Ben Affleck has opened up about the “excruciating experience” of filming 2017’s Justice League and why he has no interest in being in another superhero film.
In a new cover story, the Gone Baby Gone actor looked back at his time playing Batman in Zack Snyder’s DC Universe and how his personal “failings” carried over to his role.
“There are a number of reasons why that was a really excruciating experience. 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,” he told British GQ.
“But I certainly wouldn’t want to replicate an experience like that. A lot of it was misalignment of agendas, understandings, expectations. And also by the way, I wasn’t bringing anything particularly wonderful to that equation at the time, either. I had my own failings, significant failings, in that process and at that time.”
Affleck was first seen as Bruce Wayne/Batman in 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and reprised the role in Justice League and 2023’s The Flash.
The Oscar winner has called his time filming Justice League “the nadir for me” in 2022, and chalked it up to a “confluence of things” including his “own life, my divorce [from Jennifer Garner], being away too much, the competing agendas and then Zack’s personal tragedy [Snyder’s daughter Autumn died by suicide in 2017] and the reshooting”.
In 2023, the actor called it the “worst experience” in film, and said it almost made him quit Hollywood.
“It was either that or jump out the window,” he said, adding: “And I just thought, ‘This isn’t the life I want. My kids aren’t here. I’m miserable.’”
Affleck said the disastrous production left a “monstrous taste” in his mouth, and made him go: “I’m out. I never want to do any of this again. I’m not suited.”
Justice League was plagued with controversies, especially after Gal Gadot made damning claims about the on-set behaviour of Joss Whedon, who stepped in to direct after Snyder’s exit.
In the GQ interview, Affleck spoke about his negative feelings around Justice League more extensively, explaining how he allowed his personal life to affect the energy he brought to the set of Justice League, which also starred Henry Cavill as Superman, Gadot as Wonder Woman, Ezra Miller as The Flash, Jason Momoa as Aquaman, and Ray Fisher as Cyborg.
“I mean, my failings as an actor, you can watch the various movies and judge,” he continued. “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. 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.”
At the time, Affleck was set to direct and star in The Batman, which would have been his first time playing the character in a solo film. However, in early 2017, he stepped back as director and sought treatment for alcoholism, and then officially exited the project two years later.
Affleck, who founded production company Artists Equity with filmmaker and longtime collaborator Matt Damon in 2022, said that part of why he started the company was “actually a way of trying to avoid that situation”.
“I want to put together partnerships and filmmakers and cast and a studio apparatus that’s aligned, where precisely that kind of misalignment doesn’t happen and you have a much better work experience.”
While it may sound like Affleck was miserable the entire time he played Batman, the actor said he enjoyed his time on the other films in the DC Universe, but the direction they took with his rendition of Batman didn’t work for a large section of their audience.
“I loved Batman v Superman. And I liked my brief stints on The Flash that I did and when I got to work with Viola Davis on Suicide Squad for a day or two,” Affleck told GQ.
“In terms of creatively, I really think that I like the idea and the ambition that I had for it, which was of the sort of older, broken, damaged Bruce Wayne. And it was something we really went for in the first movie.”
“What happened was it started to skew too old for a big part of the audience,” Affleck continued.
“Like even my own son at the time was too scared to watch the movie. And so when I saw that I was like, ‘Oh s***, 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.”
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In the same interview, Affleck also revealed the tactic he and ex-wife Garner employed to help their children avoid tabloids and gossip.
“We used to have a thing, my ex-wife and I, when they would see something on a supermarket stand, we would say, well, ‘You know this isn’t always true because if it were, you would have 15 brothers or sisters or whatever the number of stories is where they said that your mom was pregnant.’”
The 2017 DC comics team-up film was dud of rare proportions, a movie that whiffed so badly Warner Bros eventually commissioned a radical, expensive re-edit.
If you are experiencing feelings of distress, or are struggling to cope, you can speak to the Samaritans, in confidence, on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@samaritans.org, or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch.If you are based in the USA, and you or someone you know needs mental health assistance right now, call or text 988, or visit 988lifeline.org to access online chat from the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. This is a free, confidential crisis hotline that is available to everyone 24 hours a day, seven days a week.If you are in another country, you can go to www.befrienders.org to find a helpline near you.
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