‘He’s broken… filling a hole in his soul’: how Batman’s darkness engulfed Ben Affleck

In 2017 Ben Affleck was a superhero on the slide. As he slipped on his pointy-eared cowl and prepared to reprise his grumpy middle-aged take on Batman, he found himself adrift in a movie falling apart in slow motion. Until it was suddenly falling apart at maximum velocity. That film was, of course, Zack Snyder’s Justice League – a disastrous attempt by DC and Warner Brothers to conjure out of thin air an Avengers style team-up franchise.

Nobody involved in Justice League seemed to be enjoying themselves. But most miserable of them all was Affleck, who radiates a glowering grouchiness throughout the finished product. He confirmed as much in a new interview.

“It just was the worst experience,” the actor told the LA Times. “It was awful. It was everything that I didn’t like about this. That became the moment where I said, ‘I’m not doing this anymore’.”

Affleck went on to insist his upcoming appearance as Batman in the new stand-alone Flash movie would be his big farewell to the character.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to end when Affleck was announced as the new Batman in 2013. For Affleck, the superhero represented a second chance at proving his virility at the box office. As it transpired, donning the Batsuit ultimately served only to further alienate a troubled star from Hollywood. Justice League became a trapdoor plunging Affleck down into a long dark night of the soul.

This is obvious from the film. Puffy of face and listless of gaze, Affleck was visibly struggling with the fall-out from the end of his 12 year marriage to Jennifer Garner. And it bled into his performance and his portrayal of Bruce Wayne, who emerged as a washed-up billionaire whose body language screamed midlife crisis.

Warner was determined to ram through its very own Avengers. Yet it had not laid the ground work of giving members of this superhero club their own stand-alone films (as Marvel had with its franchise). So, regardless of what happened, the project was on track to be a mess. And then, in March 2017, tragedy struck when Snyder’s daughter died by suicide. Affleck was at that point preparing for a fresh stint in rehab, having spiralled into problem drinking as his marriage to Garner fell apart.

“That was a bad experience because of a confluence of things: my own life, my divorce [from Jennifer Garner], being away too much, the competing agendas and then Zack’s personal tragedy and the reshooting,” he said to the LA Times.

“Batfleck” was unravelling. Affleck had taken the role after achieving a remarkable comeback with Argo, the Oscar-winning 2012 period thriller in which he had starred and directed. Affleck’s casting as Batman was not uncontroversial – many hardcore Batfans were outraged. And yet, as he prepared to make his debut as the masked vigilante in Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice (2016), he promised to approach this familiar figure from a fresh angle.

“I wanted a Batman who had been Batman for 20 years, a war-weary Batman,” he told reporters as he looked forward to squaring off against Henry Cavill’s Man of Steel. “He’s living in this grey zone. He’s more broken, not slick. He’s filling the hole in his soul.”

It was a fascinating perspective on Batman. And he did justice to the character in the otherwise hugely flawed Batman v Superman. Directed by Snyder with all the subtlety of an Olympic hammer thrower, the film was a Wagnerian mess. But amidst the lugubrious dialogue and lumbering plot, the Batfleck delivered a “biff” “pow” performance to remember. He had, since 2014, also been in negotiations to write, direct and star in a standalone Batman film, The Batman. For all the fanboy claims that Affleck was a superhero grifter, nobody could doubt his commitment to his Wayne enterprise.

The problem was that Affleck’s analysis of Batman as “broken” and needing to “fill a hole in his soul” could have applied equally to the actor. As he recently admitted in a controversial interview with Howard Stern, by 2015 his relationship with Garner had declined to the point where he was drinking himself to sleep on the couch every night.

He was desperate to leave – and heartbroken about the prospect of walking out on his three children (one of the reasons he signed on as Batman was to impress his son Samuel).

The marriage was over when cameras started rolling on Justice League. Yet for Affleck the woes continued. Warner Brothers was starting to rethink its decision to entrust Zack Snyder with custodianship of the DC Universe. Which meant it was thinking about whether the Batfleck was something it wanted to work with long-term. Batman v Superman had under-performed at the box office, its $873 million haul a long way off the $1.4 billion earned by Avengers: Age of Ultron in 2015.

The reviews, moreover, had been brutal. “When in doubt, [Snyder] simply slings another ingredient into the mix, be it an irradiated monster, an explosion on government premises, or the sharp smack of masonry on skull,” said the New Yorker. “Incoherently structured… seemingly uninterested in telling a story with clarity and purpose,” agreed the Telegraph.

And so when cameras started rolling on Justice League there was a sense for everyone involved that this was a last chuck of the dice. The shoot was heavily monitored by Warner executives, who were essentially piggy-backing on the production in order to keep Snyder’s overblown impulses in check. And when the director’s daughter died and Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon was parachuted in, Justice League – in which Gal Gadot played Wonder Woman, Jason Momoa Aquaman and Ezra Miller The Flash – started to seem more than troubled. It felt doomed.

Whedon got the project over the finish line. But the quippy style he had pioneered with Buffy and with the first two Avengers film landed flat. There was a clear clash between the tone the two directors had envisaged (Snyder would revisit Justice League with last year's doom-laden four-hour Snyder Cut).

Several of the stars openly rebelled against Whedon. Gal Gadot refused to do a scene in which the Flash lands suggestively on her (a body double was utilised instead). And in July 2020 Ray Fisher, who played Cyborg, accused Whedon of “gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable” behaviour towards cast and crew. Following in internal investigation Warner Brothers said “remedial action” had been taken.

Affleck has kept his own counsel on Whedon. But his feelings about Justice League become clear when he and Henry Cavill doubled up for an interview to promote the film. As the chipper Cavill chimed away, Affleck stared into space. Later, someone paired his crest-fallen body language with Simon and Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence. Thus was born the Sad Affleck meme.

Soon there was a Sad Affleck for every season. There was that image of Affleck looking despondent while smoking. In another he sat in his car, vaping with eyes shut.

“Affleck’s was the kind of middle-aged-white-male sadness that the Internet loves to mock—a mocking that depends, simultaneously, on a complete rejection of this sadness, as well as a hedging identification with it,” wrote the New Yorker’s Naomi Fry. “These depressed-Affleck images can arouse both amusement and a sense of poignancy, a touch of Schadenfreude as well as something like sympathy.”

Affleck, who once interviewed himself for New York magazine, is nothing if not self-aware. In his new LA Times chat he said he could understand the amusing aspects of “Sad Affleck”. But it also frustrated him that his children might start to conclude their dad, for all his accomplishments, was ultimately a pitiable figure.

“The 'Sad Affleck' meme — that was funny to me... But then my kids see it and I think, “Oh, are they going to think their dad is fundamentally sad or they have to worry about me?””

Affleck had long been a movie star with feet of clay. After early success in independent films such as Dazed and Confused and Chasing Amy – and his Best Original Screenplay Oscar with Matt Damon for Good Will Hunting – the perception was that he had frittered away his talent on a string of forgettable forays through the 2000s. More than that, something about his public persona rubbed people the wrong way.

“I think when I was young, people saw me as somebody who had too much or was successful too easily or looked like some kind of cavalier, insincere, callow frat guy,” he confessed to the LA Times.

Actually he wasn’t that guy at all, he feels. He’d grown up in a lower middle class Boston household, the son of an alcoholic father and the scion of a family plagued by mental health issues. His paternal grandmother had killed herself. An uncle had died by suicide. His aunt was a heroin addict. Matinee idol looks and a quarterback’s slightly leery charisma weren’t the only attributes he’d inherited.

“That was nothing like how I felt. I felt like this sort of insecure, anxious, overly verbal kid from Boston who had tried to break into this business and was dealing with his own stuff. But there is an interesting thing about how we come off versus who we are.”

And yet where he perceived vulnerability, other saw only smugness. That was the quality David Fincher was drawn to when casting Affleck as the slimy, unfaithful husband in 2014’s Gone Girl. He’d wanted an actor with an aptitude for insincere smiles – which is exactly what he saw leafing through old images of Affleck.

“In Gone Girl there’s a smile the guy has to give when the local press asks him to stand next to a poster of his missing wife,” Fincher said to Playboy. “I flipped through Google Images and found about 50 shots of Affleck giving that kind of smile in public situations. You look at them and know he’s trying to make people comfortable in the moment, but by doing that he’s making himself vulnerable to people having other perceptions about him.”

Affleck’s reign as Batfleck has not quite ended yet. He dropped out of The Batman and was replaced by Matt Reeves as director and Robert Pattinson as star. He will, though, be back one more time in the Flash movie. However, in the LA Times interview he made clear that, with his 50th birthday looming, he’s walking away from high profile leading man roles.

The insinuation is he’s too old, too broken – and that, after half a lifetime in the public eye, he simply brings too much baggage. Which is why, instead of driving a Batmobile through the box office, recent projects have included the George Clooney-directed drama The Tender Bar (recently arrived on Amazon Prime) and Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel. The latter was a massive flop but one Affleck has defended.

“I mean, The Last Duel came out and every article was like, 'It made no money,' he said to the LA Times. “And I really loved the movie, and I liked what I did in it. I was disappointed more people didn’t see it, but I can’t chase what’s going to be cool. I’m happy with it. I’m not preoccupied with notions of success or failure about money or commercial success, because those things really corrupt your choices. Then what happens is the movies are less interesting and you’re less good.”

As he has wrestled publicly with these issues, it feels instructive to recall an interview Affleck gave promoting Batman v Superman. He contrasted himself with Denzel Washington, whom audiences adore no matter what role he is playing. For Affleck, that relationship was different, he acknowledged. People have made up their minds about him. There isn’t a lot he can do about it

“Denzel Washington can play almost anybody — mass murderers — and you go, “But he’s all right!”” he said. “There’s something so appealing about him, and I don’t think I have that. You have these qualities that you’re born with. Some of them are good, some of them people don’t like. And you just have to live with it.”

Where Affleck goes next is harder to say. He’s pivoted before – from thoughtful middlebrow fare such as Argo to Batman vs Superman. Maybe middle age will finally free him from the obligation to be a star. He’s impressed in those quieter recent parts. With the Dark Knight’s cape set aside, perhaps Affleck will finally have a chance to do what the earthbound Batman never could and soar.