The New Batman

If you haven't heard by now, Christopher Nolan has announced that Ben Affleck will be playing Bruce Wayne/Batman in the upcoming Superman sequel.  A couple of weeks ago, I put out a list of people who I thought would make a good Batman and guess what?  Ben Affleck was not on my list.  And based on what I've been reading, internet nerds are really upset about this casting.  However, after thinking it over I think Ben will do a decent job of it.

First, let's look at why Ben Affleck is being hated on for taking the part.  The biggest problem is that no matter who Nolan picked, nobody was going to live up to our expectations after Christian Bale's take on the role.  So that already puts Affleck in a bind.  Next, Affleck was really really bad is his only other movie based on a superhero.  You all know which movie that is.  Daredevil.  And he was really really awful in that movie so people are just assuming he is going to fuck this one up, too.  With those two strikes against him, I can see why people don't like him taking over the cape and cowl.

Now, here are the positives.  When he did Daredevil, it was in the height of his Jennifer Lopez days and people found those two really annoying and it probably made people hate anything he did at the time, even if that movie was terrible no matter what.  Next, has anyone watched his more recent stuff?  The Town and Argo are award-winning films and Affleck was great in those movies on top of the fact that he was also the director.  I really feel like he has grown up since then and his effort as Batman will be completely different from his effort as Daredevil.  Last, people freaked the hell out when Christopher Nolan cast Heath Ledger as The Joker in The Dark Knight and do you remember how that turned out?  Yeah, Nolan knows what the hell he's doing so maybe we should give him the benefit of a doubt on this casting as well.

Oddly enough, Affleck might not be catching nearly as much shit as Michael Keaton did when he was cast as Batman back in the day and Keaton freaking nailed the part (and to make things ironic, fans were pissed when he didn't sign up to do a third Batman movie).  I really feel like we should give Affleck a chance.  Sure, he's not going to be as good as Christian Bale, but that was already a given no matter who took the role.  Plus, this is going to be a Superman movie with Batman in it, so maybe we are just blowing this out of proportion to begin with and should just chill the hell out and let Christopher Nolan do what he does, which is make incredible movies.

"This actually makes sense."