On paper, The Flash could’ve been the thing that kept the DCEU afloat. But even people on the Titanic knew that when the water got too high, they were screwed. And like the Titanic, there were so many things that could’ve kept the franchise going under. The pandemic didn’t help and the release of the second Wonder Woman and The Suicide Squad on streaming services hurt the movie’s financial chances.
And the merger of Warner Bros. with Discovery resulted in the end of Batgirl as they could cut their losses. My guess is that following all of Ezra Miller’s legal troubles, Warner Bros. Discovery and DC Studios realized they had a problem on their hands. As the titular character and his alter ego, Barry Allen, Miller is in a good majority of the scenes and even including many scenes where there are two of him. That basically means he’s carries the movie. And while the much anticipated return of Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne/Batman is a great delight, he doesn’t come in until about halfway through the movie.
But I think the biggest problem is that to paraphrase South Park, “Marvel did it!” When production began on The Flash a good two years ago, the buzz was all over Hollywood that a third Spider-Man movie with Tom Holland returning was going to pull in characters from the Sam Raimi trilogy and the ill-fated Amazing Spider-Man movies. Rumors persisted that Tobey Maguire, who had kept a low profile in movies for most of the 2010s, and Andrew Garfield, who’s career had exploded, were going to return. Sony and Marvel kept it under wraps as best as they could even though trailers showed that Alfred Molina as Otto Octavius and Willem Dafoe as Norman Oscorp were returning.
While I have issues with the first two Holland Spidey flicks, I found No Way Home to be a fun-filled great movie that was just what we all needed after about 18 months of the Covid-19 pandemic. Garfield had reportedly lied to his closest people, including Emma Stone, and yet his appearance in the movie is handled so well I can imagine the cheers in the audiences. Marvel also did the smart thing by bringing in Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock reprising the role from the series Daredevil, even if some audience members missed the reference.
If DC had pulled this tactic and had Grant Gustin, who played the role on The CW show, it might have helped. But some people may have seen it as a copy of Spider-Man even though I get the impression Miller as Barry/Flash has been DC’s attempt to give viewers a younger superhero. A lot of the issues with the DCEU is how it’s tried to mimic the MCU but I think to some degree, not having too many crossovers has helped. I was no fan of Man of Steel or Batman v. Superman (but found the Director’s Cut a lot better). The theatrical Justic League was terrible but the Snydercut was wonderful. Bird of Prey and the first Shazam! were fun movies and I loved the first Wonder Woman.
But it seems the hate was already there following problems with Suicide Squad which James Gunn rectifiied with The Suicide Squad. Both Joker and The Batman exist on a different plane but I felt Joker was overrated while The Batman is a wonderful dark story on pair with The Dark Knight. And Aquaman proves that Jason Momoa can make Amber Heard somewhat tolerable.
Yet The Flash seems to be a huge clusterfuck quagmire of so many problems (some of its owns and others unrelated). It’s 2023. We’ve subjected to dozens of superhero movies since X2: X-Men United and Blade 2 proved that it can be done in a way that works well. I wasn’t really a fan of the first X-Man and found the first Blade in 1998 to be overrated. That’s over two decades of all these movies like X-Men, Fantastic Four, The Dark Knight Trilogy and whatever the hell Green Lantern was supposed to be.
There is a shitload of “Superhero Fatigue” and it seems they follow the same plot with the obligatory bridge action scene followed by a huge CGI special effects barroom brawl spectacular at the end. Very few filmmakers are able to get to the heart of what made the comic book movies so spectacular. That’s why I think The Dark Knight is so wonderful. It ends so differently. The Joker is captured by Batman, who has to save Jim Gordon and his family from Harvey Dent who’s gone mad following an accident. There was no big bangs and no special effects just the performances of Christian Bale, Gary Oldman and Aaron Eckhart.
The Flash opens with a nice action sequence (involving a bridge rescue, of course) in which Barry helps the Ben Affleck Batman stop a robbery in Gotham City. Jeremy Irons appears as Alfred Pennyworth in a role that he kinda phones in, I wouldn’t be surprised if he performed all his work within a day for a big paycheck. Gal Gadot reappears as Diane Prince/Wonder Woman for a nice cameo.
But the crux of the plot involves Barry dealing with trying to prove his father, Henry (Ron Livingston replacing Billy Crudup from Justice League), didn’t kill his mother, Nancy (Maribel Verdu) who was murdered about 20 years earlier when he was a child. Henry had gone to the store to get some canned tomatoes and Barry went upstairs. When Henry came back, someone went into the house and killed Nora in the kitchen with a knife. Because he had accidentally touched the handle, Henry was convicted.
Barry uses the Speeds Force and discovers he can go back in time, despite Bruce telling him this can be dangerous. Yet, he does it anyway and stops Henry from going to the store, thus preventing Nora’s murder. Instead of focusing on who may have killed Nora, the movie switches gears and has Barry use the Speed Force to go back to 2013 where he discovers Nora is alive and his parents don’t notice he’s a decade older. And he interacts with his younger self who looks the same except having scraggly longer hair because all the kids did back in 2013.
It’s here with the movie begins to lose some interest as we discover in this alternative universe, there is no Aquaman, WonderWoman nor Superman. There’s a great humorous cameo about Aquaman I won’t ruin. But Barry lives in an apartment with other people who drop pop culture references I almost expected Deadpool to show up. Apparently, Marty McFly was played by Eric Stoltz and only Stoltz in Back to the Future. (Considering Avengers: Endgame dropped a reference to BTTF, this is just lazy writing.)
Yet, there is a Batman and unless you’ve been living on a rock on Mars with your eyes closed and fingers in your ears, it’s none other than Michael Keaton reprising the role as an older man who has turned into more of the recluse he was in the first two. He’s hung up the cape and cowl as he says it’s not needed anymore. But General Zod (Michael Shannon) has come to Earth, because it’s 2013. Both Barrys work with Tim Burton-Batman to free Kara Zor-El/Supergirl (Sasha Calle) from a facility in Siberia.
It’s nice to see Keaton return to the role and at 71, he’s still got it. Some of the criticism has been that Keaton’s Bruce Wayne was too reclusive in contrast to the comics. And the filmmakers use that to their advantage here. Yet the third act is very muddled as it involves one huge battle between the Barrys, Supergirl and Batman and the special effects aren’t too impressive. Going back to the beginning, there’s a sequence in which Barry/Flash saves a natal ward of babies with horrible special effects and might have been more impressive if Quicksilver didn’t do something similar in X-Men: Apocalypse.
This whole movie feels like half of it was copied from better superhero stories. It also doesn’t help that Miller is kinda annoying as Barry/Flash. He’s been playing this role since a small cameo in the first Suicide Squad but when he had the rest of the Justice League on the screen, he could be taken in small doses. But yet, we even have two of them here and that just makes him even more irritating, even the older getting frustrated with the younger. Even Gandhi would’ve given Barry a good old-fashioned trip to the woodshed and seeing Miller flash his shit-eating grin so many times knowing what he’s done in real life make him hard to empathize with.
The movie never really explains how Synderverse-Zod and Burtonverse-Batman exists together. And the conclusion where we see references to other DC characters, including Nicolas Cage as Superman from the abandoned Superman Lives. All in all, it feels like it worked better as an idea that looked good on paper and everyone was enthused when they pitched it or brought it up during discussion. All the references to pop culture things like Cage as Supes and Stoltz as Marty McFly read like a scene from SNL‘s The Chris Farley Show as we’re supposed to imagine how “awesome” it is.
I give the movie credit for squeezing in an origin story in a clever way. Yet I felt the movie went through so much rewrites and changes, along with the news of Miller’s legal troubles caused the moive to be delayed. Reportedly Henry Cavill had been hired to reprise his role as Superman/Clark Kent but it was later cut. Also, coming after Black Adam and Shazam: Fury of the Gods, two movies that didn’t really impress me, nor anyone else for that matter, it’s hard to get people in the theaters.
And let’s face it, the MCU along with how Disney has over-saturated it with TV shows, didn’t really help. There’s the blueprints of a very good movie here but I agree with James Gunn, who has been named co-chair of DC Studios, that a lot of these movies are going into production with no set ending. However, Gunn praised The Flash. And not to give much away, there’s hints that The Flash may be the transition into the D.C. Comics Universe or DCU. But hopefully, Gunn and co-chair Peter Safran can make things look better.
Blue Beetle has received good reviews but doesn’t look to be a big blockbuster. And the Aquaman sequel may be just as good as the first. But time will tell on that one. The Flash isn’t a bad movie, but it’s not a good one. I could probably watch it again, but I’m not really wanting to watch it again like the better superhero movies.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 