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Okay, Ben Affleck, you win.
What are we going to say? That we're still not convinced? That you still haven't had your Top Gun yet? That just last year you starred in the biggest, most bloated brain-sore of the summer, Pearl Harbor, and it was pretty much an ugly, loathed flop, and that for awhile there was talk that maybe you can't carry a film after all? That you used to have a goofy demeanour that was part of your charm and now you stare out at us from the cover of People magazine looking not so much like a sexy guy but like a guy from our high school making his "sexy guy" face?
That we don't quite buy it yet?
And what does it matter if we do? Because you are Daredevil. You are the future Mr. J. Lo. You are the Sexiest Man Alive™. You are everywhere.
You don't even seem like just one man anymore. You're like an army of Ben Afflecks, a whole platoon of the Sexiest Men Alive. You are stationed in the folds of magazines, you've conquered all the pages, you've sent special strike teams of yourselves to stake out tabloid covers and slap your multiple lips on Jennifer Lopez from all angles. You're like that villain from Omega Flight named Flashback who, when he fought Alpha Flight, could make multiple copies of himself and send them to swarm people and overcome them by his sheer numbers, until people were swallowed up in crowds of him that pummeled them into submission.
To paraphrase a famous leader, we are overcome. We are pummeled. We give.
So what if you haven't yet had that career-defining hit? So what if more of your movies were disappointments than not (and don't think we've forgotten about Forces of Nature or Bounce or Reindeer Games). So what if you haven't really carried a big movie all by your lonesome? And that the big ones you sort of carried, like Armageddon and The Sum of All Fears weren't just ass, they were disposable ass. They were throwaway ass. They were ass that you pull off your hips at the end of the day and chuck in the trash and don't think twice about, because it came shrinkwrapped in a whole value pack of ass, eight-for-the-price-of-six.
Of course, none of that matters. Because so many pens were poised over so many pages, all ready to anoint you, once and for all, as the Prince Hal of Hollywood, to sign you into the great ledger of movie stars, that all you needed was that one moderate success, one not-disappointment, to set all those pens to scribbling. And you got it, with The Sum of All Fears. No, it wasn't Top Gun. But it did all right at the box office, it didn't flop, and you proved your point (sort of).
Imagine the huge exhalations of sheer relief when those opening numbers came in. It must have felt, to many invested people, like an organ transplant that finally took. Hey, Affleck's movie is a hit! This is actually working! The body is not rejecting him after all!
In fact, now there's even talk of a sequel called, perhaps, The Sum of More Fears, or Some More of My Fears. Maybe in this one Cleveland or Seattle will get leveled by a nuke, but it will all be okay because you'll once again get to picnic on the White House lawn, having saved the world, except for Seattle, which was so over by 1995 anyway.
So congratulations on that.
And then, of course, there is the J.Lo thing.
The J.Lo thing.
We wish happiness to all those in love.
And we doff our caps to you, Ben Affleck, for having invented an almost entirely new kind of Hollywood career (though we know you had lots of help). You have proved that if someone acts like a movie star often enough, and with enough sincerity, and is presented as such repeatedly to the public, and does all the things a movie star is meant to do, such as check into rehab, and make a big show of backing prominent politicians (though you don't actually vote yourself; who has the time?), and appear in magazines, and squint, and make the "sexy guy" face, and hook up with another big star in a paparazzi-friendly courtship, then -- dammit -- you can be a movie star. Even though none of your actual movies are big hits. You've almost -- almost -- managed to eliminate the movies from the equation altogether.
Think about it. Or rather, think about him. Think about Ben Affleck. Does what you're thinking about have anything to do with one minute of the screen time in his career? Sure, there was Good Will Hunting, in which he made his introductions. And many of you probably remember him from Chasing Amy, in which he may have struck you as a stiff but charming-in-a-gawky way kind of guy. And he had that funny cameo in Jay and Silent Bob. But otherwise, really, do the movies even matter? Do his movie roles have anything to do with why he's famous, or that he's famous, or how famous he is now?
No. No, they don't. Not really. He's not on the cover of People this week because anyone loved Bounce, or was moved by Reindeer Games, or had their life changed by Forces of Nature.
We used to think that Ben Affleck had the makings of a great movie star. We said so, back in the original audit: "Ben Affleck is not, and has never been, a good actor. But he's exhibited the makings of a good, maybe great, movie star." That's what we said.
But, boy, were we wrong. Ben Affleck was never on track to be a movie star. Whatever promise he may once have shown is now immaterial. He's just a star, period -- he is fame divorced from accomplishment. And who better to cleave himself to than the female version of this very same phenomenon?
He'll make more movies and she'll make more movies and they'll make movies together and she'll make records and maybe he'll sing on those records. But none of that stuff will matter anymore. They are just stars now. To ask "Does Ben Affleck deserve more or less fame?" is kind of like asking "Does he deserve more or less DNA?" He's now professionally famous. He's made of fame. Rent the movie Fame, and he'll jump out at you from your VCR. Touch him, and you'll get fame burns. In the morning, he gets out of bed, shouts "Fame on!" then flies out his bedroom window.
You know what else we said in the original audit? "Affleck has been the beneficiary of an alarmingly rapid, media-fueled rise, and, as such, may find himself the victim of a equally rapid, media-fueled fall."
So, yeah, that was wrong too.
But, you know, one day, when Harrison Ford is old and wizened and craggy (let's call that day "Thursday"), he'll be able to pull Raiders of the Lost Ark or Star Wars or Witness or even American Graffiti down from the shelf and think, Hey, look what I did.
And George Clooney, when he's old(er) and grey(er), can pull down Three Kings and even Ocean's Eleven and (fingers crossed) Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and think, Hey, look what I did.
But as of right now, the only time the elderly Ben Affleck will think, Hey, look what I did, is when he feels a warm spattering and peeks into his Depends.
Maybe one day, after he's finished marrying J. Lo in the show-business wedding of the decade, he will make a few movies that he too can pull down proudly from the shelf. We hope so, because we'll get to enjoy those movies, too. And because, seriously, not even his own grandkids are going to sit through Pearl Harbor twice.
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