Affleck’s Jay & Silent Bob Cameo Makes His Batman Return Incredibly Awkward

Ben Affleck’s cameo in Jay & Silent Bob Reboot makes his Batman return in the DCEU’s The Flash incredibly awkward. The Batman v Superman star previously hung his cape and cowl up after failing to turn his vision for The Batman into reality and in response to the struggles of filming Justice League, which came at a cost to his personal life and health. But he will play the Dark Knight at least once more in the DCEU, joining fellow former Batman Michael Keaton for the long-gestating, Flashpoint-inspired, and multiverse-set The Flash movie. It’s an exciting development, but it makes his cameo for Kevin Smith’s sequel very awkward.

Affleck’s will-he-won’t-he-quit saga was one of the biggest and most compelling stories of the DCEU, prior to the revelations of Justice League‘s tumultuous shoot. And while his last outing as Batman was poorly received, Affleck was praised for his performance in Batman v Superman, despite the usual merry-go-round of criticism when he was cast. Upon leaving the role, he turned up as one of the many cameos in Jay & Silent Bob Reboot, which heavily riffed on the DCEU and Dawn Of Justice in particular with one notable Martha moment joke in particular.

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But it’s not that self-effacing nod to Batman v Superman‘s most controversial (and most memed) moment that makes Ben Affleck’s return to the DCEU as Batman incredibly awkward. It’s the actual substance of his cameo and indeed of Jay & Silent Bob Reboot’s story as a whole that makes it both clear that Affleck’s return wasn’t planned and paints a slightly unwelcome picture.

Jay & Silent Bob Reboot is essentially a morality tale about personal and creative growth in which Jason Mewes’ Jay is presented with the twin crises of seeing a character based on Jay and Silent Bob’s likenesses (Bluntman and Chronic) rebooted by Hollywood and discovering he has a daughter. Through some very meta skewering of Hollywood’s fascination with churning out franchises through sequels and reboots (and ignoring originals like Smith’s Tusk, it is implied), the Hollywood machine is eating itself. In Affleck’s stand-out monologue, in which he shows Holden McNeil’s growth as a response to becoming a father, he explains the reboot obsession as a means to escaping how awful the present is by reliving the past. McNeil says he’s left that all behind, he’s no longer Bruce Wayne, he’s Thomas Wayne and he needs to look forward, rather than back.

Affleck’s Martha joke in Jay & Silent Bob Reboot is not a criticism of Batman v Superman, it’s an affectionate rib and an acknowledgment of fan response, but stating his desire to move forward and not relive the past, even the very recent past makes his Batman U-turn more difficult to accept. Affleck did have unfinished business as the DCEU Dark Knight and The Flash looks like an exciting project, but such a loaded moment that was so inherently tied to Affleck’s Batman experience and which was adjacent to such a criticism of Hollywood franchising is not a great look.

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