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Volume 610
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Friday, August 21st, 2020
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Page 2 of 3
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There's another reason The Flash needed the character affectionately known as Batfleck. In DC's movie universe, Affleck's gray-templed Bruce Wayne is the one Ezra's Flash would consider "the original
Batman," the one he has already fought alongside in the previous Zack Snyder films.
Muschietti said it wouldn't work as well for him to venture into the company of other Batmen without having Affleck as the starting point. "He's the baseline. He's part of that unaltered state before we
jump into Barry's adventure," the director said. "There's a familiarity there."
DC has still other motivations for exploring this story. Batman is too valuable a character to leave fallow for long, and new actors will forever be stepping into the role. By threading the concept of a
multiverse into its DC storyline, Warner Bros. is attempting to create a way for all the competing factions of its fandom to coexist together.
Unlike the Marvel Cinematic Universe or Star Wars, in which everything is designed to be part of the same canon, the multiverse approach can allow projects to vary greatly in tone, or feature different
actors, while still being threaded together. Keeping a broad coalition of fans from battling over what is "legitimate" is one of the biggest challenges for studios managing franchises with vast appeal and
decades of history. Sony's animated Into the Spider-Verse also helped popularize the alternate-dimension concept, introducing the Miles
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Morales character to a host of differing Spider-folk.
So far, the multiverse approach has helped DC both differentiate itself and revisit the same characters without being accused of rebooting or erasing recent favorites. DC TV shows such as Arrow, Batwoman,
Black Lightning, and Supergirl have done crossover events, and a few months ago the Crisis on Infinite Earths storyline laid the groundwork for the multiverse concept, with Miller's movie Flash making an
appearance in that story by coming face-to-face with the TV Flash played by Grant Gustin.
"This movie is a bit of a hinge in the sense that it presents a story that implies a unified universe where all the cinematic iterations that we've seen before are valid," Muschietti said. "It's inclusive
in the sense that it is saying all that you've seen exists, and everything that you will see exists, in the same unified multiverse."
That doesn't mean there aren't still intense disagreements in the fandom, and the return of Batfleck is sure to launch countless takes.
Affleck was cast as Batman in late August of 2013, and the debate over his presence hasn't let up even after two movies with Snyder—Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League - and one cameo in
Suicide Squad. His take will also get a new approach in the famed "Snyder Cut" of Justice League, which will appear on HBO Max, restoring the original director's
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