14 DAY TRIAL // Whether he likes it or not, no matter how hard he might try to avoid it, Ben Affleck will have to talk about his Batman role in Zack Snyder’s “Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice” during the current promotional tour for “Gone Girl,” his most recent film, out in theaters this week.
After trying to deflect questions on the topic in a chat with Matt Lauer for The Today Show, Affleck was cornered by Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan on Live! With Kelly and Michael, as the video below will show.
He also let slip an estimated value of the famous Batsuit, or better said, of the reinvented version of the Batsuit created under Snyder’s careful supervision.
The Batsuit isn’t cheap, in case you were wondering
Snyder first offered a glimpse at the famous Batman suit on Twitter, when he posted the first official pic of the actor in character (and still the only one available as of now – you can see it below, at the end of this article) to drum up interest in the film ahead of San Diego Comic-Con 2014.
Chances are more versions of the same suit will be shown in the movie, but this version that fans got to see sparked a lot of interest because it was strikingly different from any other, in all of Batman’s long history.
To many comic book movie fans, “different” almost always equals “worse.” Regardless of their opinion on the Batsuit, Affleck wants them to know that this is no cheap superhero costume, like they used decades ago.
“I asked them, ‘So, how about maybe taking the suit home at the end of this thing?’,” Affleck told the co-hosts on the show. “They were like, ‘For $100,000 [€79,439] we could!’”
He explains that “a lot goes into it” and this is why it’s such an expensive wardrobe piece, because costume designers make sure every little thing about it is perfect. Even so, that’s a lot of money for a movie costume.
The clothes don’t make the (Bat)man, the muscles do
Looking the part is just as important as being physically convincing in front of the camera. Ben Affleck tells Ripa that, though the suit has muscle “definition” by default, he also has to look like Batman even when he’s not wearing the Batsuit.
In other words, he had to bulk up considerably for the role – and he understood this right the second he accepted the offer to be in the movie.
“Audiences have an increasing expectation,” he says. “You see guys like Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans and all these guys whose bodies are just like, you think, ‘How is that even possible?!’ So, exercising is as much of the job now in some ways as the rest of it.”
He does have a point: these days, most actors doing action movies and particularly superhero flicks, are required by contract to get in shape, whether they like it or not. The most recent example, besides Affleck, is that of Chris Pratt, who went from chubby to hunk (his words, not ours) to appear in Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy.”
Today, Pratt is hailed as the hottest actor of the moment, and he has Marvel to thank for that. Affleck is probably wishing he’ll be just as lucky when his “Batman V. Superman” movie comes out in 2016.
I shot this with my @Leica_Camera M Monochrom. #Batman #Batmobile #Gotham http://t.co/WPHKLxgBLM pic.twitter.com/p5DEf6fLzJ
— ZackSnyder (@ZackSnyder) May 13, 2014