The Rise and Fall of a Hollywood Star, or How a Single Meme Convinced Everyone That Ben Affleck Is a Bad Director

You've probably seen this meme: Halle Berry cheerfully announces from the stage, "The Golden Globe goes to Ben Affleck," and a stunned Quentin Tarantino spits out his champagne in the very next moment.

I'm sure you never once doubted it was real. Tarantino's reaction looks natural, genuine, and clearly unscripted — and Affleck has long been branded a mediocre star with a "brick-face" acting range, the worst Batman in history, who got famous thanks to his romance with Jennifer Lopez and a string of romantic comedies. And they gave him a Golden Globe — for directing, no less? Anyone in Tarantino's position would have reacted the same way!

Mocking Affleck has been perfectly acceptable among both progressive and not-so-progressive audiences since the late '90s. In the South Park episode "Fat Butt and Pancake Head," he even struck up a romantic relationship with Cartman's hand. So the "Tarantino reaction" meme fit the popular narrative perfectly, becoming yet another piece of irrefutable evidence for a widely accepted fact: "Ben Affleck is a bad director."

Except none of it is true. Well — the brick face, the rom-coms, the scandals, and J.Lo all happened, and Tarantino really is Hollywood's chief truth-teller: he'll put Paul Dano in his place, argue with Scorsese, and question Bruce Lee's legacy. But he did not spit out his champagne upon hearing "And the Golden Globe goes to..." — and Ben Affleck is one of the most underrated directors in Hollywood over the last 20 years.

Before debunking the stereotypes, I need to explain why I, the author of these lines, decided to look at Affleck's career through the lens of memes. Simply put, there is no other celebrity in the world who generates them so frequently, is so strongly associated with them, and whose life they have played such a significant role in.

Ben's "meme career" began long before the word "meme" itself entered everyday use. As a child actor, he appeared in all manner of cursed and cringe-worthy content: garish commercials, cheap TV shows — but what everyone remembers most is his stint as the host of the children's educational program The Voyage of the Mimi.

At the start of his adult career, Affleck directed a short film whose title will live forever: I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meathook, and Now I Have a Three Picture Deal at Disney. I'm convinced that in a parallel universe, Ben is a successful manga artist.

Then came a role in the cult teen comedy Dazed and Confused. The most viral moment from that film — the famous "Alright, alright, alright" — was claimed by Matthew McConaughey. But thanks to the significance of Richard Linklater's film, the dim-witted school bully Fred, played by Affleck ("He was so smart and full of life" — Linklater on Affleck), carved out a prominent place in the American cultural code of the '90s. Also worth noting: his role in Kevin Smith's equally cult Mallrats.

At the 1998 Oscars, Affleck and his childhood friend Matt Damon delivered one of the most meme-worthy acceptance speeches in the ceremony's history. The newly minted Best Screenplay winners behaved like classic Boston roughnecks: shouting, swearing, talking over each other, and clearly unsure what they were even doing there.

It's impossible to ignore the best role of his acting career — by his own admission — which is his DVD commentary for Armageddon. There, Affleck openly mocked the stupidity of Michael Bay's film: "I asked Michael why it was easier to send oil drillers into space than to train astronauts to drill. He told me, 'Shut up. Just shut up. That's a real plan'... Sure: 'I'm a third-generation oil driller' — that's science, but going to space is the hard part."

Or the mind-bending, absurd, and thoroughly provocative SNL sketch "Fanatic," written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson himself. In this MTV parody, Affleck plays a hysterical teenager obsessed with blonde actress and Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith. And I haven't even mentioned Dogma yet.

All of this Affleck achieved before the age of 30, before the Web 2.0 era. And then came what followed: the worst Daredevil and Batman in history, two marriages to Jennifer Lopez, a sad face under The Sound of Silence, rehabs, scandals, and benders.

"When I step outside to get a package or a delivery, I don't care if someone photographs me. Some people are smarter or think more strategically. I just think: 'Whatever, I just want my coffee.'" — Ben Affleck.

It's time to go back to 2013, to the moment the Golden Globe for Best Director was announced, and to see that things actually played out quite differently. The original footage makes it clear that the "champagne incident" did not happen when Affleck's victory was announced. Tarantino spit out his drink when he heard his own name among the nominees. And then, through the magic of editing, the meme was born.

That said, the fact that the viral clip turned out to be fake doesn't prove anything by itself. A perfectly valid counterargument remains: the meme isn't literally true, but it is true in spirit. "Affleck is a bad director, and that's why we believe anything that confirms it." And honestly, it is hard to believe Affleck's win was deserved. That evening, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Best Director award was being contested by an exclusively heavyweight lineup: Tarantino with Django Unchained, Spielberg with Lincoln, Bigelow with Zero Dark Thirty, and Ang Lee with Life of Pi. Each of them had at least a couple of hits to their name, the status of living classics, and eleven Oscars between the four of them. And yet — here was some guy with (let us not forget!) a brick face and Cartman's hand.

Another argument: a few months later at the Oscars, Affleck didn't even make the shortlist for Best Director. A remarkably rare occurrence in awards season — in the twelve years that followed, it didn't happen to a single other Golden Globe directing winner. As for Argo winning Best Picture at those same Oscars, that can be chalked up to political bias: it's a film about good Americans and bad Iranians. And besides, everyone knows the Oscar jury doesn't actually watch the films.

So the time has come to dispel the central myth of this piece. Because the truth is…

The Boston native was still being written off as a star of mediocre rom-coms and Matt Damon's friend all the way up to 2007, when his debut film Gone Baby Gone was released. The thriller, adapted from a novel by chronicler of American criminal underclass Dennis Lehane, told the story of a private detective (played by brother Casey Affleck) searching for a missing little girl.

Gone Baby Gone didn't exactly land like a bomb, but it was very well received by critics and audiences alike. Many made no secret of their surprise that J.Lo's ex had made such a terrific film. A Boston Globe reviewer admitted: "As it turned out, the joke was on us — Affleck crafted a witty, morally ambiguous, and gripping thriller." Audiences echoed the sentiment: "I didn't expect this kind of script from Affleck. I always thought of him as a Hollywood heartthrob and never took him seriously — I'll even admit he slightly annoyed me — and then he makes a film like this." The debut was a success: 72 from critics and 7.8 from audiences on Metacritic, $34 million at the box office against a $19 million budget.

The first thing that jumped out was that Gone Baby Gone was a profoundly actor-driven film. It was a parade of colorful, memorable characters, each woven perfectly into the overall story. Everyone was good, but Ed Harris and Amy Ryan stood out in particular — Ryan earning an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Over time it became clear: one of Affleck's greatest directorial gifts is assembling the ideal cast without relying on first-tier stars.

But Gone Baby Gone wasn't just flawlessly performed — its intricate detective plot was told with surprising clarity and economy. For all its brutality and raw naturalism, it was a deeply poetic film, mesmerizing in its melancholic beauty. Tense scenes alternated with quiet, everyday episodes that grounded viewers in the harsh reality of Boston's rough neighborhoods and illuminated the characters. The film even had a memorable action sequence — just one, but inventive, gripping, and entirely its own.

But why did critics and regular viewers alike — including this author — see in Affleck not merely another competent craftsman, but a genuine creative voice and auteur? The question of where the line falls between art and industry, between creator and "entertainer," is ultimately rhetorical. But the simplest and most common answer is this: for an auteur, art is a means of expressing the self — of speaking about something personal, something that matters to them specifically, not to an audience. That absolute subjectivity is what unites many of the greats. Federico Fellini compared each of his films to a mental illness you could only recover from by making the film. Akira Kurosawa said his "films are born from a need to say something."

Gone Baby Gone was precisely that kind of personal film for Affleck. In many ways it's a story about people trying to escape their personal problems, addictions, poverty, and the traumas of the past — and failing, because you can't run from yourself. The Boston of the film isn't a real city but a metaphorical space that has entirely shaped and consumed its inhabitants. Every character in the film — from the lowest addict to the noble police chief — is its hostage, compelled to act as the "city" dictates.

All of this maps closely onto Affleck's own biography: like his characters, he grew up in a rough part of Boston, surrounded by poverty and street gangs. Even after becoming a major Hollywood star, he kept returning to his family's dark legacy: "Dad got drunk every day, and that was just life… He quit when I was 19." Affleck mentioned more than once that other family members struggled with various addictions and mental illness. The future would show that, like the characters of Gone Baby Gone, Ben never managed to escape either.

A second hallmark of a genuine auteur is that every work is driven by a concept, a central creative purpose. Gone Baby Gone is no exception. The film opens with a panorama of Boston streets: American flags flutter in the wind, neighbors chat outside their homes, children play in the yards. Before us is a working-class idyll — simple lives, strong bonds, clear rules, a sense of community.

And then we're immediately shown the other side: the "good people" circle the missing girl's house like vultures. They laugh, grill meat, gawk at the police, and do everything they can to get in front of the news cameras. Someone else's tragedy is merely an excuse to be entertained, to feel important, to escape their dull routine for a couple of hours. That contrast — that duality of human nature — is the film's central idea. Gangsters and killers perform good deeds; mothers abandon their children; "saintly" men are prepared to kill for a righteous cause. Yet Affleck doesn't moralize — he simply observes: this is life, and in it there are no innocents and no guilty.

That's why the ending of Gone Baby Gone is so unforgettable. In a scene as spare and hermetic as anything in Fincher, Casey Affleck simply sits on a couch watching television — but for the viewer it is the film's supreme emotional moment and climax. Did the protagonist make the right choice? What would I have done in his position? Quietly, the character's decision becomes our own personal moral dilemma.

One more detail that convinced critics and cinephiles alike that they were dealing with one of their own: Affleck is unabashedly, unreservedly in love with cinema. The tabloid fixture and supposed symbol of talentlessness would speak in interviews with passionate enthusiasm about the French New Wave, his favorite films and directors, and the homages to film classics he buried throughout his own work. I especially love the Criterion Closet video, where Ben admits, among other things, that he lifted a line for Gone Baby Gone from Jean Renoir's 1939 The Rules of the Game. The most-liked comment under the video: "I haven't seen Ben Affleck this happy in years."

In 2010, three years after Gone Baby Gone's success, Affleck released The Town — again a crime thriller, again set in Boston, again about a hero trying to escape his past, but this time bigger, louder, with a pair of memorable shootouts and himself in the lead (brick face intact). And once again: critical and audience goodwill (74 and 7.7 on Metacritic respectively), glowing reviews, over $150 million at the box office, and an Oscar nomination for a supporting actor — this time Jeremy Renner.

Along with the budget and box office, the director's ambitions had grown too: this time all the social commentary and personal drama served as backdrop for a different creative purpose — to make a spiritual successor to Michael Mann's Heat.

Even if The Town ultimately loses to Mann's film in originality of vision and complexity of plot, and the Affleck–Renner pairing doesn't stand up to the Al Pacino–Robert De Niro tandem, it remains the closest thing to Heat that mainstream cinema has produced in 30 years. Special credit to Affleck for the absolutely brilliant blocking in the scene below.

Finally, in 2012, Argo was released — a loose adaptation of the true story of a CIA operation to rescue American diplomats from Tehran under the cover of a fake science-fiction blockbuster. Among other Hollywood films of its kind, Argo stood out not only for its lack of propagandistic pomposity, but for the way Affleck masterfully juggled genres: caper comedy, thriller, historical drama, spy adventure, and more — while every element worked in perfect harmony, creating the feeling of a cohesive, gripping, and intelligent film rather than a patchwork quilt. It's no surprise Argo became the most successful project of Affleck's career — over $232 million at the box office and seven Oscar nominations, winning three, including Best Picture.

One can debate endlessly whether Argo deserved the Oscar for Best Picture, or whether Affleck deserved to beat Tarantino, Spielberg, Bigelow, and Lee. I would have given every award to Django Unchained — not just for its cultural significance and undeniable artistic value, but because it was the decisive leap toward the apex of Tarantino's cinema: The Hateful Eight. If you want to understand why Tarantino deserves that kind of loyalty, we ranked all his films from good to great — and the answer becomes obvious pretty fast. Undoubtedly there is a great deal of opportunism in Argo's victory: Hollywood loves films about itself, Hollywood rewards star actors who try their hand at directing (see the annual Bradley Cooper nominations), and Hollywood values historical dramas about good Americans. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that Affleck absolutely deserved his place among the year's best directors.

After three consecutive successes in five years, it didn't take long for a ticket to the major leagues to arrive: Warner offered "J.Lo's ex" the chance to become "the new Nolan." Yes, the role of Batman came as a bonus to an agreement to direct a solo film about the Caped Crusader. And the studio executives' reasoning is easy to understand: Affleck was a major Hollywood star, a director who had proven he could make tough, dark, intelligent crowd-pleasing thrillers with inventive action sequences and a city as one of the central characters. The ideal candidate to maintain the bar set by The Dark Knight trilogy, preserving its tone and atmosphere.

But if you want to make a DC fan laugh, tell them we live in a society… The time has come to expose the final myth — because the truth is, the reason we think of Affleck as a bad director is Affleck's own fault. Where exactly Affleck sits in the rankings is for you to judge — see our TOP-10 Batman Movies, ranked worst to best.

My earlier words — that Gone Baby Gone was for Affleck not merely a crime drama but an attempt to work through his own traumas, addictions, and past — were not simply a figure of speech. At a certain point, a dark inheritance and adverse external circumstances converged, and Ben broke. There's no desire to turn this piece into a retelling of tabloid headlines, so we'll focus only on the most significant events of the Bostonian's dark decade.

In 2015, Affleck divorced actress Jennifer Garner, with whom he had spent ten years and raised three children. His constant drinking was cited as the cause of the split.

In 2016, his fourth film was released — Live by Night, a crime drama about bootleggers in the early twentieth century. The picture, which on paper looked like a sweeping gangster saga spanning multiple eras and drawing inspiration from Hollywood classics like the original Scarface, turned out to be a muddled, overlong failure. Overstuffed plot lines, problems with internal logic, an excess of genre clichés — the result was just $22 million at the box office against a budget of around $65 million, scathing reviews, and a stain on his directorial reputation.

In 2017, another catastrophe struck: Justice League, which was reworked by Joss Whedon following a tragedy in Zack Snyder's family. The film grossed a humiliating $661 million for a project of its scale and was simultaneously savaged by critics and audiences. That became the point of no return both for Snyder's cinematic universe and for Affleck's solo Batman film.

Meanwhile, headlines about benders, relapses, and rehab stints grew ever more frequent. Affleck openly acknowledged his alcohol problem: "It's a disease I'll have to live with for the rest of my life." He checked into rehabilitation centers several times, often driven there by his ex-wife.

Add to all that the harassment allegations that surfaced in 2017 — and it becomes clear why Affleck's directorial career went off the rails.

It seems now that the worst is behind him. Ben has pulled himself together — he became the face of Dunkin' Donuts, is actively acting (admittedly, mostly in undemanding action films), gives even more active interviews, and keeps producing new memes. In 2023 he returned to directing with Air — the story of how Nike signed a young Michael Jordan. A quite solid, professionally crafted film with an excellent cast, and with his best friend Damon in the lead role. But Air is no Gone Baby Gone: it's a decent, but entirely safe biopic in which there is nothing personal, no central creative purpose. The pattern of good films going quietly unnoticed is nothing new — here are 10 great movies from last year that most people simply missed.

It's hard to predict what comes next. Perhaps Affleck will forever remain in popular culture as the guy from the memes and the man behind the worst Batman and Daredevil in history — or perhaps he'll decide to stare into the abyss one more time and go back to doing what he loves most: making films about traumatized heroes and quoting cinema classics.

It seems unlikely he'll become the new Nolan or Scorsese — but I'm fine with him simply being Ben Affleck. If you want to understand why Nolan became the very benchmark against which everyone else is measured, our TOP-10 Christopher Nolan's Films: Ranked from good to great will answer that question better than any critic.