Affleck’s Time on Justice League Set Was the Worst Experience of His Career
Featuring a team of DC superheroes, Justice League 2017 was one of the most expensive movies of all time with a $300-million budget, returning more than twice as much revenue in the box office.
The movie starred actors from its major franchises, including Superman’s Henry Cavill, Wonder Woman’s Gal Gadot, and Batman’s Ben Affleck. In a recent interview to The Hollywood Reporter, the latter spoke up about filming JL and how it was a very unpleasant experience for him.
When talking about the projects he enjoyed working on, Ben Affleck said that Justice League wasn’t one of them. He gave several reasons for that.
Firstly, the movie wasn’t creatively satisfying. The actor spoke of the repetitiveness of the whole thing and being stuck in the rut of his character, Batman. Affleck admitted, however, that he had liked earlier movies from the franchise, which doesn’t devalue any of his criticism towards Justice League.
“And it’s sad because he said playing Batman was one of his dream roles,” Redditor kmank2l13 wrote supportingly.
Secondly, the production of Justice League was very harsh on the actors. Apart from covert comments on mistreatment, Affleck mentioned some creative decisions that were done in vain, taking everybody’s time and spending resources. Nevertheless, the actor said that, despite all these inconveniences, Justice League became his highest-ranking movie on IMDb.
Thirdly and most importantly, there was a personal matter as to why working on the movie was the worst experience in Affleck’s career — the stress from working on JL caused him to have problems with alcohol.
The actor said that all those moments had made him think if he’d wanted to direct a Batman film himself, which is something he had been approached with by DC. Apparently, the answer was no.
There’s a great sense of solidarity within the fandom that has been very supportive of the actor. Nobody seems to be upset about Affleck’s revelations. Quite the opposite, people are discussing the new DC management’s work policies and whether they’re worth the anguish they cause everyone involved.
“Yeah he’s over it completely and has been for a while. He also recently said that his small role in The Flash was the best experience he’s had as Batman, so it’s likely he wants to go out with a bang on a great memory of his role as Batman and not risk being the guy getting torn to pieces by this fandom again,” Reddit user Drengis Khan commented, expressing fans’ understanding of Ben Affleck’s words.