Former Batman Ben Affleck says hated wearing the Batsuit: ‘Horrendous’

Ben Affleck has revealed that the real villain during his stint as Batman in the DC Extended Universe wasn’t the Joker or Lex Luthor, but rather his very own Batsuit. 

The actor, who played billionaire bad boy Bruce Wayne and his caped crusader alter ego across multiple films including Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League, revealed in a recent GQ video that he absolutely detested wearing the superhero’s signature look. 

“I hated the batsuits. The batsuits are horrendous to wear,” Affleck said. “They’re incredibly hot, for one thing. They don’t breathe. They’re made to look the way they want ‘em to look, and there’s no thought put into the human being.”

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As a result, the actor explained, “you just start sweating” from the moment that you put on the outfit. 

“Now I’m already — I sweat, you know what I mean? I get hot,” he emphasized. “And so in that thing, you would just be pouring water because it’s got the cowl over it. Like, there’s one thing to wear the suit, but once you cover your head, I guess that’s where all your heat kind of escapes and you feel it.” 

Affleck noted that he wasn’t the only one who felt that way about the suit, either. 

“Even the most highly-trained, much more fit stunt guys, the parkour guys, the action guys, they could do that for about like 45, 50 minutes and then they’re like gonna get heat stroke,” he said. “So you had to come out of it. And that was really the thing was that it just made it difficult to make the movie because it was so hot.” 

It also took away a lot of the appeal of being a superhero in the first place. 

“And it also does not make you feel very heroic because you’re instantly exhausted and really sweaty and kinda trying to hide like, the sweat pouring down your face. Like, ‘No, we can go again, I’m fine, I’m good,’” he said while making a show of wiping sweat from his brow. “And then there’ll be like — eye black is like, running.”

He also acknowledged that fellow Bat-brethren like Christian Bale, who starred in Christopher Nolan’s beloved Dark Knight trilogy, and Robert Pattinson, who played a darker version of the Gotham hero in Matt Reeves’ The Batman, may have just been better at dealing with the heat than he was, but that he found the costume “to be the least fun part” of being Bruce Wayne. 

In a GQ interview last month, Affleck explained that while he “had a really good time” starring as Batman, he felt like DC films at the time had begun to “skew too old for a big part of the audience” that they were trying to reach.

“Like even my own son at the time was too scared to watch the movie,” he told the outlet. “And so when I saw that I was like, ‘Oh s—, we have a problem.’”

In the years since Affleck last put on the cape and cowl, the DC Studios reins have since been handed over to co-chairs Peter Safran and The Suicide Squad director James Gunn, the latter of whom is in the process of rebooting the entire franchise beginning with his upcoming Superman film. (However, certain projects like the upcoming Batman sequel and its spinoffs still will continue on under the “Elseworlds” brand separate from Gunn’s continuity.)

Watch Affleck discuss wearing a sweaty ol’ suit in the clip above.