‘Superman & Batman’ movie will follow ‘Man of Steel’

I'm not an Affleck-hater, but I do think there's a bit more of a case to be made there. Daredevil was a bigger movie, and it was a similarly dark and edgy character like Batman-- which Affleck was not exactly the most believable at playing.

Although I realize that was 10 years ago, and he could probably pull it off a bit better now.

 

I didn't like Affleck in Daredevil, I didn't mind Brolin in Hex.

I am willing to Affleck a chance, but he has been the weak link in anything I have seen him in up until now--but I haven't seen him for a while.

 

While I can see Brolin as Batman, I cannot see him as Bruce Wayne, he just doesn't have those pretty boy looks.

 

They should have hired Brolin to play Batman and Affleck to play Wayne.

 

I never realized Wayne always had to be played by a pretty boy.

 

Having rewatched the Nolan films over the last week, I saw something I didn't notice before. When Bale had the facial hair he could pass for a young James Brolin. That made me think that if they ever did a Beyond movie, he might be good for old man Wayne.

I've looked at pics of Josh Brolin recently, and he could probably have pulled it off. But that was not to be. Affleck will probably do a good job, He's matured now, and with a good script and good direction it will be ok. As long as he doesn't try to do the Bale voice thing. That wasn't optimal.

But the Wayne/Batman duality is tough. As someone said recently, Bruce Wayne is a mask but Batman is in the eyes.

 

I think we certainly CAN blame Affleck for having the screen presence of a wet sock in "Daredevil" while having as much chemistry with Elektra as sodium has with water.

 

They say real life couples can't play couples in movies very convincingly. I would say there is some truth to that since Afflect and Garner ended up getting marred just two years later after staring in Daredevil together. It was the one good thing the come from that movie at least.

 

Well, that's part of the core idea of the character -- that Bruce is a handsome, eligible billionaire playboy. Sure, with his kind of wealth you don't need to be good-looking to attract women, but Bruce's matinee-idol looks are an established part of his character.

Can we, though? He didn't direct his own performance. Some directors are better at bringing out good performances than others. Look at all the fine actors who gave wooden performances when George Lucas directed them in the Star Wars prequels. The performance we see onscreen is the responsibility, not only of the actor, but of the director and to some extent the editor.

What I hear is that Affleck's been praised for his acting in the films he directed himself -- that becoming a director has honed his performances as well. The Ben Affleck of today is not the Ben Affleck of ten years ago.

Anyway, I should rewatch Daredevil at some point. I don't remember having a problem with Affleck's performance, but maybe I should refresh my memory.

 

^^^
My problem with Affleck in that movie was that he tried to play Matt Murdock as a charming light hearted character when, at least in versions of the last twenty years, he has not been. (Or perhaps he was just directed that way.)

Meyer, on the Trek II DVDs, talks about doing take after take after take with Shatner to wear the hammy performance out of him. The Kirk of TWOK is a completely different character than the Kirk of TFF in many ways because of it.

 

I didn't buy Ben Affleck at all in Daredevil.

He was meant to be intimidating and I just couldn't buy it. He was passable as Matt Murdock, but he just tried too hard when it came to portraying Daredevil. It didn't help that he was saddled with a mediocre script and some fairly bad dialogue.

What makes me cautiously optimistic, and not downright dismissive, is that Affleck has grown a lot as a professional over the last ten years. His performances in State of Play, Argo, The Company Men, etc. have been fairly decent to good. I still think he's better in roles when he's being likable, but that's just me. I can see him playing Bruce Wayne without a problem - I just can't see him playing Batman. If he can be more intimidating and menacing than he was as Daredevil, then I think we'll be in better shape.

 

Actors are given too much credit for performances (and too much crap). Directors play a much bigger role in the quality of performance than most people realize (on stage and on film). If you have an actor with a strong ego and personality and a director without the presence to rein that in, you get crappy performances. Bruce Willis and Kevin Costner are two such actors. Given strong direction, they can offer strong performances. Left to their own devices, they fall into bad habits (for examples of good performances of each, see Twelve Monkeys for Willis and A Perfect World for Costner). Obviously not all actors are equally talented and some are good enough to overcome weak direction--but a strong, skilled director can elicit powerful performances from actors that are often considered limited in skill and range.

The question to ask is not whether Affleck can offer a good performance here--the question is whether Snyder is sufficiently good as a director to elicit one from him.

 

He doesn't have to be, but in the majority of portrayals he has been a pretty boy.

 

I think you meant handsome. When I think of pretty boy I think of boy band males like those from One Direction.

 

Exactly -- it's what he was directed to do. The film came out ten years ago, before Nolan's Batman, still early in the modern age of superhero movies. There were some serious superhero films at that time, primarily Singer's X-Men films, but the prevailing assumption of a lot of studio executives and filmmakers was that superhero movies were lightweight stuff. I'm not going to blame the actor for the assumptions of the people who hired him and gave him his instructions about how to play the character. An actor's job is to do what the director says. If he doesn't, they'll fire him and get another actor who will play along.

As for Matt being light-hearted, have you read the recent Mark Waid run on the comic? DD's got a new, upbeat attitude there, and I think it works very well. I mean, really, someone called "Daredevil" should be carefree and laugh at danger, as Stan Lee intended.

Right, and that's what worries me. The real issue is how the character will be written and how the director will envision him. That's where this new version of Batman is more likely to go wrong. From what I've been hearing about their intentions, I think Snyder and Goyer have already taken the wrong turn with Batman. I don't see how Affleck can make it any worse. But maybe, given how he's grown as an actor and director and given how much creative control WB evidently wants him to have, there's a chance he can make it better.

 

But Daredevil only really took off as a character once his we got the grim and dramatic Frank Miller storylines like "Born Again" and "The Man Without Fear". Before he was just a cheap imitation of Spider-Man.

The Daredevil movie felt too much like a Spider-man movie knockoff at times, especially the cheesy playground fight.

 

But the "grim 'n gritty" take that Frank Miller envisioned of DD has been, frankly, taken as far as it could go. The new Waid run is a very refreshing change, and the book is still doing quite well in sales, despite the change of direction.

 

I agree. Snyder and Goyer both worry me the most. The weakest elements of Man of Steel centered around Snyder's direction and Goyer's script. If Affleck was directing, and not Snyder, I would have a lot more faith. As you said, what gives me a modicum of comfort is that Goyer understands Batman decently enough (since Batman Begins was a well-written script). I'm worried we're going to get saddled with an action-heavy movie that focuses too much on the physical aspect of Batman and Superman's dynamic, but hopefully Affleck will have enough influence to help steer Snyder in the right direction.

 

I am thinking of the dynamic between the two characters in the pre-52 Superman/Batman series. It was all about how their opposite natures helped make them stronger as a team, but also how Bruce trained Clark to use his intellect more, and how Clark helped Bruce remember what he was fighting for and that there was real hope in the world.

Based on the Man of Steel and Affleck's previous roles, I almost think that Cavill should be Batman and Affleck should be Superman

 

I'm honestly kind of surprised they haven't tried hiring different actors for the superhero and the alter ego. It would be especially easy with someone like Spider-Man, or even Batman. For SM his face is completely covered in the suit, so all you'd need to do is dub in the dialouge from the actor playing Peter Parker. Same goes for Batman, although for him you might need a little bit of makeup on the lower half of the suit actor's face if it isn't passably similar to the actor playing Bruce's.