Batman: 8 Reasons Affleck Must Make Arkham Asylum (& 3 He Shouldn't)

4. There's Threat & Darkness (Without Having To Jump Any Sharks)

We all know that DC and Warner Bros have a certain manifesto for dark, grown up comic book movies. Warner Bros. film chief has already explained why they're darker than the Marvel films, and even with the critical backlash to Zack Snyder's work, it's unlikely they're going to abandon the entire approach now. That would surely represent an embarrassing about turn?

"There is intensity and a seriousness of purpose to some of these characters. The filmmakers who are tackling these properties are making great movies about superheroes; they aren't making superhero movies. And when you are trying to make a good movie, you tackle interesting philosophies and character development."

Considering Silverman's manifesto, Arkahm Asylum fits the brief for seriousness, interesting philosophies and character development, and crucially, it's a clasutrophobic enough story so that Affleck wouldn't be forced into a dramatic escalation that required a Doomsday or Darkseid MacGuffin to sell the final act.

That jumping the shark style escalation in Batman v Superman has already backed Snyder into a corner, which he's going to have to throw bigger and bigger plot contrivances at, and Affleck should already have identified the risk for his own film. It should be a smaller, tighter story (that doesn't mean a smaller cast of characters, obviously), and Arkham fits that requirement perfectly.