Summary
You wanna get nuts? The DCEU gets nuts for a trip back through its own history, doubling down on its star, and jumping aboard the Multiverse.
“The Multiverse,” remarks one Bruce Wayne. “It’s all just a crapshoot.” He might be right, but it was the one defining feature of the DC Comics universe for decades. It tied together colliding worlds, various crises on infinite earths, and more reboots than we can count. Yet when it came to the movies, everyone from the MCU to Michelle Yeoh beat them to it.
It’s taken a while for Warner to build up enough cache to even attempt something as ambitious, at least on paper, as THE FLASH. After all, Sony had to reboot Spider-Man three times before they started mashing them up. The DC Extended Universe’s path here has been just as rocky, from a legally embattled star, to cancelled projects and a string of critically and commercially disappointing films. Yes, we’re looking at you Black Adam and Shazam: Fury of the Gods.
Yet THE FLASH, by its very nature and origin, is about tying together loose ends. Christina Hodson’s screenplay is loosely based on the DC Comics Flashpoint event of 2011, and has previously been adapted in CW’s The Flash series and as the DC Universe Animated Original Movie Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox. That series rebooted the whole DCU for a line-wide reboot, but not before having some fun with the characters.
In Hodson and director Andy Muschietti’s version, Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) is feeling less than stellar about his lot in life. Between being on clean-up duty for the Justice League, and his dad’s (Ron Livingston) pending retrial for a wrongful conviction of murdering Barry’s mother, he is feeling less than valued. When Barry discovers he can use the Speed Force to time travel, he goes back to save his mother, despite Bruce Wayne/Batman’s (Ben Affleck) warnings.
In doing so, he creates a whole new timeline. Landing in an alternate past, he has to seek the aid of his younger self, a retired Batman (Michael Keaton), and Superman’s cousin Kara Zor-El (Sasha Calle) to stop this world’s General Zod (Michael Shannon) from finishing the work he started in Man of Steel.
Let’s start by addressing the elephant in the room: the special effects. If you’re reading this, chances are pretty good you’ve either heard some things about the CGI or have witnessed their uniqueness for yourself. There are some stellar sequences, and the doubling of Barry in almost every scene is flawless. The desert-based climactic battle is actually an effective use of multiple effects elements.
Still, when it goes wrong, it all goes very wrong very quickly. It begins with a nightmarishly rendered rescue sequence, a literal shower of CG babies and a dog. Yet this pales in comparison to the Speed Force sequences, where barely rendered versions of Miller and other DCEU characters loom over audiences like bootleg parade balloons. For a film that reportedly cost in excess of $200 million, one wonders where all the cash went.
We can sort of put the effects to one side though, as it’s not the biggest of the film’s problems. The cameos can be quite cool in places, but once they’ve occurred, everything else is just grist for the mill. Perhaps suffering in proximity to Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, THE FLASH doesn’t learn Spidey’s most fundamental lesson: with great intellectual property comes greater responsibility. Hell, the 1989 Batmobile is used as nothing more than an armchair for one of the Ezra Millers.
Which isn’t to say that THE FLASH hasn’t found room to have a little fun. I will be the first (or 500th) to admit how cool it is to see Keaton back playing Batman, complete with little stings from Danny Elfman’s score. There’s a recurring gag about Eric Stoltz playing Marty McFly in Back to the Future in this universe. Even watching Barry suit-up from his Flash ring made this fanboy smile.
The issue is that there’s very little connective glue or character development for anyone. Barry simply reacts most of the time, often to himself, and Miller’s choices with the role simply aren’t charismatic enough to justify two of them on the screen. Keaton’s presence doesn’t make a massive amount of sense, but he at least seems to be having fun with what he’s given. Calle steps into the Supergirl role confidently, and we can look forward to her solo film, but her portrayal isn’t allowed to do more than a series of angry punches.
In the end, we’ve just seen it all done before, and better. CW’s Crisis on Infinite Earths came closer to capturing the joy of the shared history of these characters, and one has to wonder if Flashpoint’s comic book plotting would have worked better here. In the text, it’s an alternate Thomas Wayne who has lost Martha and Bruce to crime and subsequently becomes Batman. The denouement sees him give Barry a letter to take home to Bruce to give him closure, which brings the Bat’s dark journey full circle. The film goes as far as referencing Bruce and Barry’s joint pain of parental loss, but it’s never developed any further. Like many things in the movie, it’s a missed opportunity.
If the closure of the DCEU is the point of THE FLASH, then time will tell. In fact, it’s hard to know why this movie survived the great Warner/Discovery cull when Batgirl was deemed to be too unmarketable for the cinema. After all, it too had a Keaton Batman. With James Gunn now helming the next chapter of the universe, we’re yet to see how much this plays into the franchise’s future. For now, it is stubbornly looking backwards, trying to keep a foot in each camp. For a character who runs a lot, surely they know that’s a trip hazard.
2023 | USA | DIRECTOR: Andy Muschietti | WRITERS: Christina Hodson | CAST: Ezra Miller, Sasha Calle, Michael Shannon, Ron Livingston, Maribel Verdú, Kiersey Clemons, Antje Traue, Michael Keaton | DISTRIBUTOR: Universal (AUS), Warner (US) | RUNNING TIME: 144 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 15 June 2023 (AUS), 16 June 2023 (US)
