'm still pissed about the direction this movie is going though (not posting spoilers but anyone who's seen trailer 2 will know why I'm annoyed about the thing included at the end) and really hope that doesn't ruin the film for me, although it's going to take A LOT to make that particular thing work, for me at least.

@InvisibleSanji

Sorry for the late response, wasn’t at the PC.

A common theme from these comics is the distrust and need for regulation of great power, especially from an unknown entity.

I’m well aware how these are themes that are dealt with quite often, and it’s definitely a worthy and interesting thing to do so. It’s just not that interesting to me if the result of it is Batman putting on a power suit to beat up Superman.

The post-Crisis Batman had known the Justice League for an extended period of time, having saved the world with them many of times, but he still devised ways to defeat them. His familiarity with them did not prevent him from creating protocols to stop them. This was reflected in Mark Waid's Tower of Babel story. Another major story dealing with similar issues would be Identity Crisis, when Batman's view of the League's abuse of power lead him to create Brother MK1 which basically became the OMAC Project. Both stories depict a Batman with much closer ties to the heroes than what we will see in BvS between Batman and Superman, but both displayed a Batman who went to greater extremes. If the late 90s and circa 2005 is too old for reference, then the Snyder New 52 Batman also displayed the same anti-JLA protocols despite being a founding member of the team yet again. That's just Batman in general.

I think it’s cool and a very Batman-ish of him to make contingency plans, I love that. I also think it’s a lot more interesting to see these things play out exactly when there is some more history between him and his teammates, and when it’s a calm, rational Batman behind those countermeasures. I’m not yet seeing that to be the kind of Batman we seem to get in BvS.

As for the examples you give, I can’t say I’m familiar with the New 52 takes on the characters beyond the adaptations for the animated movies. Especially in JL War, I must say, I wasn’t a fan of them, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman in particular (and GL, but I don’t care much about him).

The specific Batman will probably be influenced from several portrayals, but most likely be influenced by Miller. Miller's Batman can be extremely violent and can swear, btw. This Batman has to be in control and distrusts others, including the federal government, the police, and Superman. This Batman is ALSO aware of the good Superman does and is also his friend. In this world, superheroes are regulated by the federal government, but Batman does as he please even against the wishes of his friend Superman.

And I’m not overly happy about this inspiration. More on that later.

As for Superman not being able convince others of his intent to do good. In the movie, the federal government, the populace, and also Batman will still distrust him because he's both an unknown entity with no regulation and no power on Earth with the means to regulate him. We've seen the shots of Superman helping humanity, but that does not necessarily make him a hero to be trusted. For example, the White Martians duped humanity in Grant Morrison's first JLA story, for example.

I can agree that acting like a hero isn’t necessarily enough to convince everyone of his good intentions, but what more can he really do at this point? But I can even understand how Batman might have troubles with him, but that’d go back into some problems I had with Clark’s behaviour in MoS and the fact that I believe both government and Batman should have long since figured out his identity.

Anyways, funny enough the Batman in that JLA story was a [frick]ing awesome Batman from what I remember - not being taken seriously by the White Martians and ultimately being first to figure out their real identity and going forth kicking more of their asses than the rest of the League. It’s just more interesting to me when it’s not Batman vs Superman.

That's just a tip-of-the-iceberg for VS in comics. If unfamiliar with the comics, I'd refer you to Dini's World's Finest. Both DCAU Batman and Superman had been established as heroes in their world. Even then we saw their first meeting end in conflict. Also, again, TDKR animated can be used to show the basis of Batman/Superman for this movie.

The DCAU World’s Finest is actually probably as close to my ideal of how to handle a first contact scenario between those two as anything I’ve ever seen. “I heard you were crazy. Didn’t think you were stupid.” from Superman to Batman after he tried to physically attack him, then Batman countering by confronting him with some Kryptonite. Supes looking under the cowl with his x-ray vision, Batman tracking him down to his apartment in response. Just very nicely done imo, and all with about as much as one and a half actual punches thrown. If the DCEU started with something like that I’d be close to ecstatic.

TDKR clearly a big inspiration for the movie, and for my personal taste they couldn’t have picked a less appealing one for the start of the DCEU and the first ever big screen meeting of the two biggest superheroes ever (aside from Spidey). I like TDKR well enough, a lot actually, but it would’ve never even crossed my mind to use it (or elements of it) as the foundation of the first connected cinematic DC universe. Just seems absurd to me.

I think things really boil down to the fact that I’m not much of a fan of “hero vs hero”, and probably the least interesting example of a fight like this for me personally happens to be Superman vs Batman. If Batman wanted to kill Superman he could find a way. If Superman wanted to kill Batman he’d simply do it soon as they saw each other. If they’re somewhat close to how I understand the characters they need to stop fighting at some point, because it leads to nothing and they’ll eventually need to work together anyways.

Now it’s okay for Batman to try to beat up Supes to prove some kind of point, but it’s not something I need to see as the main focus of something that’s essentially an origin story for the Justice League.

What are your thoughts on Civil War's conflict? The combatants are actually established teammates that know each others resumes very well...

I wasn’t too thrilled when they first announced Civil War, precisely because of my aversion towards “versus” stories. But by now I’ve warmed up to the idea, mostly because I’m actually somewhat emotionally invested in those characters, and also due to the fact that the pure fighting between all the characters involved has the potential to be pretty interesting in this case. Also I’m not yet sure how the results of the events in that movie will look like, or, well, the events themselves.



So much for now, I hope all of this (or at least some of it ^^) made some kind of sense. I’m off to bed now! :)

"When you have more words of concern for Batfleck as Batman then you EVER did with Rudd as Lang....are you a studio groupie.....deep down....."

Well when you have people that watch only 10 movies a year you tend to get hate from people especially if the last movie they ever saw Ben Affleck in was Daredevil.