Tag Archives: daredevil

Whenever I think about Ben Affleck as the new Batman, I can’t stop that episode of South Park from playing in my head, the one where his long-lost biological parents have butts for faces

Everybody’s talking about Ben Affleck being cast as Batman in the new Superman movies. Well, almost everybody. I doubt the Dalai Llama is talking about it. But you know what, that’s not really fair of me, just assuming that His Holiness isn’t a fan of superhero movies. So I’ll rephrase it: a lot of people are talking about Ben Affleck taking over as Batman.

ben affleck meme

My immediate reaction was pure disbelief. And while I don’t want to let my instinctual, “You’ve got to be kidding me!” prevent me from giving Affleck a fair shake, it’s really pretty tough to imagine him as the Caped Crusader. Do we have to get into Daredevil?

All right, let’s get into Daredevil. Superhero movies were just beginning to breach the mainstream. The X-Men and Spider-Man franchises were such undeniable hits that Hollywood decided to dip into the Marvel canon to see which other costumed crime fighters might make for successful big screen blockbusters.

And that’s how we got Daredevil. It was a cheesy movie. And I’m being nice here. Go ahead and search the Internet for other opinions or reviews about Daredevil. Some point to it as the reason why Hollywood should be out of the comic book movie business all together. And fair or not, Ben Affleck is the lead. Draped in his red leather jumpsuit, Ben Affleck is Daredevil.

Affleck should feel lucky that Daredevil didn’t derail his career in the same way that Catwoman destroyed Halle Berry’s. And we as an audience should feel fortunate that Daredevil didn’t prevent the studios from going ahead and green lighting future superhero projects. Just imagine what could have went down if the exec who approved Batman Begins had happened to catch a few minutes of Dardevil playing on FX right before he was scheduled to sit down with Christopher Nolan. I shudder to think of a world absent of The Dark Knight.

Which is why casting Affleck as the new Batman amounts to six steps backward after three monumental steps in the right direction. I kind of understand where DC is coming from. Marvel Comics clearly holds the advantage in terms of its ability to turn even its tertiary characters into big screen behemoths, and after The Dark Knight Rises wrapped up one of the most successful trilogies in movie history, everybody was eager to maintain the momentum.

That’s why we had Man of Steel earlier this year. And I get it, in terms of its money making ability, the new Superman was an undisputed success. But was it a good movie? I didn’t think so. It was too serious, and once the fight scene that comprised the entire second half of the movie got underway, it was too boring.

Still, numbers don’t lie, and adding a rebooted Batman to the equation, especially in light of The Avengers super-group success, it was the next logical decision. What doesn’t make sense is Ben Affleck. With moviegoers around the world more than willing to pay upwards of twenty dollars to see a movie that hasn’t even begun filming, why risk spoiling the fun with a man whose talents clearly belong behind the camera rather than in front?

I realize that I’m not even giving Ben Affleck a chance to prove me wrong, but he just doesn’t make sense as Bruce Wayne. I don’t see pain, I don’t see a lifetime of training to fight crime, I just see Ben Affleck, I see Daredevil, I see the guy in the Runner Runner commercials screaming over-the-top obscenities at Justin Timberlake.

I hope that I’m wrong. Nobody wants to see a successful Batman/Superman movie more than me. Well that’s probably not true, there are probably other people who want to see it succeed more than I do, like people who have a vested interest in its performing well. Like Ben Affleck, I’m sure he wants it to succeed more than I do, to prove everybody wrong, to give the Bruce Wayne performance of a lifetime. If I see it, and it bombs, I’ll just be like, well, that was a bad movie. If he makes it and it’s no good … well, I guess he’ll still be OK. He got past Daredevil. Right? Yeah, Ben Affleck’s going to be OK either way.

I’m kind of a daredevil

That guy just jumped from orbit. Everybody’s calling him a professional daredevil. I guess I have to give some credit where it’s due; I would never even jump out of a plane, so imagining this guy riding a balloon up into outer space and then just jumping off. Well, it’s causing me to have a physical reaction. But daredevil. Without detracting from his accomplishment, I think the word daredevil is being completely manhandled here. I’ve always considered myself a daredevil of sorts, but now all I’m reading about is how this guy is a daredevil, and it’s making me feel like less of a daredevil knowing that I’d never put on a spacesuit and do what he did.

But there are a lot of things that I’ve done that I bet you Mr. Professional Daredevil would never consider. Like one time last summer, I went to a bar with my friends. After a few drinks we went out to their patio out back to enjoy the afternoon weather. The table we sat at was made of planks of wood nailed together. One of my friends said, “Ew gross,” and pointed to a gap in between two of the planks. A single french-fry was wedged right in the crack. It looked like it had been there forever. And it was a really hot summer, so this thing looked double-fried by the sun. So I picked up out of the crack and ate it. And I didn’t even get sick. I’d love to see the jumping Joe or whatever his name is try something like that. He’d probably make one of those fake gag-reflex sounds and then insist on finding a new table.

But try telling that to Red Bull, to CNN. There’s no way anybody over there is paying attention to any of my emails. The whole world thinks that this guy is a daredevil. And so I guess I lost. It just kind of sucks because I always thought that while professional basketball player, Mr. Senator, and Your Excellency were all titles that would be forever out of my reach, I could always take comfort in the fact that I had my own title, that I could always look in the mirror and say to my reflection, “Looking good daredevil.”

I’ve pulled off plenty of stunts that could have warranted their own Internet specials. Like one time I ran across a highway. Or another time I ate thirty dogs in an hour and a half. Or this other time I … I can’t remember everything right now. There’s too much stuff that I’ve done. And besides, I feel like if I’m forced to list everything off, like a list, it just sounds too cheap, like I’m trying too hard to prove how much of a daredevil I really am.

All I’m saying is, I used to call myself a daredevil. And now I can’t because this guy totally upstaged me. It’s just how I used to call myself an artist. One time I did this painting. It took me forever. I thought it was pretty good. But then a few weeks later this rich mega couple draped the entirety of Central Park in curtains. “Oh that?” they told the news media, “We’re artists.”

But really, I have no idea how that guy floated up there. One time I was at this college upstate and there was this really weird looking building. On one side there was a dent in one of the walls. It was a planned dent; it wasn’t a defect or anything. I’m just having trouble describing it. It was an indent in the wall, maybe three feet in and four feet across and it ran all the way straight up. Anyway, I pressed my body in there and pushed my arms and legs to both sides to the point where I was off the ground, just pressed in between this indent. And I started climbing up, really slowly. And I got up to like fifteen feet and I just got freaked out, just imagining the possibility of me climbing all the way up to the top, and then getting even more freaked out, to the point where I couldn’t even move, where I couldn’t come down, and everybody on the ground would eventually call campus security, and they’d have to call the fire department, and what if while I was waiting up there to be rescued, what if I ran out of strength and slipped? Because I don’t think I could maintain a position like that indefinitely. And this was all in my head. In reality I was only maybe twelve feet off the ground, and I started freaking out, and I couldn’t come down. I was stuck.

But I felt pretty dangerous there. Kind of like a daredevil.