Zack Snyder calls Ben Affleck ‘the best Batman ever’ in farewell message

Riiiiight.

Now that Ben Affleck has retired his cape and cowl, the focus for Matt Reeves now turns towards finding the perfect Bruce Wayne/Batman for his upcoming film on The Dark Knight.

As stated previously, The Batman looks set to take the beloved character in a new direction. Recent reports have suggested that Armie Hammer (The Social Network, Call Me By Your Name) is the leading contender to play the iconic role.

Since debuting in the Snyder’s 2016 film, Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, Affleck has been The Dark Knight in 2017’s Justice League and he had a brief cameo in Suicide Squad.

Aside from this, the director of Gone Baby Gone and The Town was set to direct a standalone Batman film. In a recent interview with Jimmy Kimmel, he stated his reasons why he had to walk away from the director’s chair.

“I tried to direct a version of it, worked with a really good screenwriter, but couldn’t come up with a version. Couldn’t crack it. So I thought it was time to let someone else take a shot at it and they got some really good people,” he said.

Taking to his official Vero account, Snyder posted an image of Affleck during production on Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. The director added a caption that thanked “his friend” for the opportunity to work together.

He also called Affleck the “best Batman ever.”

Truth be told, we’re actually kind of sad to see Affleck step away from the character because he was never given any decent material to work with.

The three films that Batfleck featured in were terrible but he did make a pretty decent older version of Bruce Wayne.

We would have liked to see him take on a project like Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns graphic novel.

In terms of being the best Batman, we think that fans of Christian Bale and Michael Keaton might have something to add to this discussion.

With regards to the plot of The Batman, Reeves said that they’re definitely not adapting Frank Miller’s iconic graphic novel, Year One.

“We’re not doing any particular (comic). Year One is one of the many comic books that I love. We are definitely not doing Year One. It’s just exciting to be focused very specifically on a tale that is defining for him and very personal to him. Obviously we’re not doing an origin tale or anything like that. We’re doing a story that is definitively Batman though and trying to tell a story that’s emotional and yet is really about him being the world’s greatest detective and all the things that for me, since I was a kid, made me love Batman,” he said.

These comments echo what he previously said during the press tour on War for the Planet of the Apes – basically, we’re going to get a Batman film where he relies more on his skills as a detective.

Reeves elaborated on the tone and visual style that he’s aiming for on the new film.

“I’ve talked about making it a very point of view noir-driven definitive Batman story in which he is investigating a particular case and that takes us out into the world of Gotham. I went on a deep dive again revisiting all my favourite comics. Those all inform by osmosis. There’s no continuation of the Nolan films. It’s very much trying to find a way to do this as something that for me is going to be definitively Batman and new and cool.”