We don’t know if The Flash will become a box-office success or a bomb. But it’s obvious the filmmakers worked hard to craft a masterful superhero film and it’s much better than it deserves to be. However, it’s far less than it should be.
The latest movie in the DC franchise follows Barry Allen (Ezra Miller), a junior Justice Leaguer, as he discovers that he can travel back in time and prevent a family member’s grisly murder from his childhood. It starts with a thrilling scene of Barry saving a dozen babies falling from the sky and ends with a cameo of a past superhero actor. In between is a wild ride, but nothing to make it a true moment of cinema.
Miller’s overstimulated performance is charming, but it is not enough to resolve the tonal clash of the emotional stakes and the interdimensional plot. Michael Keaton’s return to the cowl drops the kinky, barely repressed mania of the Burton films in favor of incongruously cool hand-to-hand combat. This film is filled with skittish energy and humor that feels out of place in the Zack Snyder DC universe. That’s not a bad thing. But it shows how far the movies have evolved from the dark brooding tone DC was stuck in for years. This movie captures the scale of people with otherworldly powers, but it’s also a cheap thrill.
The constant fan service of dropping actors like Nicholas Cage as Superman and Helen Slater as Supergirl is fun. But it doesn’t bother to make them more than glorified cameos.
Several special effects are not as polished as expected from a big-budget film, but it’s a perfectly serviceable and frequently amusing addition to the ever-increasing list of superhero pictures that unfold in multiverses or parallel realities. Barry Allen discovers a replacement Batman, and in place of Superman, there is Supergirl. It’s efficient, pacy, and largely enjoyable stuff. But it pales in comparison to films like Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) and Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022). It even fails to capture the emotion of The Flash CW show.
Superhero movies demand high-flying adventure and nuggets for comic book fans. The speed scenes are reminiscent of Evan Peters’ amazing hyperfast Quicksilver scenes in X-Men: Days of Future Past and its 2016 sequel, X-Men: Apocalypse. Nonetheless, The Flash movie lacks the technical effort it took to create the visuals.
Ezra Miller’s movie begins with fan service and ends with fan service. But it doesn’t try to go beyond that. It’s just trying to squeeze the last dollars from the DC Universe and it shows.
Overall: Skip The Flash in the theaters and watch it on streaming
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="43388 https://thegeektwins.com/?p=43388">1 Comment
Some site on Facebook spoiled that end cameo and at first I thought they had to be lying but I guess since Adam West and Kevin Conroy are dead, Val Kilmer has been ill, and Christian Bale probably wouldn’t do it, who was left? But it seems like a bad joke to pretty much end this version of your “cinematic universe” on.