Ben Affleck reflects on the "excruciating experience" playing Batman in the Zack Snyder movies: "A lot of it was misalignment of agendas, understandings, expectations"

Ben Affleck says he didn't exactly have the best time playing Batman in the former DCEU.

"There are a number of reasons why that was a really excruciating experience, and they don’t all have to do with the simple dynamic of, say, being in a superhero movie or whatever," Affleck told GQ. “I am not interested in going down that particular genre again, not because of that bad experience, but just: I’ve lost interest in what was of interest about it to me. But I certainly wouldn’t want to replicate an experience like that. A lot of it was misalignment of agendas, understandings, expectations."

The actor played Bruce Wayne, AKA Batman, in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Justice League, Zack Snyder's Justice League, and The Flash - the latter of which was his final appearance in the suit.

The Zack Snyder era of DC was not without its problems, and you might remember that there were various online petitions for DC to recast Affleck. Batman v Superman has a 29% score on Rotten Tomatoes, with Justice League sitting at 39% - though Zack Snyder's Justice League fares much better at 71% Fresh.

Affleck also mentioned how the movies were made for a much older crowd, and that his young son was too scared to watch: "When I saw that I was like, ‘Oh shit, we have a problem.’ Then I think that’s when you had a filmmaker that wanted to continue down that road and a studio that wanted to recapture all the younger audience at cross purposes. Then you have two entities, two people really wanting to do something different and that is a really bad recipe."

A separate Batman movie, starring Robert Pattinson, hit theaters in 2022, and served as a multiverse sort of film, being a part of Elseworlds as opposed to the DCU proper. James Gunn, who now co-runs DC Studios, has not yet cast a new DCU Batman, which makes sense given there is no set release date for the planned Batman: The Brave and the Bold movie.

All of Affleck's outings as Batman can be streamed now on Max. For more, check out our list of the best Max movies and the best Max shows to stream right now.