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2013 Movie News Archives

December 3, 2013: Ben Affleck Talks Batman and Internet Reactions

Entertainment Weekly's "Inside Movies" sat down with Ben Affleck, mainly to discuss the Home Entertainment release of his award-winning film "Argo", but they also asked him about being cast as Batman and his thoughts on wearing the costume.

The Oscar for Best Picture must have felt like a giant bear hug from your peers and the public. At that moment, did you feel like you had graduated past the pearl-clutching reaction that the Internet than dropped on you upon the Batman announcement?

No. I mean, that's the sort of great and terrible thing about this business. Each project is kind of in its own silo, you know what I mean? You do something, it works, people say it works. And if the next one doesn't, you know, it doesn't. You don't get to start ahead because you did well last time. Without getting into the vagaries of the internet and who's sort of out there being vocal about it, at the end of the day, when you get into the arena of those kinds of movies, these superhero movies, particularly ones that are working with characters that everyone's known for so long, everybody's got these strongly held opinions and preconceived ideas about what it should be. I totally understand and recognize that. At the same time, I don't think projections about something that hasn't happened yet are all that meaningful. I think at the end of the day, it's like any other movie or project: You go out and make it great, people will say it's great. If you go out and miss, you'll hear about it. The stuff beforehand is kind of just the noise that happens.

Kevin Smith, a pal of yours and a huge fan of Batman, interviewed Zack Snyder recently and Smith raved about photos of you in the new Batsuit. I appreciate you're not yet about to tell me what's in Batman's arsenal this time around, but what did it feel like wearing the suit for the first time?

Well, I don't want to get too far afield and I'm sure I'll have time to talk about Batman down the road. What I'll say is that I really like Zack. From what I've seen of what's Zack is doing, it's made me very excited. One of the nice things about being an actor in that movie is they show you all the stuff before anyone else gets to see it. So all the sort of world-creation, and the take on the character and the other characters is really exciting. And at the end of the day, the truth is it's really directors that make movies work or not - especially these kinds of movies, where it's about the whole world, and a rising tide lifts all ships. And if it all has integrity, if it all has a sense of realism, then it works. And if it doesn't, than it doesn't really matter what everyone's doing [on the screen] because they just look like a bunch of Mexican wrestlers in suits.

Read the entire interview at EW.com.

Latino-Review.com has also published snippets from an interview Ben Affleck participated in for the upcoming issue of Playboy magazine.