Ah, Ben Affleck's Batman. You'll recall that interview he did sat next to Henry Cavill, the one where the interviewer remarks that the reviews for Batman Vs Superman: Dawn of Justice have been "mixed", the one where he stared at a point somewhere to the right of the interviewer's knees and looked thoroughly crushed.
We've got a bit more insight into what might have been running through his head at that time: George Clooney's sage advice to give the role a wide berth, having been stung badly by the negative press around the utterly honking Batman & Robin.
"I actually did talk to him about it," Clooney told the Hollywood Reporter's Awards Chatter podcast. "I said, 'Don’t do it.' It was only from my experience, which is, you know…"
We know, George. To his credit, Clooney gamely gave Affleck's portrayal a double-thumbs up: "He did great, though."
"Schwarzenegger was paid, I think, $25 million for that, which was like 20 times more than I was paid for it, and, you know, we never even worked together! We worked together one day. But I took all the heat."
That, though, was a catalyst for Clooney to start taking more of a role in forcing projects away from cataclysmic failure.
"Now, fair deal; I was playing Batman and I wasn’t good in it, and it wasn’t a good film, but what I learned from that failure was, I had to rethink how I was working. Because now I wasn’t just an actor getting a role, I was being held responsible for the film itself."
This story originally appeared on Esquire.co.uk.
* Minor edits have been made by the Esquiremag.ph editors.
