Batman

After a recent interview where he claimed the movie would standalone and not be a part of the wider Extended Universe, Reeves now says his words were unclear.

Yesterday we learned San Diego Comic-Con would bring big news for Wonder Woman with Warner Bros. finally confirming our hopes of a Patty Jenkins-directed sequel. That’s bound to be just a sliver of the big news to come out of the studio’s panel on Saturday, and ahead of it we’ve already learned the sequel’s potential release date.

Rough day to be Ben Affleck, the kind of day that makes you just wanna get away from it all by sneaking into your car and having a quick sad-vape. His performance as Batman has begun to emerge the fanbase’s most-loathed, and to add insult to injury, he was ousted from the director’s chair on upcoming solo film The Batman. Now, even more insult has been added to that injury, as replacement director Matt Reeves has begun to clean house and get himself comfy in a new franchise.

The people cannot get enough Batman. He’s everywhere: he fought Superman, now he’s in the Justice League, soon he’ll return to another solo movie, and he ended up back in the news due to Adam West’s passing — we’re living in the Batman-est of all possible worlds. And those Batmaniacs clamoring for more time with the Caped Crusader before he returns in Justice League on November 17 are in luck, because Bruce Wayne and a couple familiar friends will storm nationwide theaters for a special one-night engagement this summer.

I don't mean to be judgmental but when you tattoo your face to look like the Joker AND it looks terrible, I'm gonna judge you a little.

If I learned anything about Abu Dhabi from watching the entirety of Sex and the City 2 while sitting in a tattoo parlor waiting room (which actually happened and is not a joke), it’s that the United Arab Emirates city is a mecca of wealth. The oil-rich nation has concentrated much of its affluence in its capital, and accordingly, the area has exploded with development in recent years. Skyscrapers have cropped up like so many dandelions, massive tourist resorts now dot the coastline, and high-end boutique shopping caters to such fashionable visitors as Carrie Bradshaw and her pals. And while Abu Dhabi’s latest attraction won’t invite as many Dolce & Gabbana puns as one might like, it will delight comic book fans worldwide.

If you saw Tim Burton’s original Batman, you remember Billy Dee Williams playing the role of Gotham City District Attorney Harvey Dent. Williams never got to play Dent’s evil alter ego, though; when Dent became Two-Face in Batman Forever, the role was recast with Tommy Lee Jones. That all changed with The LEGO Batman Movie though, when Williams got to play Two-Face by providing the voice for the role in the new animated film. That’s just one of the LEGO facts featured in the latest installment of You Think You Know Movies!

If you’ve seen a Batman movie, you can tell that rubber suit is heavy. It’s obvious by the way the actors lumber around in that thing. But did you know that George Clooney’s Bat-suit in Batman & Robin weighed 90 pounds? The cape alone tipped the scales at 40 pounds. The thing was so hard to get in and out of that George Clooney urinated inside it on more than one occasion when nature called. Holy incontinence, Batman! That’s just one of the facts that’s guaranteed not to piss you off in the newest episode of You Think You Know Movies!

Like any job, writing about the latest news in the world of entertainment can wear on you after long enough, so you gotta appreciate the little pearls of amusement where you can get them. Personally, watching the latest solo Batman project fall apart in slow motion has been a perverse thrill over the past couple of months: star Ben Affleck was gonna direct (maybe) the film titled The Batman, then he was definitely gonna direct it, then he backpedaled a little bit, then he requested that people stop asking him about it, then he face-planted onto the sidewalk with the costly flop Live By Night, and then look at that, he wasn’t taking the director’s chair after all. The indignities kept coming, as Warner Bros. ordered sweeping rewrites to this floundering project before landing Planet of the Apes remake maestro Matt Reeves to fill the directorial vacuum.

In the tradition of ScreenCrush series like You Think You Know Movies and You Think You Know TV comes a new YouTube series: Top Five! Every two weeks (or so; we’ve got a lot of other stuff going on), ScreenCrush editor and critic Matt Singer will count down a particular topic from the world of movies (and probably write these introductory posts in the third person).

After years of watching a certain segment of fans argue over which Enterprise captain was the best, I think it might be time for Star Trek fans to admit that they’re no longer the leader in casting fan arguments. Now all the cool kids want to argue over which Batman actor played the role best. While the obvious answer for most millennials would be Christian Bale, I tend to gravitate towards the early performances of Michael Keaton, a Batman who was a bit more believable as an intellectual than subsequent versions of the character. To each their own, I suppose.

Ben Affleck is frustrated. And who could blame him? Anyone who dons Batman’s iconic cape and mask is immediately the center of superhero fans’ attention, both positive and negative. But Affleck doesn’t just want to live in a Batman bubble and only be asked about Batman. (Valid, but what did you expect dude?)