Ben Affleck’s The Batman will never happen but that doesn’t mean we can’t forever wonder what it would have been like. Obviously Affleck was set to star as the Caped Crusader and it was always rumored that he would be taking on multiple villains. Aside from that, not much is known. And it’ll all forever remain a mystery because the movie has been canned, Matt Reeves has taken over with Robert Pattinson in the lead and Mr. Affleck has moved onto other things, presumably more films about Boston low lives with hearts of gold.
Cinematographer Robert Richardson dropped in on the Happy Sad Confused podcast and talked a bit about what Affleck’s Batman movie would have been like. His quote surely made many Batman fans sigh bittersweetly.
“I wanted to shoot Batman with Ben [Affleck] cause that was the next film we had. There was a script, but not a loved script. There was a lot of work he was doing to it to change it. He was going into the more insanity aspects…
He was entering more into the Arkham, he’s going into where everyone was bad… That’s where we were going. I was very interested in that one.”
Comic book fanatics have long wanted a truthful cinematic take on Arkham Asylum. For those who don’t know (but everyone does) Arkham is the institution that imprisons many Batman villains. The Riddler, Joker, Poison Ivy, Clayface — they’ve all been locked up in Arkham at one time or another. So having a film that takes place partially or entirely in Arkham would ensure appearance from many Batman baddies. You can understand why fans would want that.
Richardson’s information lines up with what we heard about Affleck’s vision for the film. A visit to Arkham would showcase many different enemies and would also delve into Batman’s psyche, which is the approach Affleck wanted to take. So this totally checks out.
While I would love to see Arkham faithfully portrayed on the big screen someday, I don’t think I’m as eager as other Batman fans. I really, really want the next Batman movie to truly focus on Batman. The villains are important, of course, but they seem to always overshadow Batman and become the focal point of the films. Matt Reeves has assured us that he will really be zeroing in on the psychology of Batman and digging into his brain and that means the bad guys will likely take a bit of a backseat. That sounds great to me. A movie centered around Arkham would have a lot of Batman, of course, but it would likely be a villain-centric film again and I’m ready for something different.
Or maybe Affleck’s Arkham Batman film would have been a damning satire and condemnation of America’s prison-industrial complex, calling out the politicians and corporations who have made billions off the blood, sweat and tears of our nation’s poor. Just kidding, it probably would have just featured Batman busting into Arkham and beating the ever-living shit out of mentally-ill outcasts. Fun!