Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice star Ben Affleck has opened up about his “excruciating” experience playing the Caped Crusader for DC.
The actor explored his feelings after about 10 years of playing Batman during a recent interview with GQ. He described his time working as a figurehead of the so-called Snyder-verse as “a really excruciating experience,” explaining how the complicated relationship with those at DC has now led to his loss of interest in the superhero genre.
“There are a number of reasons why that was a really excruciating experience,” Affleck said. “And they don’t all have to do with the simple dynamic of, say, being in a superhero movie or whatever. I am not interested in going down that particular genre again, not because of that bad experience, but just: I’ve lost interest in what was of interest about it to me. But I certainly wouldn’t want to replicate an experience like that.”
It’s a topic Affleck has opened up about before, but now we know more about where the poor experience came from. He mostly chalked it up to a “misalignment of agendas, understandings, and expectations” but admitted he has to take some of the blame, too. He looked back at his stint with DC and felt he “wasn’t bringing anything particularly wonderful to that equation at the time, either.”
“I mean, my failings as an actor, you can watch the various movies and judge. But more of my failings of, in terms of why I had a bad experience, part of it is that what I was bringing to work every day was a lot of unhappiness,” he said when elaborating on where he feels he failed.
“So I wasn’t bringing a lot of positive energy to the equation. I didn’t cause problems, but I came in and I did my job and I went home. But you’ve got to do a little bit better than that.”
Affleck began his time with DC when he signed on to co-star in Zack Snyder’s Batman v. Superman with Henry Cavill, and what followed were years of cameos and even a canceled standalone project. Fans will remember that Affleck went on to star in various team-up projects like Justice League (both the 2017 original and 2021’s infamous Snyder Cut) and The Flash, but he also made a brief appearance in 2016’s Suicide Squad, too.
As for that shuttered Batman movie, we don’t know exactly how it would have covered 80 years of the Dark Knight, but rumors have teased that it would have explored Arkham Asylum and maybe involved Joe Manganiello’s Deathstroke, too.
Affleck previously stated that it was longtime collaborator Matt Damon who helped him finally hang up the iconic cowl, but in today’s GQ interview, he says his own son helped play a part in his leaving, too.
“But what happened was it started to skew too old for a big part of the audience. Like even my own son at the time was too scared to watch (Batman v. Superman). And so when I saw that I was like, ‘Oh shit, we have a problem.’
“Then I think that’s when you had a filmmaker that wanted to continue down that road and a studio that wanted to recapture all the younger audience at cross purposes. Then you have two entities, two people really wanting to do something different and that is a really bad recipe.”
DC seems to be finding a new groove as it splits its grittier and more lighthearted stories into separate paths. We’ll see the former continue in 2027 when The Batman 2 finally arrives, with the latter set to really kickoff when James Gunn’s DCU gets its feet off the ground with Superman this July. As for Affleck, don’t expect to see him ever return to DC to direct a film in Gunn’s new universe.
Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
