LONDON: You’d think superheroism would be anathema to him. You’d think the merest sniff of snug-fitting lycra and a cape would be like a lump of Kryptonite. But no. In today’s Hollywood, your career’s going nowhere unless you’re prepared to writhe around in a green-screen studio wearing an outlandish costume.

A big superhero gig gives you clout, something that no-one wants to turn down, and this even applies to a now increasingly respected director — with a chequered list of acting credits.

Ben Affleck has been chosen to play Batman in the feverishly anticipated new film in which he faces off against Superman.

A strange choice in many ways. At 41, he will be a more mature opponent to Henry Cavill, who is 30.

But Affleck is in any case very different from his predecessor Christian Bale, who had a fierce and even malign intensity in the role; Bale brought his gym-built bulk and combustible reputation with him — this was the man who had played the lead in American Psycho and has had fanatically fierce and highly publicised bust-ups with family and professional colleagues.

The more relaxed and modestly-proportioned Affleck has still not entirely lived down his on- and off-screen association with Jennifer Lopez.

The odd thing is of course that Affleck has already tried being a superhero. He played Daredevil in 2003, whose blindness — caused by being splashed with biohazard material which left the rest of his handsome chops untouched — was offset with supersensitive hearing and a huge desire to right wrongs in mask and costume. He was not much liked in the role, although I found it and him reasonably entertaining.More daringly still, in the 2006 movie Hollywoodland he played Superman — or rather, he played George Reeves, the unlucky 1950s actor who played Superman on the long-running TV show, failed to find work after that was over and was found dead in his apartment after having apparently committed suicide.

It was a role which won Affleck a best actor award at the Venice film festival — and the part rewarded his sense of irony, humour and pathos, and his grasp of the idea that there is something faintly absurd about dressing up in a cape.

None of this bodes particularly well for his latest outing in the world of movie superheroes, whose fan base does not much care for humour or ironic vulnerability. It could well be that Affleck will be a much better Bruce Wayne than Christian Bale ever could be, and that he will feel more comfortable in that other superhero outfit: the tux. Affleck might be better being the sophisticated and mysterious plutocrat Wayne. And if quips are among the permissible choice of available weapons in his duel with young Cavill, he might have the edge.

But would it not have been more interesting if Ben Affleck had directed Batman v Superman, rather than starred in it? His drama Argo — based on the true story of how the CIA invented a fake movie project with fake Middle East locations in order to smuggle embassy staff out of Iran — had a sharp sense of heroism and was a neat exercise in tension and drama.

And his blue collar movies The Town and Gone Baby Gone were tough and forthright. They had the all-important muscle-tone and seriousness. If Affleck had been announced as director there would, I think, be a wave of excitement among fans, rather than the current rather mixed reaction. But of course the director’s job is already taken by Zack Snyder. It all depends on the screenplay and sympathetic direction: Affleck has already reinvented himself, triumphantly, as a director. It could still be that in the menacing precincts of Gotham City, he will retrieve his reputation as an acting star.

By arrangement with the Guardian