Exactly=P

Heath played the Joker as he was written for that particular take on the Batman universe. I don't think that the Joker that you're talking about would have worked well in Nolan's version of Batman.

I don't really like ben affleck as an actor but to be honest i can not see him as batman. I just can't and that has nothing to do with his acting skills but more of HOW he acts, his own personallity and face expressions that he cannot leave behind. It's Always going to be ben affleck and ben affleck isn't a batman, or a bruce wayne ....But then again i couldn't see it with christian bale either but that turned out okay.

Excluding The Dark Knight anyway. Awesome movie, to be sure, but it was Joker's movie.

True.

I'm just being silly, because I never really liked Superman all that much.

I recently saw an article (I can't find the link) about how a good Flash movie might be the saving grace of D.C. While not a comic book fan I've always preferred the Marvel guys to DC, minus Batman, and I think that shows in the movies. Aside from Batman the DC movies just seem too campy as do the heroes in general. No one is ever going to mistake an X-Men movie for "Citizen Kane" in terms of cinematic greatness but at least those guys seemed more identifiable; they cursed they bled they smelled bad, shit some of them were positively insane. Superman has always been too "pretty" and it makes for a better cartoon than a movie. The Flash is the closest thing DC has to a Marvel hero so maybe the article has a point. Am I putting WAY TOO MUCH thought into this?

My buddy Terrence is a big comic book fan and he pointed out that DC doesn't have very good villains either which is their biggest problem. As Roger Ebert put it, "Your film is only as good as the villain" (whether or not you like him personally doesn't change how true this is) It's the reason why The Dark Knight soars above the other two films in the saga and why the other DC properties suffer. Batman's the only one with good villains, it's hard for anyone to take Lex Luthor seriously as a threat to a veritable god.

According to IMDB, I have seen Ben Affleck in one movie, Dogma. I don't remember him, but I assume he was OK.

I think it's more interesting that Superman, one of DC's two great iconic heroes, is apparently unable to carry his own movie.

I really don't have a problem with him being cast as Batman. He has already proven to be a good actor.

I agree to your point about how he was written. I think Nolan took the easy way out by making the Joker more subdued and brooding. Nicholsons Joker was too hammy and over acted, which would not have worked in the Dark Knight setting. But it was more Joker-y.

For what it's worth my favorite Joker movie was The Mask of the Phantasm. Yeah I know it was an already established character portrayal, but I went to see it in the theatre so it counts. There is a scene I absolutley love where an aging Mob boss turns to the Joker for protection from the Batman, who has supposedly gone crazy and started killing crime lords. He grabs the Jokers lapels and says "Please, you gotta help me." The Joker then gets very, very angry, growls, twists his lips and shoves the guy back against the wall. He screams "Don't Touch Me!" then instantly regains his composure and say very nonchalantly, almost jokingly, "I don't know where you've been" and walks away giggling at his own humor. This too me was a perfectly Joker way of doing something. The closest that Ledger-Joker got to this level was "Very poor choice of words." From what I understand the Arkham Asylum/City Joker is basically the same animated Joker but much darker.

I almost forgot about the topic at hand.

Ben Affleck!? I hated him as Daredevil and now he's going to play freakin' Batman? Yeah go ahead and cast Nicholas Cage as Superman* while you're at it and guarantee I'll never watch your movie.

*Cage was considered for an earlier flick, not the upcoming one.

That's wrong. Facial expressions are mostly not learned, they are genetical. People across the globe smile the same way, sob the same way, are getting angry the same way.

Facial expressions are pretty much universal.

Oh, yes, Mark Hamill (as a voice actor) was the very best Joker, IMHO, and better than even Heath's Oscar winning performance. It's still difficult for me to imagine Luke Skywalker as the perfect Joker, but that's the wonder of voice acting, when it's done right, you don't even think about who the voice actually is in real life. It's also why I hate stunt casting for animated films so much. I don't want to think about how that's Brad Pitt or Owen Wilson or whoever's voice, I want to get lost in the character and only a voice-over pro can pull that off, but I digress.

Affleck just doesn't have the range necessary to play a character with a "dual" personality. I don't think his Daredevil was wooden because he believed that a blind person should be that way (and truly, when you think about blind performers, are they really all that wooden in their facial expressions? Stevie Wonder? Ray Charles? Usually it's the opposite, they overcompensate). I think that's just all he had to give. Kind of like Keanu Reeves or Kevin Costner, when a part is written for what they do well, then they can succeed, but never give them anything that will force them into a position to stretch their skills, because they'll just give you the same thing they always do. Affleck has acted well in a few movies, but those were parts well tuned to his best performance. Batman is not one of those parts.

I wonder if this information was "leaked" just to get a public response to the idea and if a negative outcry is strong enough then Affleck might suddenly find his schedule too otherwise too full to participate...

I don't know enough about Aquaman which actually makes him more intriguing to me so while I don't totally agree with your earlier post I think you might REALLY be onto something here. I'd be very into seeing an Aquaman movie, even a not so well made one. The visuals one could utilize for something like that would be totally unheard of in any current hero movie, that's for sure.