As I got deeper in my Twitter feed, I realized it wasn’t going to be that easy. I may have been perfectly content to wait until 2015, when the movie will actually be arriving in theatres, to make substantive judgments on Affleck’s casting, but the Internet is not that patient. The Internet wants to judge Affleck now, to speak of his casting as though they have seen the movie, are aware of his (and the filmmakers’) specific interpretation, and are generally omniscient in all things related to this bit of news. And of course, the Internet, for the most part, wants to do so in the most immature, childish way possible.
So we already have two separate Change.Org petitions to remove Affleck from the role (I would say Change.Org loses all credibility because of this, but that happened a long time ago). We have Twitter hashtags mocking the choice, and countless people thinking themselves clever for bashing Affleck, Snyder, and Warner Bros. in 140 characters or less. We have forums, talkbacks, and comment threads aflame with people explaining how they would do things differently (or, more likely, resorting to petty name-calling and such), as if they have (or should have) any control in the creative direction of a film the world knows nothing about, because a script has not even yet been completed.
And my reaction, as stated above, is one of exhaustion. On some level, it does not even matter to me what the general online atmosphere about this news is – what bothers me is that the news has, in less than 24 hours, become so incredibly all-consuming. And at this point, I just don’t have the energy for this any more. I don’t have the energy to care strongly, one way or the other, about a project that is at least two full years from arriving in theatres. It is the same way I feel about Star Wars Episode VII, or Avengers: Age of Ultron, or any of the other big 2015 releases we have spent the majority of 2013 talking about. My favorite part of being a film fan, as I previously noted, is watching and discussing movies in the here and now – not dealing in broad hypotheticals about movies that will one day exist. When those movies arrive, and we have something tangible to examine and discuss, I will be happy to participate in the critical debate – because at that point, the movies will actually matter. Right now, they do not, because they do not exist. And when there are plenty of movies that do exist being released into theatres every week, and hundreds of thousands more that have existed for much longer and are still 100% worthy of evaluation, I think it is borderline insane to devote more than a modicum of energy to films that have yet to even be scripted, let alone filmed, edited, or released.