"I'm not wearing hockey pants." (NBC)
Yesterday, Ben Affleck returned to Late Night to talk to Jimmy Fallon about appearing about Batman in Zack Snyder's new film. Don't worry you guys, it seemed he got all our letters. "I'm a big boy," Mr. Affleck told Fallon about dealing with the online critics, which is something we're really looking forward to him saying in his big boy latex suit as the Dark Knight(tm?).
Here's the video (it starts at the 1:40 mark):
Now, before we all start talking about how much we wish we could go back in time and give Mr. Snyder a terrible phobia of the graphic novel genre, Patton Oswalt's comments from late August serve as a good reminder that recently, Mr. Affleck has been improving his batting average:
No matter how many times you post your stupid "Fire Ben Affleck from Playing Batman" petition, I'm going to delete it and block you. Take a deep breath, and think for a second:
Yeah, the dude's made some bad films. Every actor has. Every actor does. Every actor will. It's a huge, arcing career and NO ONE has control over where it goes. Movie to movie, year to year, you're collaborating and trying and risking and, sometimes, yes -- failing.
Plus, everyone seems to forget that he had the world dropped in his lap when he was YOUNG. And, judging by how other suddenly-famous youngsters do in the same situation, he fared pretty well. Even when it went wrong, he seemed to keep a self-deprecating, long-view philosophy about the burning freak carousel he'd found himself on.
And then what happened? I mean, he'd fallen from a HEIGHT. You know what happens to 95% of people who weather a descent that steep? They come apart, fray at all of their sanity nodes, and give up.
But then there's the 5% who embrace crushing defeat and see it for the gift it is. And here's the gift: when you fail, and fail UTTERLY, you wake up the next morning and see that the world didn't end. And then the fear of failure is gone. And you're free. You're free to proceed on your own terms and pace -- if you have the ego that permits you to.
Ben brushed himself off, realized he'd kept his eyes open on the movies he'd done, and started directing. And he's become a damn good one.
A Batman portrayed by someone who's tasted humiliation and a reversal of all personal valences -- kind of like Grant Morrison's "Zen warrior" version of Batman, post-ARKHAM ASYLUM, who was, in the words of Superman, "...the most dangerous man on the planet"? Think for a second and admit that Ben Affleck is closer to THAT top-shelf iteration of The Dark Knight than pretty much anyone in Hollywood right now.
I'd write more, but I have to go work on my post about how an overweight 44 year-old comedian with bad feet and insomnia would be a bold choice for The Joker.
After all, if Mr. Oswalt--the man most famous for combining Stars Wars and Marvel comics together in one amazing rant--thinks Affleck will make a decent Batman, who are we to judge. Though he's much better as the Penguin than Joker: