The actor and director analyzes the flops of The Way Back and The Last Duel.
In December, Ben Affleck was questioned by The Playlist on the theatrical flop Last duel, by Ridley Scott, and on the words of its director, who put this on the back of “Millenials who never want to learn anything unless it’s marked on their smartphones.” “Let’s be honest, who hasn’t wanted to say that on a promo?, replied Affleck with a laugh. Ridley is at a point in his career where obviously he doesn’t care what people think at all.” He then added more seriously be worried about the cinema, and ended up saying: “I believe that The Last Duel will be my last film to be released in theaters. Because I don’t want to play in a franchise film, with this more or less established audience. It interested me at one time, but I don’t like it anymore.”
The Last Duel: Ben Affleck defends Ridley Scott and worries about the future of cinema in theaters
Rebelote a few weeks later. For Entertainment Weekly, which he made the front page, the actor, screenwriter, director and renowned producer is interviewed by his lifelong friend, Matt Damon. He returns to this subject when his new film, The Bar Tender, directed by George Clooney, is streaming on Amazon Prime.
“You know, I don’t want to bring her back, because it’s always boring, but I can tell you that when The Way Back (de Gavin O’Connor, 2021) came out, it was a week before a massive closure of theaters in the United States (because of the Covid, editor’s note). But even before it came out, I knew this drama about grief, the death of a child and alcoholism, and how to recover from it wasn’t going to attract adults to movie theaters. We were talking just before Narcos : Mexico, Succession and Mare of Easttown : there are all these amazing things that happen in streaming. Roma ! It’s no longer the fashion for old-fashioned series, those long ‘procedurials’ like when we were children. That you could only see like my father on a small black and white TV. If I had to bet, I’d say a drama like Argo (which he directed in 2010 and which won the Oscar) would no longer be made for the cinema today. Still, it’s not that old. It would be a limited series. I believe that films intended for the cinema will become more and more expensive and event-driven. They will be mainly intended for young people, who will say to themselves: ‘Hey! I’m into the Marvel Universe, can’t wait to see what happens next.’ So there will only be about forty films a year in the cinema, probably franchises, sequels and animated films.
Returning more specifically to the failure of The Last Duel, Ben Affleck, who co-wrote this project with Matt Damon and Nicole Holofcener, adds: “This film really clicked for me. I made bad films that didn’t work, and it didn’t make me wince. I know why people didn’t go: because that they failed. But I like what we did here. I like what we had to say. I’m very proud of it. So I was very confused. Then when I saw that was doing better in streaming, I said to myself: ‘Here. That’s where the audience is.’“
The Way Back is above all a nice film about Ben Affleck [critique]
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