How an “easy decision” for Ben Affleck did major damage to two careers: “It was an opportunity”
The career of Ben Affleck has been a fascinating thing, with the actor and filmmaker experiencing the ups and downs of a rollercoaster life in the public eye, which saw him soar from the industry’s highest points to the bottom of the barrel before he picked himself back up again.
With the benefit of hindsight, the biggest difference between Affleck and his platonic life partner Matt Damon is the way they approached their careers after Good Will Hunting, which famously won them an Academy Award for ‘Best Original Screenplay’ and turned them into overnight stars.
Damon sought to become an actor, throwing his lot in with Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, and Anthony Minghella, whereas Affleck chased movie stardom. He made two films with Michael Bay, teamed up with John Woo, and headlined a blockbuster comic book adaptation, which did much more harm than good.
On paper, 2003’s Paycheck had plenty of potential. It was adapted from the story of the same name by sci-fi savant Philip K Dick, the brains behind Blade Runner, Total Recall, and Minority Report. It boasted one of the action genre’s greatest-ever directors at the helm in Woo, and Face/Off had already shown he could turn a preposterous premise into an extravagantly explosive spectacular.
Affleck’s Michael Jennings is a reverse engineer whose memory is erased every time he completes his latest act of corporate espionage. When he’s tasked with finding out the secrets of a government project, he wakes up with no recollection of what he did or why he’s being chased by so many people ready to inflict grievous harm upon him.
“It was an opportunity for me to work with someone who I have admired for many years, who I think is personally responsible in a lot of ways for elevating the way action movies are made,” the leading man told the BBC. “It was a very easy decision.”
And yet, 2003 marked the point of no return for Affleck V1.0. Released in a dire year in which he also headlined the derided Daredevil and the abominable Gigli, all he had to show for his trio of big-budget efforts was a Golden Raspberry Award for ‘Worst Actor’, striking him with the realisation that maybe he didn’t want to be an A-list action hero after all.
For Woo, it was the worst-reviewed film of his American sojourn, and the constraints repeatedly placed upon him by overbearing studios became too much. He wanted to make a Hitchcockian sci-fi thriller, but once Paycheck had gone through the wringer of rewrites and post-production, it was entirely forgettable and even found the maestro’s touch deserting him for the shockingly formulaic set pieces.
It did at least yield positive results in the long run, though, with Woo abandoning his Stateside excursion to return to his native China and shoot Red Cliff, the jaw-dropping historical epic that out-grossed James Cameron’s Titanic, and he wouldn’t return to Hollywood for 20 years. Meanwhile, Affleck’s reinvention added another acclaimed auteur to the ranks, with Argo winning him the second Oscar of his career when it scooped ‘Best Picture’.
At the time, Paycheck was a low point for both, but it eventually became a defining moment in their careers, with the setback ultimately leading to resurgence and rejuvenation.
