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.

The Value of Terrible Media

Often, Kyle and I will have a discussion about Zack Snyder. He sits at a perfect intersection for our interests: movies and comics. We have spent, I would estimate, upwards of 100 hours discussing his films and, specifically, why they are so bad. One day we might focus on a particular scene in Man of Steel, the next on why he would have added the scenes he did to 300, yet another day we may be found trying to put into words how hollow Watchmen was. That’s 100 hours on objectively terrible entertainment.

So today, I read the latest chapter of Tokyo Ghoul, and I was immediately struck with the need to write down my thoughts on how it continues to get worse. How can it be this bad for this long, and yet still find new ways to fail? Why am I still reading this? What hope is there for any of us that this pile of smoldering garbage continues to be published?

It was then that I thought of Zack Snyder, and I had to wonder if I was wasting a significant amount of time discussing something that quite simply did not merit the attention. Wouldn’t it be better for Kyle and I to sit and chat about Francis Ford Coppola? Or what of the other Snyder, Scott? I considered why it is that we are attracted to this garbage, and what it is that makes us fascinated enough with it to go over it again and again.

I think, in the end, it’s simply more valuable to talk about what went wrong than what went right. I often find myself reminding my wife that we don’t learn much when we succeed constantly. If your computer always works for you, you’ll be of no use when it breaks. If you’ve always cooked a roast successfully you’ll probably never learn why it tastes so good. If you’ve always made good movies that were well-received, maybe you’ll never understand why those movies are good to begin with.

Of course, Snyder doesn’t have that problem. By my count he’s never made a single good movie, and he’s not done making bad ones yet. But in discussing Snyder’s failings, in sussing out why his work falls flat or outright provokes anger at its awfulness, it might be possible for a new director, or a new writer, or a new producer, to single out what does not work for movies in general, and then apply them to their work. It may be able to stem the tide early enough that a new director thinks to him or herself “Ah, don’t want to pull a Snyder here, let’s not just take quotes from famous comic books and insert them into this movie without consideration for context.”

On the flip side, what do we learn from discussing great films? Yes, we can talk about why The Godfather works, but do we learn much more than how to emulate the greats? It is a far more difficult task to look at something great, take the lessons from how it was constructed, and create something completely new and useful than to look at something great and simply copy it. The former is the kind of thing you see from Paul Thomas Anderson. The inspirations are there, lurking just beyond the horizon in his films, but they’ve been crafted to his own, unique vision. This is incredibly difficult to pull off. The latter we see much more frequently, even in films from a single director! M. Knight Shyamalan took almost two decades to understand why The Sixth Sense is a great film (hint, it was not the twist). He directed that movie!

(The middle ground here is, of course, Quentin Tarantino)

There are remarkably few PTA’s in this world. There are quite a few kids capable of directing good, fun films, however. And most of these kids will see Snyder’s movies. And then, hopefully, they’ll see the nauseous critical reception and wonder why everyone feels that way. How a person can make something so universally terrible and still release it, confident that it is not. Maybe they’ll stumble across the Red Letter reviews of the Star Wars prequels and enjoy a humorous and thorough dismantling of three impressively terrible movies. And maybe they’ll know, when they get behind the camera, what not to do, so we don’t have to see yet another movie that plays like 30 different 90 second trailers slammed together.

This brings me back to Tokyo Ghoul. Folks, it’s bad. But it’s bad in all these unique ways. It’s bad in new ways quite often, ways that surprise and inspire me to write more about it. This week they managed to avoid a climactic fight altogether, a fight that saw the main character made into a quadruple amputee, and yet ALSO have a ton of incredibly confusing action. They managed to run the “The main character smells something is wrong!” trope right into the “Yes but the bad guy predicted all of this somehow I guess!” trope, head long. They’re killing characters for, I think, funsies. I’m pretty sure next week they’re going to fridge the female lead and her unborn child.

And you know what? I’m here for it. All of it! Bring it on, Tokyo Ghoul. We all have a lot more to learn from you.