Updated with video.
One of the greatest “What If?” of the DC Cinematic Universe will always be Ben Affleck’s solo Batman movie. According to the DC timeline, this film would have arrived at some point after Zack Snyder’s Justice League, and paid off on one end-credits scene included in that movie – where Joe Manganiello’s Deathstroke meets with Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor, and gained valuable information on Batman’s secret identity. The movie theoretically would have pit Affleck’s Caped Crusader against Slade Wilson, one of DC’s most lethal supervillains. But why did the Air director want to limit himself to one opponent?
Zack Snyder recently screened his four-hour Snyder Cut of Justice League, followed by a Q-and-A that included Ben Affleck. And when explaining why he walked away from directing the solo Batman movie, Affleck also broke down the reason why he wanted to zero in on one opponent for his story, rather than some form of villainous team up. Several Batman movies in the past have combined threats from The Joker (Heath Ledger) and Two-Face (Aaron Eckhart), for example, but Affleck told the gathered crowd:
There were a number of (ideas) that I was exploring, and the plans were to make interesting, nuanced, complex characters. And in particular, for (Deathstroke), I kind of feel like either you do – I mean, I'm just going to get into my own preference here, which is, either you do a massive kind of one villain that is so formidable, you just can't imagine how it is that you're a protagonist is going to be able to overcome it. Or you have to sort of really populate, like, you know, the Injustice (approach), like this big group of villains where you get to have all these different characters. So I was, at the time, really trying to kind of hone in and focus on that character and get into the depth and detail about it, to make him seem as impressive as I felt like there was the opportunity to do.
That just makes me more upset that Affleck and Joe Manganiello never got the chance to explore this dynamic. Because it likely would have been dynamite. Affleck has proven himself to be an incredible director. And he happily returned to his cape-and-cowl to film new Batman footage for the Snyder Cut, with Snyder even telling us why Batman had to forge an alliance with Jared Leto’s Joker in that Knightmare future.
Check out their interactions in that pivotal scene:
But now that solo Batman movie lives in the realm of “what could have been,” because it’s highly unlikely that the SnyderVerse is going to be restored, Robert Pattinson currently is playing Batman for Matt Reeves, and someone else is going to be cast as Batman in the announced upcoming DC movie The Brave and the Bold. Assumedly. So stay tuned for more information on all things Batman as developments occur.
