Movies

Christian Bale Has Not Seen Ben Affleck's Batman Movies Yet

Christian Bale Ben Affleck
By Ben Pearson/

After a long day of transforming himself into former Vice President Dick Cheney on the set of an upcoming movie, it's hard to imagine The Dark Knight star Christian Bale rushing out to catch a screening of Justice League so he can compare his take on Batman with Ben Affleck's. And as revealed in a new interview, Bale hasn't gotten around to seeing any of Affleck's portrayals of the character yet – and it doesn't sound like he'll be sitting down for a marathon of them anytime soon, either. Read the Christian Bale Ben Affleck Batman comments below.

Speaking with the Happy Sad Confused podcast (during the same episode in which he confirmed he was in talks for a role in Solo: A Star Wars Story), Bale revealed that he hasn't gotten around to checking out Ben Affleck's gruffer, more middle-aged spin on the Caped Crusader:

"I have not [seen Ben Affleck's Batman]. Yes, I'm interested [in seeing it], my son seemed like he was really interested, but then I realized he just wanted to see the trailer and that was it. I tend to go see films that [my kids] want to see. I have to confess I'm not a huge superhero film fan. People seem surprised at that, I don't know why. I've not seen any of the Avengers films or any of those films at all. I hear they're very good, but I'm quite happy just hearing they're very good."

While the easy joke would be to say that watching the trailers for BvS or Justice League would be far superior to the experience of watching the actual films themselves, I'm glad I've seen those movies; Bale, on the other hand, doesn't write about movie news every day (unless he has a secret film blog that we don't know about...damn it, now I just want to read Christian Bale's secret film blog), so it makes sense that he's less interested in seeing another actor's interpretation of such an iconic role. Elsewhere in the interview, Bale even admits that he didn't particularly care for any of the Batman movies that came before his:

"I didn't have knowledge of the graphic novels or the comics. I wasn't an avid fan, but when I had seen the Adam West series, I really enjoyed it. I had seen some of the other films. I was ambivalent about them. It was Frank Miller's Batman: Year One that was such a surprise to me."

If Bale didn't like Tim Burton's Batman or the delightfully weird Batman Returns, it seems, uh, unlikely that he'll be bowled over by Batman v Superman or Justice League. But if he does make time to check them out, he's not the type of guy who will hold back his true feelings about something, so we'll keep you in the loop.

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