Ben Affleck's Batman Film Would Have Had An 'Impressive' Teen Titans Villain
Batman has one of the deepest rosters of villains in all of comic books. From intellectual adversaries like The Riddler and Hugo Strange to physical enemies like Bane and Killer Croc, Bruce Wayne is never far from danger. However, Batman has a few enemies that represent both intellectual and physical threats, including the all-out chaos of his arch-nemesis, The Joker, and the expert tactician and warrior, Deathstroke. While Ben Affleck had an entire cadre of DC Comics icons to choose from, the latter was his pick for his failed solo outing as the Dark Knight.
Affleck had an excellent reason for wanting to use the character in the film, as he told Collider that he loved a specific version of Deathstroke. "He's a great villain because — I just had an instinctive feeling that he would match up with him well. You know, I'm a big admirer of that character as well, especially in the New 52 the way that they did Deathstroke, and I thought that it could work."
Slade Wilson, aka Deathstroke, has a long history in the comics as a super soldier and a mercenary. While he is a common villain of the Teen Titans, he has faced off against many different characters and consistently proves to be a formidable adversary. The New 52 version of the character Affleck refers to is an older iteration of Wilson, who comes out of retirement to reclaim his legacy. It's hard to argue that the advanced age of Ben Affleck's Batman wouldn't match up perfectly with the more seasoned version of Deathstroke.
Deathstroke would have broken a four-decade streak
During an appearance at Zack Snyder's "Justice League" panel at the Full Circle fundraising event, Ben Affleck revealed he was torn between two different villain concepts for his Batman movie. His eventual choice of a solo villain would have broken an impressive, decades-long streak of multiple villains in a movie led by the Caped Crusader.
"The plans were to make interesting, nuanced, complex characters, in particular to [Deathstroke]. I kind of feel like either you do – I'm just going to get into my own preference here – but either you do a kind of massive one villain that is so formidable you just can't imagine how your protagonist is going to be able to overcome it. Or you have to really sort of populate kind of, you know, 'Injustice' – these big group villains – where you have to get all these different characters."
The last time a Batman movie had a single villain was when Michael Keaton's Batman faced off against Jack Nicholson's Joker in 1989. Since then, each film used Affleck's second scenario. Whether it was The Penguin (Danny DeVito) and Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer) or the less in-your-face examples like "The Dark Knight" using The Joker (Heath Ledger) and Two-Face (Aaron Eckhart), Batman always had more than one villain on his plate. With Affleck only using Deathstroke as the villain in his film, fans were guaranteed to see something special from the very formidable "Teen Titans" adversary. Unfortunately for us, the Batfleck solo outing never saw the light of day.