The Dark Herald Does Not Recommend: The Flash
Maybe there is an alternate universe where DC films are getting the respect they deserve. In that world, someone at Warner Brothers had the sense god gave a chicken and made a film series based on the Justice League cartoons of the 00s. In that world, there was a proper build-up for the longest and best-established superheroes in comics, Henry Cavil has had a great run as the Man of Steel, Batman is dark and engaging, Zach Snyder was never involved with DC, and Ezra Miller never left the Indie scene.
But we live in this world and here The Flash ran into a cliffside at light speed.
The superhero genre is finally out of gas, and everyone can thank Disney/Marvel for that. The market has been ludicrously oversaturated and that was just the baseline circumstance this movie was launched in.
The Snyderverse was a hideously misguided idea led by a man who wanted Batman raped in prison (that’s a quote). Snyder personally loathes heroism and mainstreamed the revolting practice of deconstructing superheroes. He really would have been a much better choice to headline The Boys rather than Justice League.
After his films failed, the short-lived Hamadaverse took shape. Named for the ill-fated head of DC films Walter Hamada, the Hamadaverse was a child born of misandry and Wokeness, and it was meant to come to life after The Flash was released.
The Flash is based on the DC Comics crossover event, Flash Point. The term crossover event tells you it was yet another reboot of the DC Universe. Although, it was a better story than usual. Barry Allen gets a bug up his ass about his mom and in defiance of every time travel story ever told decides to go back in time and save her. Bad move Barry. He comes back to the present to find a war between the Atlanteans and the Amazons is destroying the Earth, Bruce Wayne was murdered in the alley instead of his parents who are respectively Murder Batman (Thomas Wayne) and Mrs. Joker (Martha Wayne). Superman has been stuck in a red-sun prison by the government. Everything ends in disaster, so Barry goes back in time to let his mother die. When he gets back to the present, the DC Comics universe has been rebooted.
Flash Point is a good enough story that it has been shot a few times. The version truest to the comics was the animated film. The Flash TV show did their own version, it wasn’t any good but it was waaaay better than this thing.
The original plan had been to use The Flash to dispose of the Snyderverse and replace it with the Hamadaverse. Or perhaps more accurately, the Sarnoffverse because Ann Sarnoff appears to have made her impact deeply felt on that nightmare world that would have been.
At the end of Hamadaverse Flash, the reset would have seen Michael Keaton as Batman acting as mentor to diverse Batgirl, and Henry Cavil banished in favor of Sasha Calle’s Supergirl. Wonder Woman and Aquaman would stay the same. The many personalities within Ezra Miller’s head would have remained as the Flash as he was flavor of the month two years ago.
David Zaslav wisely opted to strangle this monstrosity in its crib. Sadly, The Flash had already finished shooting.
When Zaslav started his massive tax write-down there was some surprise that The Flash wasn’t included. Two reasons were in play, one he couldn’t make the numbers work and two, the working reel of The Flash was testing surprisingly well. Enough so, that stakeholders in Snyderverse properties were floating the Idea of Ezra Miller remaining The Flash. And if it had hauled in over a billion all would have been forgiven.
It won’t.
I’m six hundred words into this review and I haven’t talked about the movie yet.
Given that it was reliably rumored to be testing well I was expecting more from this film than it delivered.
The film opens with Barry doing the Justice League’s light work. He comically saves a bunch of babies. I was hoping this DC movie wouldn’t try to constantly yuk it up like a Marvel movie. Wrong call, this thing is loaded with gags that destroy any attempt to build tension in what should be a fairly dark film. The Flash runs so fast he enters the Speed Force and realizes he can alter time. His Dad is coming up for parole it isn’t looking good for him. He was falsely convicted of murdering his wife, Barry’s mother. Barry talks things over with the last appearance of Batfleck and ignoring the sound advice of one of the richest men in the world, goes back in time and saves his mother.
When he comes back to his own time, or at least 2013, his mom is alive, his folks are together and there is a second Barry Allen running around. Well, that’s an issue but there is a worse one, somehow his mom being alive has deleted Superman from existence, so there is no one to stop General Zod when he shows up to destroy Earth. There was some version of this movie with an explanation for Kal-El’s ablation, but it wasn’t provided in this one.
With nowhere to turn, Barry goes to see Bruce who as you all know is now the Michael Keaton version. He’s retired because he won his war on crime. Good for him!
However, it doesn’t change the fact that all of Batman’s enemies just want to rob a bank or kill someone. He’s really not the guy you call if the world is coming to an end. Although, in this case, he figured out that the government was holding a Kryptonian in a secret black site. Barry assumes it’s Superman. But surprise it’s Supergirl. Kind of. I guess.
I’ll be fair to Sasha Calle, she did a decent job with Supergirl. She wasn’t there for long but what was there was competently delivered. Not at all a Woke Girl Boss. That said, I don’t know how much of her performance was cut and no one may ever know because this thing is a patchwork movie, clearly and obviously scrapbooked together.
Batman and Supergirl fight Zod and get killed. Barry goes back into the Speed Force to try a fix things and fails repeatedly. This is the point where you get all the fan service cameos. Finally accepting the reality of the situation, he goes back in time and lets his mother die which kind of fixes things. His Batman is now George Clooney and Drogo is still Aquaman.
Yes, I have left out a lot because there was never any reason to include it in the first place. The tone is never right throughout this movie. There are way too many jokes for a story as dark as Flash Point is supposed to be. They were too determined to Marvel things up enough to pick a mood and stick with it. Consequently, they managed to make a worse movie than Marvel.
As I said, this thing has been Frankensteined together in the cutting room.* The story is barely coherent in any serious way. Given the ludicrous degree of knob slobbery the trade media is giving Ezra Miller’s performance I thought that it would be good but I honestly think they may as well have hired Grant Guston. Michael Keaton did deliver a good performance as Batman and is the only (and do mean only) reason I’m not giving this movie a lower rating.
The biggest problem you are going to have with a scrapbooked movie is the CG effects. CGI is a complicated process with many layers and handoffs. You only need one guy to get something wrong and everybody else is stuck polishing a turd. These things need to be planned well in advance. Since this movie was known to be getting recuts right to the last minute, the effects were not allowed to achieve minimum competence. The CG is honestly worse than Marvel’s and that’s saying something. At first, people thought Cavil wasn’t in this at all, but he was, he was just unrecognizable. It feels like someone went to the effects guys and said, “Zaslav says you’re done. There’s no more money to be had, so whatever you’ve got just render it out. We’re done here.” The results have been compared to The Scorpion King which is unfair to The Mummy Returns because that was shot twenty-two years ago, (god I’m old), it is completely unacceptable to have this expensive of a superhero movie with baby’s first effects kit doing the CG. It was awful.
If you wanted to see cameos, this film has got them. Adam West, George Reeve, Christopher Reeve, Helen Slater, Nicholas Cage, Burt Ward, Caesar Romero, and screw it I’m done with this list.
The sad truth about this movie is that it never stood a chance. I was honestly startled when I first heard that it had started shooting. Multiverses are always a terrible idea under the best of circumstances because there is never any dramatic tension because you know nothing is at stake. And that was before Marvel utterly saturated the superhero market with these damn things. Audiences are sick of multiverses.
Michael Shanon’s Zod was a waste of screen time. Sasha Calle was okay. Ezra Miller was as likable as he’s ever been, which is to say not at all. Michael Keaton turned in enough of a performance that I can recommend seeing it… On streaming, or commercial TV. But it’s not worth a trip to the theater.
The Dark Herald does not recommend. (2/5)
*For the record, I coined that term before the Critical Drinker when I was describing the Rise of Skywalker.
