The Flash (2023)
A Movie for, Well, No One
I intend to add movie reviews to my regular writing line up, alongside my already appearing book reviews. Like the books I write about, these will be a mix of films I’ve watched over the years and things still having their “cultural moment.” This first entry is about as “fresh on the mind” as it can get.
The Flash. Directed by Andy Muschietti, featuring Ezra Miller, Michael Keaton, Sahsa Calle, Michael Shannon, Ron Livingston, Maribel Verdú, Kiersey Clemons, Antje Traue, Ben Afleck, Jeremy Irons, Gal Gadot, and Jason Momoa. Warner Brothers, 2023.
“Not every problem has a solution. Sometimes you just have to let go.” - Maribel Verdú as Nora Allen
It might not be fair to call this a movie review, upon reflection. I don’t intend to be a lot of critical analysis. There has already been a lot of ink spilled in “critical” reviews of The Flash (2023). There were high expectations for the film and few of them became reality. Rather than rehashing a lot of what I have seen elsewhere, I intend here to offer a popular review,1 exploring some things I think the film did right and some things that prove Zach Snyder and James Gunn both should have listened to Nora Allen.
To begin with, the movie’s plot should have been predictable to anyone who has any knowledge of Flash or similar characters. Heck, if you’ve seen something from the Terminator series or even Back to the Future, you should have called this one from the word “go.” By deciding to adapt a film using the Flashpoint storyline from the 2011 comics, the Snyderverse worked itself into a plot hole. Readers cared about Flashpoint because they’d been reading Flash comics for years. The DCEU was only one movie deep when the semi-launched the Justice League, then two more movies later made it official. They were already talking at that point about the stand-alone Flash movie being an adaptation of Flashpoint. Five movies in and the thing needed a reboot.
With this background, Savitar becomes a less strange villain choice. The reviews I’ve seen call him the Dark Flash, and maybe that is what the director intended, but the character is clearly a variant of Savitar. While this version seems inspired by the terrible CW show, the truth is he was the only viable option to make the Flashpoint storyline work given the circumstances. Marvel beat DC to the punch by introducing the multiverse in Loki (2020-) and their subsequent other media. This second preemptive move (the first being launching the Avengers before DC could launch the Justice League) meant using variants of Flash were always going to be problematic. By making a Flash variant the actual villain, instead of trying to introduce Reverse Flash, the film’s plot held together without having to do all kinds of build up or backstory.
A primary problem for the film is a simple one: to do the multiverse right, your audience needs to be invested. This is why The Flash is more about Batman than the titular character. Everyone knows the Batman movies, even if they aren’t a fan of the comics, or cartoons, or video games . . . (you get the point). No one was invested in the DCEU (minus the hardcore Snyderverse fans, who don’t count).2 And the Batman tack worked, quite frankly. Watching Keaton suit up again, diving into Burton’s version one more time, those aspects are the primary draw to the film.
But as much as I loved the nostalgia, it didn’t make for a compelling story. For all the reasons I listed above (and probably more), the story just doesn’t land. And I think that is a real shame because Ezra Miller is talented. While he may not be high on everyone’s “definitive portrayal” list, I think he did a solid job. I’ve never been a fan of Grant Gustin’s portrayal and, while the John Wesley Shipp variant holds a certain nostalgic charm for me, there really haven’t been any live action portrayals to rival Miller’s. Might his personal woes mean the end of his portrayal anyways? Maybe. But people never thought RDJ would mount a comeback either.
I will add that the concept of the film worked for me. In fact, I think the DCEU approach to multiverse stories was better than that of the MCU (the spaghetti illustration is far more interesting to me than the straight lines of Loki’s Kang). Even if it is more interesting, I get the impression people are tired of the whole thing. Marvel only had to contend with the MCU, but DC had the DCAU films which explored the multiverse, the Arrowverse shows which also explored the multiv, and then there was the Snyderverse’s original plan which led to the film under discussion. Gunn has now added the Elseworlds concept, which is effectively more multiverse. I cannot see it being sustainable for storytelling. I’d argue it has hampered DC's comic book storytelling over the last two decades. They've rebooted their whole universe a couple of times in my lifetime, and I don’t think it has made for better stories.
Of course, the human component was not the biggest issue with the film. Quite frankly, it was the CGI. There was way too much of it and it was all too cartoony. This is something that plagued the Snyderverse after Man of Steel (2013) and Wonder Woman (2017). I don’t know how but even Batman vs Superman (2016), which came out in-between them, managed to go way overboard with the computer graphics. I don't know why the Marvel movies have fared better in this realm, but up through Endgame (2019) there is little doubt that the Marvel CGI beat out the DCEU CGI every time. While I haven't seen much MCU content since Moon Knight (2022), I’d wager they’ve managed to handle the animation well enough.3 And The Flash’s multiverse depended so heavily on the CGI, that this is likely to go down as a serious embarrassment. Who cares if it paid homage to Christopher Reeves and Nicolas Cage by using YouTube footage? It was an assault on the eyes and made the moment all the more unreal. I hope Muschietti, Gunn, and everyone else involved will read Longinus’s On the Sublime before making any more films. Or Aristotle’s Poetics. Either one would help.
In the end, it might have been better to just let it all go. Stop trying to squeeze every last penny of any remaining Snyderverse films and admit defeat. Not all problems have a solution, not even money problems. This does make me less excited for Blue Beetle (2023) and any other DCEU films still floating in the ether. While I hope Gunn can get his DCU working eventually, based on how he shaped The Flash, I have my doubts.
This approach is born out of the lengthy text messages I exchange with a friend about movies from time to time. A text thread is not the proper place to expound on anything, but it serves as a nice mini-dialectic session for me.
I admit up front to being a naysayer of the Snyderverse from the beginning. Maybe I’ll write something up one day about why I think Snyder’s approach was terrible. Which it was.
To be honest, I skipped quite a bit after Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021). I’ve seen Moon Knight, but that’s it. It’s crazy to think of how much I haven’t watched in that time. 5 films, 2 TV series, and the Halloween special. You can fall behind awfully quick these days. If story fatigue is a real thing, then I’ve definitely had it since 2019.