by Chris Vegvary
When Ben Affleck was announced as the next Batman in the
sequel to 2013’s Man of Steel, fans
of the Dark Knight were outraged. Only a few people I’ve talked to support the
idea of Ben Affleck playing Batman (including myself), but the majority of the
movie-going and comic-reading population went on a rampage, telling the world
how bad an idea they think this is. Well, now some rumors are starting to
spread out there in Internet Land, and I’m curious what is true and what is
not.
Firstly, I’ve heard there’s two versions of the Batman suit,
and that Kevin Smith and possibly a few select others have already seen Affleck
wearing both of them. Comments by Kevin Smith indicate that the suit is going
to be unlike anything we’ve seen in any of the previous Batman films, and from
a piece of concept art floating around out there, it seems to be more inspired
by the Batman suit featured in the game Injustice:
Gods Among Us, which would be a little more high-tech and armored. That
would make sense, seeing as how Affleck is supposed to be playing an older,
wiser Bruce Wayne who has probably made many modifications to the suit over the
years.
Next up, there was a rumor a couple weeks ago that Ben Affleck
suffered a leg injury (not sure if it had anything to do with the film or not)
which caused the release date of Batman
vs. Superman (it’s one of the working titles) to be pushed back from 2015
to 2016. If that is the case, Affleck is going to need time to recover, because
as we all know, Batman is a very physical character, and it would be pretty
cheap of them to just use a stunt double for all the action scenes.
Another rumor from last week states that Ben Affleck
is threatening to quit playing Batman. The supposed reason is that WB needs to
“get their affairs in order.” If that’s true, that means there’s a lot of bad
stuff going on behind the scenes of this movie, which kind of makes me sad. I’m
definitely not as big a fan of DC stuff as I am of Marvel, but I am really
looking forward to this movie as well as Justice
League. Troubled productions always make me sad.
And finally, a rumor started earlier this week (with the source
being the tweet of a Brazilian journalist who has been in that profession for
about thirty years) that Ben Affleck will no longer be playing Batman, due to
fan reactions being too “strong”. The rumor states that in a few months from now,
Zack Snyder and Ben Affleck will make an announcement citing creative
differences or scheduling conflicts, which will cause Affleck to drop out of
the part. Here’s the thing about that: they’ve already dumped a ton of money
into this thing and fitted the suits for Affleck’s body. Things are already in
motion, and you know what? People bitched about Heath Ledger being the Joker,
didn’t they? Yeah, we all know how that turned out, so again, why can’t we all
just give Batfleck a chance?
So how about you folks? Do you believe any of these rumors,
or hope that they are or aren’t true? I, for one, think that someone’s just
spreading rumors out there on the internet (or I hope so, at least) in order to
throw the rest of us off track, maybe keep really important things about the
film from leaking out while everyone’s attention is focused on whether or not
Ben Affleck will actually play the role of Batman.
