George Clooney has been chatting about Batman & Robin again – and also about recommending Ben Affleck turn the Batman role down.
Like a lunar eclipse, there’s something satisfying about George Clooney’s occasional apologies for his portrayal of Batman. It reminds us that the world is still turning and that in the face of such an all-encompassing force of nature, we are but small, insignificant beings.
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That’s certainly what Clooney has been getting at in his latest admittance of failure whilst wearing the cape and cowl in 1997’s Batman & Robin. The actor, who can next be seen in Netflix’s upcoming The Midnight Sky (a film he’s also directed) was reflecting once again on his much-maligned performance. And like the aforementioned lunar eclipse, he remarked that it was was something that was simply far, far beyond his control.
Speaking on the Howard Stern show (via Deadline), Clooney said that “it’s so bad that it actually hurts to watch, you’ll be flipping the channels and it’ll just pop up and I’m like ‘oh no, no, no”.
He added that “it’s a big machine, that thing. At that point I was just an actor getting an acting job, I wasn’t the guy that could green light a movie”.
More surprising though was Clooney’s admission that, when asked for advice by Ben Affleck as whether to take the part for the Zack Snyder DCEU movies, he cautioned against it. Affleck was famously reticent to don the Batsuit following the critical mauling of his only other superhero appearance, that of Daredevil in the 2003 film of the same name. Clooney told Affleck to avoid the role, but said that the actor instead put on the cape and “ended up doing a great job and I was wrong.”
Robert Pattison is the latest actor to take on the role and in some ways, like Affleck, he is risking his credibility as a respected actor having built up a sterling reputation in standout indie films like 2019’s The Lighthouse, to name just one. The new film, The Batman, is due out in 2022, but whether Pattison sought advice from the Ghosts of Batmen Past has yet to be disclosed.
Until the next Clooney confession, that is, which we look forward to eagerly.
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