Zack Snyder has been quite generous with fans of his Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice production in the last two days. On Thursday, the director shared a new photo of Ben Affleck wearing his batsuit mask to balance out the one of Henry Cavill as a Super Jedi.
Snyder is creating quite a stir on social media with his back-to-back photos of the major Batman v Superman stars. While Henry Cavill’s had a twist, Ben Affleck’s was straight forward.
Could be time to pull the tarp…Tomorrow? http://t.co/Nmm0QqWYYH pic.twitter.com/E6iKluZNDj
— ZackSnyder (@ZackSnyder) May 12, 2014
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
The new Batman photo shows Ben Affleck in his batsuit, in profile, looking down and sporting a days worth of stubble. We can see him more clearly in this closeup than we did in the original, shared by Snyder in mid-May.
#75 pic.twitter.com/Caj2N8iTAb
— ZackSnyder (@ZackSnyder) July 24, 2014
Snyder captioned the photo simply #75, in reference to the 75th anniversary of Batman, the Caped Crusader, which was celebrated on Wednesday. The special day was marked by several special events and was called Batman Day.
Ben Affleck’s casting as Batman came with heavy criticism, which fans seemed to clearly dislike by a landslide. There were pleas and petitions were started to try to convince Warner Bros. and Zack Snyder to drop the Oscar winning director from the role, recently vacated by Christian Bale in the Dark Knight trilogy.
In an interview earlier this year, after the storm of protests died down a bit, Ben Affleck talked about the differences between his character in Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and the portrayal we saw from Christian Bale in Christopher Nolan’s production.
Although reluctant to take on one of the most iconic comic characters of all, Affleck changed his mind and decided he would once again put on the spandex (or whatever that material the batsuit is made of) and play another superhero:
“When they asked if I would be Batman, I told them I don’t see myself in the role and I was going to have to beg off. They said I’d fit well into how they were going to approach the character and asked me to look at what the writer-director, Zack Snyder, was doing. The stuff was incredible. (…) It was a unique take on Batman that was still consistent with the mythology. It made me excited. All of a sudden I had a reading of the character. When people see it, it will make more sense than it does now or even than it did to me initially.”
Hopefully Batfleck is correct and will prove his harsh critics wrong when we finally see his Batman, alongside Henry Cavill’s Superman, in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice . The 41-year-old certainly fits in well with the more “seasoned” Batman Zack Snyder was looking for.
[Image via Zack Snyder/Twitter]