Actor-star Ben Affleck disagrees with Mexican filmmaker Alejandro G. Inarritu (Oscar winner for The Revenant) that the superhero movie craze is leading to “cultural genocide,” as the director remarked in a interview with Deadline.
Speaking at a Mexico City news conference ahead of Saturday’s world premiere of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Affleck had this to say about the director’s comments.
“I know Alejandro and he’s a great guy and a brilliant filmmaker and I admire him enormously,” Affleck said. “And El Chivo (Mexican cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki) is a friend of mine. Alejandro is also given to over-statement. I wouldn’t call it cultural genocide, but he’s brilliant and his point is taken that you can’t just swallow up cinema with any kind of movie.”
In the Deadline interview, Inarritu said he “sometimes enjoys superhero movies,” but he sees many with a right-wing message. “They have been poison, this cultural genocide,” he was quoted as saying.
“The problem is that sometimes they purport to be profound, based on some Greek mythological thing. And they are honestly very right wing,” Inarritu told Deadline. “I always see them as killing people because they do not believe in what you believe, or they are not who you want them to be. I hate that, and don’t respond to those characters.”
Asked to comment on a rumor that he was rewriting the Batman v Superman script in his bat suit during production, Affleck said: “That is the dumbest rumor. I just like how if I was gonna go write, I would put on this bat suit first because it’s so comfortable to write in. I didn’t rewrite anything in any outfit, my underwear or otherwise.”
Affleck took questions alongside co-star Henry Cavill, director Zack Snyder and Gal Gadot, who plays Wonder Woman. The film also features Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor. Snyder said he was actually considering Eisenberg for a different role, but all that changed after they met.
“He’s got this amazing way about him and you can never tell whether he’s being self-deprecating or whether he’s insulting you, and I mean that as a compliment. I thought he offered really amazing possibilities for Lex,” he said.
