While the tragic death of his daughter led Zack Snyder to walk away from Justice League, it's hard to escape 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 he 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.
During a recent conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, Batman actor Ben Affleck reflected on "the Justice League experience" and admitted it caused those stories to "became somewhat repetitive to me and less interesting."
"Justice League...you could teach a seminar on all the reasons why this is how not to do it. Ranging from production to bad decisions to horrible personal tragedy, and just ending with the most monstrous taste in my mouth...But I was going to direct a Batman, and [Justice League] made me go, 'I’m out. I never want to do any of this again. I’m not suited.'"
"That was the worst experience I’ve ever seen in a business which is full of some shitty experiences. It broke my heart. There was an idea of someone [Joss Whedon] coming in, like, 'I’ll rescue you and we’ll do 60 days of shooting and I’ll write a whole thing around what you have. I’ve got the secret.' And it wasn’t the secret. That was hard."
Affleck went on to say 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." After that period obliterated his interest in the superhero movie genre, the actor says he came to the conclusion the franchise was no longer for him.
Despite that, he praises Zack Snyder for getting his cut of Justice League on HBO Max and says he didn't hesitate to join the filmmaker for his reshoots. "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 states. "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."
"I did finally figure out how to play that character [Batman], and I nailed it in The Flash," he concluded. "For the five minutes I’m there, it’s really great."
As we suspected, his Batman will play a very minor role in The Flash, and it will now serve as his farewell to the Dark Knight despite there once being plans for him to be part of a Crisis on Infinite Earths movie.
Affleck has made it clear he isn't interested in James Gunn's DCU, so unless Marvel Studios can win him over, that might be it for the actor/filmmaker and superhero fare.