Ben Affleck has ditched the cape and cowl and will no longer play the DCEU's Batman after three appearances. While Matt Reeves now looks for a replacement, another actor to have donned the costume has revealed the advice he gave to Affleck when he first considered playing the Dark Knight: George Clooney.
1997's
Batman & Robin proved to be a disaster for him, and it turns out that he learned quite a few lessons from the experience of playing a superhero in the critically panned DC Comics adaptation.
"[Arnold] Schwarzenegger was paid, I think, $25 million for that, which was like 20 times more than I was paid for it, and, you know, we never even worked together! We worked together one day. But I took all the heat. Now, fair deal; I was playing Batman and I wasn’t good in it, and it wasn’t a good film, but what I learned from that failure was, I had to rethink how I was working. Because now I wasn’t just an actor getting a role, I was being held responsible for the film itself."
Years later, Clooney worked with Affleck on Argo as a producer and he cautioned the filmmaker to think hard before becoming the new Batman
"I actually did talk to him about it," he reveals.
"I said, ‘Don’t do it.’ It was only from my experience, which is, you know..." While Affleck didn’t take his advice, Clooney was quick to add that,
"He did great, though."
Affleck was, in fact, an awesome Batman, but the problems lay with the movies he starred in.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice took a critical drubbing due to some strange creative decisions, the Caped Crusader's cameo in
Suicide Squad wasn't enough to save the movie, and
Justice League was a huge mess due to those reshoots.
Do you think Affleck should have taken Clooney's advice?