The Dark Knight Disappoints: Why Ben Affleck's Batman Didn't Work

I don’t believe I’ve made any secret that I’m a giant Batman fan above all else, nor have I hidden my disdain for Batman v Superman or Man of Steel and their treatment of the two marquee characters of the DC Universe. With the tepid box office numbers for Justice League endangering the continued existence of the DCEU (outside of future solo Wonder Woman films, the upcoming Aquaman solo movie that has already been filmed, and whatever becomes of Batman under Matt Reeves) you might expect me to join in those crowing over the demise of this version of Batman as played by Ben Affleck (who is most definitely exiting the franchise even with The Batman on the way). This would be an incorrect assumption, however. Besides the fact that I think Affleck, at least in BvS, gave a good performance with what he had to work with, there was as an interesting idea at the core of this take on Batman that distinguished him from other versions of the character and should really have been given a chance to work. If the DCEU is over I’ll be most upset that Henry Cavill never got the chance to play a true Superman for an entire movie where he didn’t take second billing to Batman, but the chance to do something new and interesting with Batman is a major failure as well.
 

I can’t pretend I was excited when the news that Batman was going to be in the Man of Steel sequel was announced. I had more hoped that WB would respond to the mediocre critical response to Man of Steel by replacing Zack Snyder for a sequel that would feature a more traditional Superman battling one of his own signature villains, and the news that they were hijacking the Superman franchise to fast-track a cinematic universe was disappointing and the situation they’ve found themselves in today was the predictable result. I did, however, find the initial pitch for the new Batman somewhat interesting. An older, world-weary Batman inspired by The Dark Knight Returns hadn’t ever been attempted, and while I feared the combination of Frank Miller and Zack Snyder’s penchant for cynical and hyper-violent interpretations, this version of Batman really did ask some interesting questions. How would a Batman who has spent 20 years on the ground in Gotham feel if the age of superheroes began and immediately made him feel obsolete? What would the same Batman do if he’d waged his war for 20 years only to see Gotham fail to change, lose a Robin, and otherwise suffer loss after loss until he doubted his own mission and purpose?

If you pitched me the idea of a Batman who has lost his way, who initially sees Superman as a threat to humanity and then has his faith restored by the beacon of hope that is Superman when he sees him up close, I’d be all for that, actually. As the Dark Nights: Metal event has been going on in DC comics I’ve been reading each of the one-shot origin stories for the “evil Batmen,” and one of my favorites so far has been Batman: The Devastator, where Batman turns himself into Doomsday to stop an out of control Superman. The central premise of that “what if” is that the only person on Earth that even cynical, hard-hearted, always-prepare-for-the-worst Batman trusts implicitly and believes in is Clark, and when he loses that it shatters him. Batman v Superman could have shown us how that trust is established and given us a Batman who lost his faith and only found it again when shown the overwhelming goodness of Superman.

As it played out, however, we don’t really get a believable conversion. The problem with Snyder doing a deconstructed, more “complex” take on Superman is that by the time he meets Batman in BvS, he’s not yet established as a beacon of hope in the eyes of the public, and he hasn’t even decided himself that he’s really all that committed to being one. A Superman without an abiding faith in what is good and right isn’t going to be able to convince a Batman who has pretty good reasons to think he’s actually a threat to mankind. I know the company line after BvS was to pretend that it was Superman’s sacrifice to stop Doomsday that truly renewed Bruce’s faith, but that’s just so people don’t have to pretend the real turn in the movie is the rightly-mocked Martha scene. The entire concept of a fallen Batman redeemed by the presence of Superman required that the two be contrasting figures, and the movie instead presented two largely amoral figures mired in grey, and the resolution of that dispute is forced and hollow.

Despite all of the misfires in BvS, however, Justice League has its own interesting, novel take on Batman. Many Justice League stories tend to overstate just how smart, prepared, and otherwise awesome Batman is in order to justify his presence among gods and aliens in a league of superheroes. I went into Justice League expecting the kind of omniscient Bat-god we’ve seen from time to time in team-up projects and was pleasantly surprised to find that Batman’s arc in the story was mostly about recognizing his own limitations and seeking help. Unlike the grizzled Batman from The Dark Knight Returns who  regarded his fellow superheroes as traitors and weaklings who gave up on the war, or even the Batman form the Timmverse who is shown to be a disgruntled loner in old age in Batman Beyond, this Batman actually made the correct and mature choice to seek help from others once he could no longer fight it out by himself. It’s refreshing, and it almost works!

Unfortunately Justice League’s Batman is betrayed by a few things, for which Zack Snyder, Joss Whedon, and Ben Affleck must all be blamed. Batman’s conversion from “we must kill Superman because he is a threat” to “we must literally resurrect Superman despite not at all understanding what might come back”, much like his change at the end of BvS, is still a bit unconvincing for a man who had none of his actual complaints about Superman and his limitless powers addressed. He’s overly quippy (thanks Joss), and while a few of his interactions with Superman especially struck me as things a lighter-hearted Bruce might actually say, his quips to no one in particular in response to things other characters have said did not feel very Batman-like. Lastly, Ben Affleck’s performance in the scenes that were re-shot (and in this movie you can very easily tell which are which) are pretty unenthusiastic. The rumors that started in the summer that he was going to leave the role after the movie make a lot of sense when you see how little he appears to give a damn in it, and he seems to deliver every line even as Bruce Wayne in a gravelly mumble.

While it’s going to take a while before the fallout from Justice League’s box office performance to settle and we find out which DC characters will get shelved for the immediate future, we know already that Batman will not be among them. Matt Reeves is going to make The Batman and whatever sequels it merits, and the rumor mill is already churning about who will replace Affleck in the cowl. We know that before long we’ll have another Batman to throw into the WHO IS THE GREATEST BATMAN EVAR debate (and no, you 14 year old bastards, it isn’t Ben Affleck because hIS FiGhTS R TEH COOLEZT). One misfire isn’t going to end the franchise. In that way, the failure of Batfleck isn’t as disappointing as it could be, but in the end that doesn’t completely remove the sting I feel as a Batman fan about a good concept, and a good actor, undermined by poor execution. It should have worked better than it did, though, if it comforts Ben Affleck at all, he’s certainly not alone in that category when it comes to the DCEU.

Justice League Just Wants You to Like It, Will You Give it a Shot?

There was an 8 year old boy in my showing of Batman v Superman. I remember distinctly how excitedly he said "it's Superman!" when Superman first came on screen. I remember feeling sad and angry for that little guy when he left the theater looking sad and bored. It fed a lot of the anger and disappointment I already felt about that movie and Zack Snyder's drab and cynical take on the ultimate fictional altruist hero.

There was an 8 year old boy at the showing of Justice League. I heard him cheer multiple times. I cheered with him. Sometimes that's all that matters.

Justice League is not a great movie. I'm not even sure it passes some neutral, objective standard of good. There are plot holes, thin characterizations, half-assed origin stories, weak villains, and some comically long exposition dumps. The CGI makeup for Henry Cavill's mustache deserves the mockery it gets. There are times when the tonal whiplash from the parts of the movie surving from Zack Snyder's cut to Joss Whedon's cheerful re-shoots leaves you disoriented.

In the end, though, I didn't care. There's a lot of good here. Primarily in the cast, where Gal Gadot shines again as Diana, Ezra Miller delights with his quippy Barry Allen (though I wish they'd just gone ahead and made him Wally West), Jason Momoa's Aquaman is the swaggering badass from Brave and the Bold combined with Momoa's natural charm, and Ray Fisher is a revelation as Cyborg (sadly the movie's most underserved character). Ben Affleck brings less energy to it as Batman this time around, but the subdued take mostly works for a guilt-ridden version of the character. Henry Cavill finally gets to smile and have fun as the big blue boy scout, and he really sells it. I hope we get to see this version of Superman, cheesy one-liners and all, again.

My Five Favorite Batman: TAS Episodes

It's the 25th anniversary of Batman: TAS, if you haven't heard, and just about every pop culture blog on the web is doing some form of tribute, to which I boldly say: why shouldn't we also do exactly that?

 

It's really hard to overstate how important Batman: TAS is to comic fans of a certain age. Born in 1988, I grew up in an era where the Batman comics were pretty weird (Jean-Paul Valley, anyone?), and the Tim Burton Batman movies were....unique. As a 4 year old I wore out my VHS tape of Batman 89, but Batman Returns was a weird, creepy movie about a black bile spewing Penguin that featured roughly 11 minutes of screen time for a Batman that does barely anything remotely qualifying as heroic. Granted, I watched it 40 times out of brand loyalty and because we were poor and I owned like five movies total and thus watched them all over and over, but if those two movies had been the only Batman material that young Kyle had to consume, it's highly unlikely my life long obsession with the character (and subsequently comics in general) would have taken hold. Fortunately for you all, later that year Batman: TAS debuted and gave us the best version of the character that has ever been.

 

Others will go over what made this show great, from the animation style to the outstanding theme and scores by Shirley Walker to the voice acting of Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill, but the key to its success has always been that it is pure, distilled Batman. From the start of the show he's already well established as Batman, he has a Robin, Alfred is forever at his side, and his working relationship with Jim Gordon is the mutually beneficial partnership that it should be, not the cartoonish oaf of Gordon from the Burton/Schumacher movies or Batman '66 whose first response to any problem is to throw up his arms and cry for Batman's help. The show never allows itself to get convoluted by continuity issues or comic book sideplots. Batman fights crime, and he does it well. The show also gives a Bruce Wayne that is haunted by his past and driven by his obsession, yet he dates, has a friendly rapport with both Robin and Alfred, and is an active participant in the running of Wayne Enterprises. This is not the broken psychopath of Frank Miller, just an honest-to-god superhero driven to do good as a response to the evil act that changed his life. In short, this show is everything we love about Batman and it will endure forever because of that. Without further ado, here are my five favorite episodes of Batman: TAS and its successor show The New Batman Adventures.

 

DISCLAIMER: these are just episodes of the shows, not the movies that are in the same continuity, or else I'd just write Mask of the Phantasm 5 times in a row.

 

Supergirl, Flash, and TV's Beautiful Embrace of Comic Book Weirdness

I recently had the chance to catch up on season 3 of The Flash and season 2 of Supergirl on Netflix, both shows I have a ton of affection for, and neither of them disappointed. I felt The Flash bounced back from a relatively unfocused season 2 with a strong third effort, with Savitar serving as a much better Big Bad than Zoom, a guy whose over the top "I AM EVIL BECAUSE BEING EVIL IS GREAT" attitude should have worked better with me than it did because it was delivered by such a wooden actor. The general impression I got from many people was that Supergirl's sophomore effort was also weaker than her initial outing but I had to disagree. While the show certainly suffered a bit from the over-emphasis on Mon-El and the lack of Cat Grant, it more than made up for it with strong new characters like Maggie Sawyer, Miss Martian, and Lena Luthor. It also had the single best live action Superman we have had since Christopher Reeve. I could wax poetic for a long time about how great Tyler Hoechlin's Clark was, and perhaps at some point I will, but this is beside the point I want to make, which is these two recent seasons of Supergirl and Flash pretty much represent the culmination of the painfully slow process TV has taken in embracing all of the full-on bright, colorful weirdness that comic books provide.

This season of the Flash saw the multiverse and speed force name-dropped and utilized nearly every episode without even a word of explanation after previous seasons had established them. Multiple earths were visited and discussed with no one batting an eye. The Flash literally went to Gorilla City on Earth 2, where the always perfect Tom Cavanagh portrayed Harrison Wells-mind-controlled-by-a-malevolent-gorilla as he grunted the words "KILL OR BE KILLED! THIS IS THE LAW OF GORILLA KIND" and everyone in the room kept a straight face. There was a Mirror Master. The Music Meister instigated an entire musical episode. This was all before main villain was revealed to be a time-warped duplicate of Barry himself who was driven mad by eternal purgatory inside the speed force. Basically we've reached a point where I don't think there's anything comics Flash could do that couldn't also be done by TV Flash, other than hang out with his lucrative multi-billion dollar movie property friend Batman.

Supergirl, likewise, had not only the most faithful version of Superman shown on screen ever, it also heavily upped the amount of Martian Manhunter in full get-up (always a great decision), gave us a shape-shifting Durlan as President, and a Metallo inspired by the absolutely perfect Malcolm McDowell version from Superman The Animated Series. I am so happy they did not overthink Metallo as some kind of Iron Man suit or robot, they literally just gave us a British dude with cybernetic enhancements and a glowing green kryptonite heart. It was beautiful.