USA TODAY International Edition
Ben Affleck as Batman
What have they done?
Yesterday, I came out of my bunker after being in seclusion for five days. With nothing but Mace, a half gallon of water and a butter knife, I ventured outside to witness the apocalypse.
To my surprise, the world looked surprisingly similar to the way I left it. The storefronts were still intact. Cars were not on fire. Miley Cyrus was continuing to go through her “transformation.”
Whether by some miracle or just good old- fashioned divine interven- tion, everyone from the prairies of the Midwest to the coasts of the Far East survived the worst potential catastrophe since the Cuban Missile Crisis: the decision to make Benjamin Géza Affleck- Boldt, aka Ben Affleck, the next Batman.
Affleck being announced as Batman will inevitably go down as one of those “I remember where I was when ...” moments. I was in Whole Foods when I first got the breakingnews alert. I dropped my antibiotic- free, cage- free, tofu soy cheeseburger and immediately went to the people’s court, Twitter, to see what the verdict was.
Based on the first 22,000 reactions I saw, I wasn’t sure if Affleck had killed a group of baby pandas with an ax or if he had been cast in a movie about a man pretending to be a bat so he could deal with the loss of his parents. Not since the Arab Spring had there been such a high concentration of up- to- the- second emotional tweeting.
Doc Brown Hates Ferraris wrote: “I don’t know if I want to scream or vomit right now. Burn in hell, Affleck.”
Fat Troll 42 Years Old and LivingWithmy Mother wrote: “Ben Affleck must not play Batman. We must do whatever we can to stop him, even if it means leaving my house for the first time in 22 years.”
I Now Regret Hating The DecisionTo Cast Heath Ledger As The Joker wrote: “Trust me, I have a sixth sense about this stuff, and Affleck as Batman is going to destroy the franchise. I hope all the Warner Brothers and their sisters die.” How could the man who gave us
Argo and The Town do this to us? How could a two- time Academy Award winner have the nerve to dress in latex and fight another grown man in latex? Should we all just forget Daredevil and Gigli, which brought shame to an entire species? How could they not have cast Josh Brolin, star of Jonah Hex and My
Brother’s War with Jennie Garth? Were they just too dense to give the job to Ryan Gosling, the star of the TV series Goosebumps and Breaker
High? Those guys have never made career mistakes. Why should they not be rewarded?
About 20 minutes after the Affleck news broke, I said goodbye to my family and my friends and submerged myself in my bunker. I knew the world would never survive something like this. Not when the stakes were so high. And yet, somehow, humanity prevailed. Somehow, my fellow man once again rose to the occasion. We all stood hand in hand took a collective breath and said, “Perhaps Affleck playing Batman does not need to end in total annihilation.”
And it got me thinking. If we could apply that same logic and courage to issues such as global warming, mass shootings, health care, the budget crisis and all of the other major crises staring us in the face, perhaps we could start making a dent. Perhaps we could tweet enough to force people to talk about issues that will define the next 10 generations.
But first we need to handle this Affleck situation.