Aqib Rasheed
It’s almost perfect that The Flash and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (ATSV) release within one month of each other. These comic book tentpoles from rival studios revolve around the concept of the multiverse, breaking it open to many realities, worlds, and surprise cameos. Furthermore, these two movies represent the current state of big-budget filmmaking.
One of these movies serves as an example of what the industry can be and what it can achieve with a creative vision and a desire to do something that has never been done before. One of these movies is a perfect template for how multiversal stories should be executed. One of these movies is the perfect antidote to the superhero fatigue many people have been feeling recently. Lastly, one of these movies is a near-perfect masterpiece.
I can confidently say Andy Muschietti’s The Flash is not that movie. It’s not even close to being that film. It thinks it’s as groundbreaking as ATSV but they don’t even reside in the same realm. In fact, this latest DCEU entrant continues the studio’s cold streak of making juvenile and horrible-looking blockbusters, proving that a reset is the only way to keep this franchise afloat.
Inspired by the Flashpoint comic run, Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) feels the burden of being the Flash whilst trying to live a normal life, which includes working at a forensic lab and trying to prove his father’s innocence in court. When he learns to time travel, Barry decides to take matters into his own hands and try to prevent his mother’s death in the first place. As he messes with the space-time continuum, Barry finds himself in an alternate reality with no metahumans and must rely on another version of himself, an older Batman (Michael Keaton), and Supergirl (Sasha Calle) to fix the timeline.
Before diving into any story or acting issues, it must be said this is one of the worst-looking movies of all time. We’re living in a time where studios are putting pressure on VFX houses to rush their work resulting in poor CGI. The past few MCU movies are the biggest culprit of this featuring incredibly weak and shoddy special effects. Compared to The Flash, however, the recent MCU movies look like Avatar: The Way of Water—that’s how off-putting the visuals are in this tedious film.
Filming and depicting super speed can’t be easy, but the DCEU has chosen the worst way to capture it. Any time Barry enters the speed force, any viewer will be able to tell Miller was running on a treadmill in front of a green screen. There are many running scenes and none of them are executed well. In the opening fight, Barry has to save babies that have fallen from a high-rise building and these are the fakest-looking babies this side of American Sniper. It’s impossible to ignore CGI when virtually every shot has some sort of special effects component.
Whenever Barry time travels, he freezes in this odd council-like setting, surrounded by figures in his life (sometimes multiple versions of that same person or event). This is easily the ugliest setting by far. The people in this area are digitally rendered almost to look like claymation figures. I can’t tell if this was intentional or not, but it looks appalling and will take the viewer out of the movie multiple times.
Even if, by some miracle, one is able to get past the egregiously bad CGI, the movie is so weak on story. Similar to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, The Flash teases the audience with the prospect of the Multiverse and the insanity that comes with it. In reality, you only visit one different reality thoroughly in which the craziest thing that happens is Eric Stoltz being the actual star of the Back to the Future franchise. Look, if you’re gonna do a multiverse story, then you have to commit to the bit—show us true madness with tons of worlds and make them wild and weird. Everything Everywhere All At Once and ATSV are the definitive multiversal movies because they embrace the craziness and chaotic nature of intersecting timelines.
The narrative drags because there’s not a single compelling villain to be found which sucks any tension out of the movie. Sure, General Zod (Michael Shannon) is there but he barely has any screen time to leave an impact. As a result, The Flash drudges through every scene, trying to justify the characters’ motives but failing to do so successfully. Initially, you think this movie is ditching origin story tropes since Barry has honed his powers, but alas, there’s another Barry who doesn’t have his powers yet, and the lazy origin story beats are stronger than ever, There’s nothing special about this movie—you’ve seen a version of this one way or another.
The script and direction don’t help the actors who deliver stiff performances. It’s hard to talk about Ezra Miller given their long list of controversies but from an on-screen perspective, the actor is perfectly adequate. Miller only has two modes—hyper Barry and sad Barry—and is fine as both. The alternate Barry, however, is one of the most obnoxious characters seen on film in a while. It’s a grating character with a grating performance. It’s oddly what one would imagine Miller to be like in real life.
Michael Keaton gets the short end of the stick. He was always an underrated Batman and, unfortunately, he isn’t given good material to do justice to his iconic performance. At many points during this 144-minute slog, I wondered what exactly Keaton was doing in this movie and what purpose he deserved. Fumbling Keaton’s return as Batman will be one of the DCEU’s greatest failures.
The other actors—Calle, Shannon, Ben Affleck, Clemons—suffer poorly written roles with little to no characterization. Though, it’s always a joy to see Affleck on screen and perhaps the movie needed more Batfleck to be considered a competent or, simply, entertaining movie.
It’s hard to tell whether I’d consider The Flash a disappointment or not. On one hand, it’s a big-budget DCEU movie about the multiverse featuring the long-awaited return of an iconic character. On the other hand, the franchise’s track record since The Suicide Squad has been suspect, to say the least, and this regime hasn’t proved they can be trusted with such big characters and/or storylines. Here’s to hoping James Gunn can swoop in and clean up this mess. Otherwise, he’ll have to enter the speed force, go back in time, and prevent these bad movies from being made.
