Ben Affleck is Batman

[The Dark Knight]

Let the record show I logged on to Twitter for the first time in more than a year (took me 15 minutes to remember what password and email I used) to tweet this. I did have to stretch the truth and say we're friends, TDK, mainly cause I didn't think it'd look so good if I said "I can't stand the bastard" and besides I didn't have enough characters in the tweet anyway.

Huh?

[Catwoman]

Let the record show I logged on to Twitter for the first time in more than a year (took me 15 minutes to remember what password and email I used) to tweet this. I did have to stretch the truth and say we're friends, TDK, mainly cause I didn't think it'd look so good if I said "I can't stand the bastard" and besides I didn't have enough characters in the tweet anyway.

Huh?

I tweeted your feature to Ben Affleck, dork. After not being on there since November 2014. I thought it was self explanatory. lol

[The Dark Knight]

Let the record show I logged on to Twitter for the first time in more than a year (took me 15 minutes to remember what password and email I used) to tweet this. I did have to stretch the truth and say we're friends, TDK, mainly cause I didn't think it'd look so good if I said "I can't stand the bastard" and besides I didn't have enough characters in the tweet anyway.

Huh?

I tweeted your feature to Ben Affleck, dork. After not being on there since November 2014. I thought it was self explanatory. lol

Nope. Didn't see you say anything about tweeting Ben Affleck until that last post. But thanks.

[Catwoman]

Let the record show I logged on to Twitter for the first time in more than a year (took me 15 minutes to remember what password and email I used) to tweet this. I did have to stretch the truth and say we're friends, TDK, mainly cause I didn't think it'd look so good if I said "I can't stand the bastard" and besides I didn't have enough characters in the tweet anyway.

Huh?

I tweeted your feature to Ben Affleck, dork. After not being on there since November 2014. I thought it was self explanatory. lol

Nope. Didn't see you say anything about tweeting Ben Affleck until that last post. But thanks.

What else would I have been tweeting?

Oh, I see. With "this" it might have been confusing. Oops. By this I meant your feature. Sorry.

[The Dark Knight]

Gooooooood.

By the way, it seems like Batfleck doesn't just encounter Harley and Joker in SS, but Deadshot and Croc too. How cool is that? Hopefully we get a sequence of Batfleck taking them all down, aka Assault on Arkham.

[Catwoman]

Totally. They had to end up there in the first place somehow.

[The Laughing Fish]

Did anybody else think the movie was pushing the envelope a bit when Batman had confronted a sex trafficker who locked women up inside a dungeon, and the news report over what he did to a child predator that Clark watched?

For all the debate whether or not the past movies were "realistic", none of them dared to have Batman confront such horrific real world type of felons. I see complaints about how brutal Affleck's Batman is, but I think most people have failed to acknowledge that the world he inhabits is in fact quite brutal itself. From his parents' killer presumably never caught, the loss of Robin and who knows what else Bruce had to suffer through along the way during his twenty year career, to finally experiencing the horrors of what he witnessed Metropolis, I can't understand how anyone could argue that Batman's initial arc and his treatment towards depraved villains in this movie made no sense. I thought the movie provided a strong basis for it.

[johnnygobbs]

Did anybody else think the movie was pushing the envelope a bit when Batman had confronted a sex trafficker who locked women up inside a dungeon, and the news report over what he did to a child predator that Clark watched?

I'm surprised we haven't heard of a similar 'backlash' to the one that greeted Batman Returns from certain parents' groups in 1992.  This sounds a lot more adult and troubling in terms of suitability for younger audiences than Oswald Cobblepot biting a guy's nose or Batman strapping a confetti bomb to a circus clown.

Than again, I suppose the goalposts in terms of what we deem suitable for children, have moved significantly since 1992.  Plus, as far as I'm aware there isn't any major Happy Meal campaigns associated with BvS, and thus potentially stymying its director's unadulterated vision.

[The Joker]

Different time and place. I remember watching a documentary about Married ... with Children and the producers recalling how a housewife, yes 1 extremely bored and lonely housewife, would write to the show and caused major problems with the show, it's humor, and script approvals due to her constant complaints and threats. The producers made it no secret just how much of a pain she became, and as a consequence, brought about much inner turmoil on the set, and with the big wigs at FOX as well.

These days, something like that wouldn't happen. Shows are rated, and shows/movies can easily be blocked where in the early 90's, the capabilities for parents just wasn't there. Plus we're in a 24/7 news cycle that's always needing to be fed something, where in the past some news stories would linger on and on, along with the fact that we're in an age where parents are alot less conservative than, say, 1992. I mean, there's a possibility that a Wolverine film will be rated R. THAT wouldn't have happened in the '90's.

[The Laughing Fish]

BvS has its creepy moments, but I still don't find it as dark as BR. Batman does deal with sex predators, but then again, Catwoman viciously stopped a creep from raping a woman, and the Penguin's intention to massacre infants is not something for the faint of heart. BR is still a hell of a lot more gory than BvS too.

It's quite debatable if Affleck and Keaton's Batman are more brutal than the other. Both are dark and tortured men; one became cynical and bleak after recent events, and the other still can't fill this empty void in his life despite avenging his parents. But if you want draw a comparison in Affleck's favour, we don't see him taking any pleasure in a crook's demise like Keaton does with the strongman (yes, that scene is meant to be a cheap joke, I'm not one of those wowsers who get upset over that. I'm only playing the devil's advocate).

Different time and place. I remember watching a documentary about Married ... with Children and the producers recalling how a housewife, yes 1 extremely bored and lonely housewife, would write to the show and caused major problems with the show, it's humor, and script approvals due to her constant complaints and threats. The producers made it no secret just how much of a pain she became, and as a consequence, brought about much inner turmoil on the set, and with the big wigs at FOX as well.

Well, Married...With Children did take the piss out of everything, much to the annoyance of the PC brigade, so it was only a matter of time before they found some trouble. Classic show, though!

These days, something like that wouldn't happen. Shows are rated, and shows/movies can easily be blocked where in the early 90's, the capabilities for parents just wasn't there. Plus we're in a 24/7 news cycle that's always needing to be fed something, where in the past some news stories would linger on and on, along with the fact that we're in an age where parents are alot less conservative than, say, 1992. I mean, there's a possibility that a Wolverine film will be rated R. THAT wouldn't have happened in the '90's.

Having said all that, do you think that people still hold Superman as the standard for family entertainment? I ask because MOS and BvS were criticised for being too dark for Superman stories. Then again, a hardcore Superman fan might retort that it doesn't get any darker than turning the character into a "stalking deadbeat dad" as we saw in Superman Returns. 

I'd like to point out that the Christopher Reeve Superman films may have been lighter in tone, but that doesn't mean they didn't have dark moments either. Krypton's destruction used to scare the sh*t out of me when I was kid, Lex pushed a cop towards an incoming train, Zod and company murdered the astronauts on the moon and were quite brutal when they raided the White House - hell, Superman crushed Zod's hand and sent him to his icy grave in the original version of Superman II.  And the fight between the evil Superman and Clark Kent in the junkyard during Superman III was quite intense.