How does Ben Affleck fare in movies not directed by Ben Affleck?
by ARTHUR YEUNG ON November 3, 2014
In a year at the box office that can be described with
such biblical descriptors like “apocalyptic” and “an unceasing hellscape”, Gone Girl has become Ben Affleck’s highest grossing film, having
passed his Academy Award-winning Argo
this weekend. Argo infamously won the
Oscar for Best Picture despite its director/star Affleck not being nominated
for his directorial effort, something that has only happened once in 80 years
before it. Luckily for him, such a snub will be impossible this year.
Doubtlessly, Gone Girl will garner
its share of nominations if only because the field this year seems extremely
weak. It is almost certain that the film will get a nomination for Best
Picture, since practically everything gets nominated for that particular award
now (last year’s nominee count ended up being nine, down from ten). There are
two reasons why Affleck won’t get nominated for Best Director: one, the Best Director category is limited to five nominees, and two, he didn’t actually direct Gone Girl.
It’s weird, right? How many of you read that and said “wait,
didn’t David Fincher direct Gone Girl?” Probably all of you, since
you’re on a very niche film website and thus must know something about the film
industry. However, you have probably run into a few people who thought Benjamin
Affleck directed and starred in Gillian Floyd’s novel of relationships with
sociopaths. Can you blame them? How many average people can connect Fincher to any of the work he has
done without the assistance of the internet? Meanwhile, at this point, filmgoers just associate an Affleck-starring
vehicle with an Affleck-directed one. People know that Ben Affleck directed
those movies because the entire world spent the lineup to The Town or Gone Baby Gone thinking
“wait, Ben Affleck directed this movie? And why are we watching it?” Such antipathy existed because everything else Affleck
has been in in the past decade has stunk out loud. It might have been dispelled recently since, for the past
decade, Ben Affleck the Actor’s career has been saved entirely by Ben Affleck
the Director.
Ben Affleck the Actor’s career started as part of two
separate film families. He started, somewhat notoriously, as a favourite of Kevin Smith, getting cast in Mallrats as the antagonist and then the
lead in Chasing Amy. He then wrote
and starred in the acclaimed Good Will
Hunting, which paved the way for his entry into his second film family with
Michael Bay. A year after being in
Smith’s high water mark Chasing Amy,
Affleck got cast in what was arguably Bay’s best film Armageddon (at least personally it was my favorite, although The Rock is a close second). It looked
like Affleck was on his way to success.
Only suddenly he couldn’t carry a hit. He had very modest
success in very modestly received movies like Dogma or Changing Lanes and
sprinkled in big budget movies that are basically unwatchable today in Pearl Harbor and The Sum of All Fears. If he had kept on turning a profit like he
had during these days, this probably wouldn’t have been a big deal. Obviously
he didn’t.
Affleck started to have bombs explode in his face like he
was Wiley Coyote. After Daredevil
ruined Daredevil, Affleck went into his Bennifer phase where he got engaged to Jennifer Lopez, got sent to rehab,
broke up with J-Lo, started playing poker professionally, and starred in a
bunch of terrible movies that failed commercially and critically.
Then, in 2007, Ben Affleck the Director was born. Affleck
directed Gone Baby Gone which had,
quite frankly, all the makings of a disaster. It was his directorial debut, his
name already mud after years of being Bennifer, star of bomb after bomb. His
brother Casey Affleck, who looks
like Ben Affleck stripped of his Hollywood good looks, was cast in his
own first lead role. It didn’t look like it would be the most successful
venture ever.
While it didn’t make a lot of money, Gone Baby Gone was a success for all involved. It ostensibly
turned a profit (although it likely did not for the studio, since it opened
sixth and stayed around that rank for its run, turning the assumed profit on longevity), ending Affleck’s string of
losses. More importantly for his career
at this point, the film was critically acclaimed. People went from “why is
Daredevil directing?” to “hey, maybe Daredevil directing isn’t the worst idea”.
However, this didn’t really do so much for his acting
career. When Affleck did show up in front of the camera again in the following
years, it was in supporting roles in more mediocre movies. His post Gone Baby Gone filmography can basically
be split into two sides: Affleck-directed and non-Affleck directed.
All the movies he’s not actually directing himself in didn’t
exactly set the world on fire, while the films he directed himself were huge hits, culminating when Argo won Affleck
an Oscar for Best Picture. While The Town and Argo both made nine-digit profits, only two of his non-Affleck
directed features found itself in the black profit-wise, both with asterisks (Smoking Aces has Affleck in it for maybe
10 minutes, Runner Runner made all
its money internationally and its validity left debatable).
Gone Girl is the
first sign that Ben Affleck’s acting career is making some progress independent
of him directing. It’s the first big commercial and critical hit he’s had solely
an actor in since Chasing Amy It
might be the exception though, as he’s about to portray Batman in the upcoming Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice film
that I’m a more than a little skeptical about (although it’s certainly a lock
to make a bucketful of money) and after that has another self-directed film in Live by Night. Gone Girl may be the last we see of Ben Affleck as a directed actor
in a good film for a long time.
RT results found on Rottentomatoes.com.
MetaCritic results found on Metacritic.com.
Main image from imdb.com
