Before taking on the role of the Dark Knight for DC, Ben Affleck tried his luck at Marvel, without much success…
Like many actors, Ben Affleck has not only had commercial success in his career. Daredevil was one of them. In 2003, the actor – then at the height of his career – slipped into the skin of the superhero of Hell’s Kitchen, Matt Murdock.
Lawyer by day, superhero by night, man has incredibly developed hearing, smell, strength and agility. Although he is blind, his radar sense allows him to navigate and avoid the slightest obstacle. Tirelessly, this tortured being roams the streets of New York in pursuit of criminals of all kinds that he cannot punish in court….
When it comes out in theaters, it’s a cold shower. The spectators and the press are convinced neither by the realization and the poor quality of the fights, nor by the plot and even less by the game of Ben Affleck. And it’s not Jennifer “Elektra” Garner, Michael Clarke Duncan as Caïd or Colin Farrell as Bullseye who have raised the level again.
Far from being a disaster if we compare it to other superheroic productions released since, Daredevil will still have put a hell of a blow to the career of Ben Affleck, who subsequently chained several commercial failures.
It was not until 2014 that the actor, then in the midst of promoting Gone Girl, admitted how much this failure marked him : “I have regrets for all my movies that weren’t executed properly. I am very hard and demanding with myself and I want to do a great job, even if I don’t always succeed“.
With a spectator rating of 2/5 on AlloCiné, Daredevil is one of the lowest rated films of his career. His performance will in any case have cooled comic book fans enough for some of them to object in 2014 to Ben Affleck portraying Batman in the new films being prepared by Warner. In an interview given to a South American media, the actor reveals that he accepted DC’s proposal to be forgiven for his performance in Daredevil.
What he didn’t know at the time was that his Batman adventure would be long and grueling. A role that he will have physically and creatively exhausted, as he revealed a few months ago. Proof that Ben Affleck should stop superhero movies once and for all, right?