Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty ImagesBen Affleck is opening up about his forthcoming film, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, in the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly.
The 42-year-old actor, who announced in a joint statement on Tuesday that he and wife Jennifer Garner are divorcing after 10 years of marriage, touches on the casting controversy (the actor faced major backlash when he was first named the Caped Crusader) and reveals why he was eager to star in another superhero flick, despite appearing in the 2003 flop Daredevil.
"Batman is basically the American version of Hamlet," Affleck tells EW. "We accept that he's played by actors with different interpretations."
Those different actors include Christian Bale in the Dark Knight trilogy and Michael Keaton in Batman Returns, to name a few, although Affleck says his version of the superhero is tired and weary after two decades of fighting crime in Gotham City.
"He's at the end of his run and maybe the end of his life," Affleck reveals. "There's this sort of world-weariness to it."
This isn't the first time Affleck has played a superhero on the big screen. He previously starred as Attorney Matt Murdock/Daredevil in the Mark Steven Johnson-directed flick, where he happened to meet wife Jennifer Garner.
While Affleck has said in the past that making the film had silver lining because "that's where I found my wife," he seemed to have a slightly different perspective while speaking with EW.
"Daredevil didn't work, at all. If I wanted to go viral I would be less polite," the Oscar winner says. "That was before people realized you could make these movies and make them well. There was a cynical sense of ‘Put a red leather outfit on a guy, have him run around, hunt some bad guys, and cash the check.'"
But now with the success of Marvel, Affleck is confident in the forthcoming project. "They really learned how to make this stuff work," he says. "Good is the new bad."
Meanwhile, Garner and Affleck announced on Tuesday that they are divorcing after 10 years of marriage (Affleck was presumably interviewed before the announcement).
"They were a great team as parents, but with each other, they didn't want the same things," a source told E! News of the parents of three, who underwent marital counseling for two years. "After spending a lot of time figuring that out, they came to the decision that the best thing for them and for the children would be to make a change."