Ben Affleck Comments On Batman’s Contempt For Superman

Batman does not like Superman right now. It’s no secret.

When the two DC Comics heroes collide on the big screen in March, there will be good reason for it, at least from Batman’s point of view. The new Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck), has it down to a science.

“Watching destruction and seeing things exploding, which we take for granted in this genre of movie — there’s a price for that,” Affleck tells EW. “There are people in those buildings, and the people in those buildings get killed, and that’s the real price of violence. The real cost of that is in people’s lives and suffering. And we see that through the suffering that Bruce Wayne goes through. I think it’s really interesting. I really liked the idea that you can’t just blow up a whole city and just blindly move on.”

It’s a bit out of tradition for Batman to be the one so concerned with the civilian well being as opposed to Superman, especially in this case, with Superman being the one who caused all of the damage.

“There’s an enormous amount of fear and resentment and suffering that would engender,” Affleck goes on. “And we know what that is, we know what that’s like now. It ties in nicely thematically with Bruce’s dilemma. We know what happens now when confronted with powerful things that scare us, that can hurt us. We get afraid, we get reactionary.”

React is just what Batman will do. As he says in the trailer, he will take Superman as an “absolute threat.” Batman doesn’t know Superman as we have from so many years of comics and movies. This is an individual who is brand new to him in Dawn of Justice.

“We often fall back on our haunches and want to arm ourselves or we want to attack, so I don’t think it’s a very farfetched reaction that Bruce has to the arrival of Superman in the world,” says Affleck. “It’s not like we all know Superman’s a good guy, he’s been in comic books since the fifties and he’s standing for truth, justice, and the American way. The truth is, a super-being showed up and was in some fights with some other super-beings and a lot of people were killed. I think a tremendous amount of controversy surrounds that. You figure that a lot of people think, ‘This guy should be locked up.’”

Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice hits theaters March 25.

via EW