Ben Affleck's Batman: What Went Wrong?

3. Justice League And The End Of Snyder's Vision

For all the talk of his solo film, Affleck was still contracted to star in Justice League, which was then wasn't under the control of Zack Snyder, the man who'd signed him up to the DCEU in the first place.

When Justice League was released, it was another relative failure for Warner Bros, grossing just $657m against a budget that is estimated to have ballooned to around $300m. Yet again, though, Affleck wasn't the main target of criticism, but more of victim of more macro problems with the film's tone, script, and editing, which stemmed from Warner Bros attempting to quickly course correct after Batman v Superman, and the fact that Justice League was the product of two very different filmmakers.

Those changes had a serious impact not just on Justice League's overall quality (which suffered more from Joss Whedon than it did Zack Snyder), but how Affleck's Batman fit into things. It was clear that Affleck had signed on for a specific vision of the character - the older, scarred Batman we meet in Dawn of Justice, who is able to learn from Superman and become a better, brighter hero, with Snyder's plan believed to eventually end with Batman sacrificing himself to save the world - but with all of the changes to Justice League, that went out of the window.

Of all the characters hurt by Whedon's extensive reshoots, Batman might have come off worst. His arc started to disappear, while the character was injected with more humour to keep with WB's shift to a much lighter tone. That not really being within his character much, though, it often fell quite flat, while the character didn't feel as useful in the action scenes next to the likes of Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and The Flash. Justice League was like two films in one, and Batman was the most evident of that, as though you could see him being pulled in two different directions. After Justice League, Snyder's vision was done with, but that also meant that what Affleck had signed up for had failed too, much like it had with Daredevil many years before. It's no surprise that after that we heard he was looking for "a cool way to segue out" of the role.