The movie Ben Affleck was right to be wary of: “When I was first offered the role, I was suspicious”
With his decision-making being his undoing more than once in his career, these days, Ben Affleck will presumably deliberate long and hard before choosing which role to play or which movie to direct, having learned some harsh lessons in the past.
After all, 2003 alone was enough to make him re-evaluate the process. For whatever reason, at the time, he thought it would be a good idea to co-star with Jennifer Lopez in Gigli, squeeze himself into a red leather costume in Daredevil, and work with John Woo on Paycheck.
On paper, he presumed that those three films wouldn’t conspire to form the worst year of his career and the annus horribilis that saw him named as ‘Worst Actor’ at the Razzies, destroy any mainstream credibility he had left, sent Woo scurrying back to his native Hong Kong for 20 years, and leave him on the outside of Hollywood looking in for the first time since before Good Will Hunting was released.
After rebounding as an acclaimed and gifted director, culminating in Argo‘s ‘Best Picture’ win at the Academy Awards, Affleck subsequently decided that the best way to wash away the stench of Daredevil was to play an even more famous superhero in some even more expensive blockbusters, and it’s an understatement to say that he doesn’t look back on his time as Batman any more fondly.
Of course, there’s no tried and trusted method for any aspiring star to navigate their career entirely without incident, whether it be personal or professional, but maybe Affleck should have listened to his gut when he was presented with the script for Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor, since he was right the first time.
“At first, when I was offered the role, I was suspicious that the movie would not live up to the material, that it would just function to stir patriotism,” he explained at the time. “If that had been so, I would have said no, no matter how big-budget it was. But after I read the script, I was pleasantly surprised, the script was actually quite challenging.”
This would be the same Pearl Harbor that he’d call such a miserable experience that he considered quitting after the first day of shooting, the same Pearl Harbor that was slammed by war veterans for being an insult to the memories of those who were there when the titular attack unfolded, and the same Pearl Harbor that was battered by critics for being a three-hour love story lacking in historical accuracy that only has one good scene to show for its 183-minute running time.
That would also be the same Pearl Harbor that earned Affleck his first ‘Worst Actor’ nomination at the Razzies to go along with his second nod for ‘Worst Screen Couple’, which he shared alongside co-stars Josh Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale by virtue of the complete and utter lack of chemistry any of the central trio shared when they were onscreen together, regardless of the combination.
It’s still underselling just how bad the movie was to say that the actor’s concerns about the script not doing justice to the real-world source material were well-founded, but he did it anyway, and paid the price.
