OMG Ben Affleck's Decided to Be Robin!

My younger brother gets really frustrated at times with regards to news about his favourite football team. To the point that sometimes, me and the rest of my family, genuinely question how much emotion he’s pouring into following a passion of his. But in the past few days, I’ve come to realise that perhaps it’s a little hypocritical of me to reprimand him for his behaviour given my own feelings about my passion.

I’m indeed talking about DC comics and in particular regard their extended universe on the silver screen. Those of you that know me fairly well, will recall that a few years ago, my love for superheroes and the film genre itself moved down one particular avenue when my support was thrown towards DC. Don’t get me wrong, I'll still be in the lines to watch Marvel films, but it’s almost as if I've become indifferent to what’s happening with them. Maybe it’s because I love a good underdog and WB and DC are definitely that at the moment, but they’ve been making massive strides in catching up.

Following Man of Steel, WB announced Batman v Superman; a film that would not only continue the story of Superman but also introduce viewers to the idea that there are other heroes in his world. I won’t ignore the fact that it was critically panned, but what it allowed was the idea that after 70 years of comic book stories, we could finally see a Justice League film on the silver screen. And we shall in less than three months. But my issue lies elsewhere.

As I take an avid interest in these things, recently I've found myself bombarded with rumour after rumour about the current state of WB’s slate of films and most of these rumours only seem to annoy me. Not because it’s not what I want to see, but because most of them seem to stem from negativity. To give you an idea of the kind of things I've heard, I've summarised them in an easy-to-read fashion below:

1) "DC is cancelling the whole Universe and they’re going to reboot it with the Flash film coming out in 2019."

Why? Not why would they think of doing this, why would anyone make this rumour up? We’ve had four DCEU films and they’ve not done half bad economically.

2) "DC has decided to make a film about the Joker, which is a standalone film outside of the DCEU so it won’t star Jared Leto."

Again. They’ve only just started the universe, now they’re making alternative films? Also, i’m the biggest Batman fan ever, but why do we need a film about the Joker?

3) "Jared Leto is still going to be in the Joker and Harley Film which may or may not be Gotham City Sirens which may or may not be directed by David Ayer from which he may or may not have been kicked off."

This almost sounds like George Bush trying to explain why Afghanistan needed to be attacked, you know, known knowns and known unknowns and all. Again. Why do we love the Joker and Harley Quinn so much?

4) "The Batman solo film is a standalone and will not star Ben Affleck and will not be part of the DCEU and he’s leaving anyway because his brother said so as a joke."

Urgggggghh. I genuinely feel for Ben Affleck. He was perhaps the one saving grace in Batman v Superman and all he gets is hate from the press. Not even the fans. The majority of people I've spoken to actually like him as Batman. Every day there’s a new rumour. Every damn day.

You get the idea. It’s chaos. And the worst part of all of this is none of it is coming from WB or DC’s actual press releases. It all these reporters that almost have nothing else to do with their lives except start these rumours. I mean I hate to quote the guy, but Donald Trump isn’t wrong when he’s shouting "Fake News." And the people who suffer the most are fans like me, who’ve taken an interest beyond the norm in these kinds of things and every day have to hear something about how the future is so uncertain. Fine, it may well be, but is it too much to ask for these reporters to stop creating clickbait articles and creating all this negativity. I just want to enjoy seeing my heroes on the big screen, I couldn’t care less about how it’s done.

Let’s stop with the negativity and enjoy it!