Not My Choice.

It's been announced that Ben Affleck will play Batman in the upcoming sequel to the recent Superman film.  I don't know who I'd get to play Batman, but Affleck wouldn't be my choice.  He just doesn't strike me as the right guy to play Bruce Wayne.

Apparently the folks behind the franchise aren't superstitious.  After all Affleck played Daredevil in the 2003 big screen film, which failed to spawn an ongoing franchise.  I suppose some might argue that was just as much the fault of the failure of Jennifer Gardner's solo outing as Elektra.  And in this case neither Affleck, nor Batman, will be carrying the film alone.  But he'll still have to deal with Christian Bale's brooding portrayal of the Dark Knight in the successful trilogy.

I've seen more than a few people claim comic book artist and writer Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns Batman series of the mid '80s was an ultimately negative influence on the character, that it lead to a Batman who in recent years has become increasingly dark and paranoid, going so far as to make elaborate plans on how to beat his fellow superheroes if they "go rogue." The opinion of many comic fans of Miller isn't likely to be helped by his new project Holy Terror, Batman. Batman's new foe? Osama bin Laden. Batman goes after bin Laden after al Qaeda attacks Gotham City. Personally this sounds like a recipe for disaster, especially since Miller himself refers to it as "a piece of propaganda." Its true that they did this kind of things during WW2, but tastes, and the sophistication of comic book readers, has changed. At the very least you risk making yourself look silly, writing a piece of wish fullment fantasy. Certainly that was my reaction when reading that in one of the 1980s editions of Don Pendleton's The Executioner action series Mack Bolan actually kills Ayatollah Khomeini.