8 Reasons Why Christian Bale's Batman Is Better Than Ben Affleck's

3. He Did Something New And Unique

When Zack Snyder first proposed bringing in Batman for Man Of Steel 2, Warner Bros. were very keen to dip back into The Dark Knight Trilogy to do so. After all, while the Superman reboot had existed in its own world, the handful of Bats allusions - a Keep Calm and Call Batman poster and a Wayne Enterprises satellite - contained iconography from Nolan's films, suggesting this was always their gameplan.

Snyder allegedly said no (although there were rumours Bale declined a sum as high as $50 million to return), but that doesn't mean the version of the character in Batman V Superman didn't turn out oddly similar to The Dark Knight iteration; an older, lamenting Bruce Wayne is straight-up The Dark Knight Rises.

Part of this will be because Nolan dipped slightly into The Dark Knight Returns for his more worn Bruce Wayne, but it can't escape that, while Affleck did get to do a lot of new things (guilt-free murder, wear an Iron Man-esque suit), some part of his conception is riffing on Bale, rather than being totally fresh.

Nolan's version, on the other hand, was a totally fresh creation born of Year One (almost by necessity after Batman & Robin). He was grounded and nuanced and like nothing we'd seen before.