While the tragic death of his daughter led to Zack Snyder walking away from Justice League, it's hard to shake the feeling Warner Bros. would have always had Joss Whedon at the helm of those reshoots.
We know The Avengers director's script changes were thrust upon Snyder before he departed the movie and the belief was clearly that, given the success he'd found in the MCU, Whedon could transform it into a hit.
While what we ended up with definitely rhymes with "hit," the critical and commercial bomb ruined Whedon's career amid a series of damaging allegations about his behaviour on set. Those opened the floodgates, and the disgraced filmmaker no longer appears welcome in Hollywood.
Talking to GQ, Ben Affleck - who has previously said Justice League was "the worst experience I’ve ever seen in a business which is full of some shitty experiences" - talked more about his experience shooting the 2017 movie.
"There are a number of reasons why that was a really excruciating experience," he said of his time playing Batman in the superhero ensemble. "And they don’t all have to do with the simple dynamic of, say, being in a superhero movie or whatever. I am not interested in going down that particular genre again, not because of that bad experience, but just: I’ve lost interest in what was of interest about it to me."
"But I certainly wouldn’t want to replicate an experience like that. A lot of it was misalignment of agendas, understandings, expectations. And also by the way, I wasn’t bringing anything particularly wonderful to that equation at the time, either," the actor admitted. "I had my own failings, significant failings, in that process and at that time."
In 2023, Affleck revealed that the time he spent working on those reshoots in London contributed to him drinking too much as "it was either that or jump out the window." Despite that, he has praised Zack Snyder for getting his cut of Justice League on HBO Max.
"I like a lot of the stuff we did, especially the first one [Batman v Superman]. And now [Zack Snyder’s Justice League] is my highest-rated movie on IMDb," Affleck said. "Say what you want, it is my highest-rated career movie. I’ve never had one that went from nadir to pinnacle. Retroactively, it’s a hit."
It's a shame the Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice star has wiped his hands of superheroes, but it's also perfectly understandable. While there were rumblings that he might be in line for an MCU role, Affleck is thought to have turned down a return as Daredevil in Deadpool & Wolverine and surely won't be talked into anything else.
The actor's time as Batman saw him suit up in several DC movies, though he bid a final farewell to the hero in 2023 with The Flash. DC Studios scrapped plans for Crisis on Infinite Earths, a movie likely set to feature "Batfleck" sharing the screen with Michael Keaton's Batman.