June 19, 2023 · Watch the official trailer
It seems like every other month, there’s a very underwhelming superhero movie release in theaters.
Marvel has taken major steps backwards since “Avengers: Endgame” and aside from a standalone “The Batman” film, DC has absolutely no idea what it’s doing with its main comic book properties.
The latest iteration of misguided, chaotic, poorly scripted comic book fodder comes in the form of director Andy Muschietti’s “The Flash,” a long-delayed feature film about the world’s fastest man and a key member of DC’s iconic Justice League of America.
A film about The Flash has been long in development with DC hoping to bring the character into its shared universe as early as 2016, but rewrites and directorial changes pushed the film several times until its ultimate release this past weekend.
Much like so many other films in recent years, “The Flash” leans heavily into the world of time-travel, multiple universes and “Back To The Future” references in order to draw box office revenue.
In perhaps the weakest in all of these iterations, “The Flash” uses its embattled star Ezra Miller to play multiple versions of his Barry Allen/The Flash character on screen simultaneously as Barry races back in time in order to stop his mother’s murder to chaotic events.
Miller often is the only actor on screen for large segments of the film, and while there are points where the awkwardness Miller brings to the character provides some comic relief, the film is most just a slog to get through and Miller isn’t able to solely maintain audience interest.
The best parts of “The Flash” come when characters outside of Miller’s Barry Allen are on screen.
The first act of the film features Ben Affleck’s likely final turn as Batman, extending off of Zach Snyder’s “Justice League” and it seems as if Affleck has finally found his footing in the role as he leaves it in the midst of another studio reboot.
“The Flash” also leans heavily into cameos from prior comic book films, much like “Spider-Man: No Way Home.”
It isn’t a spoiler to say that Michael Keaton makes his return from his 1980s run as Batman brought to modern times and Keaton’s eclectic performance is singlehandedly the best thing about the entire film even though he’s just spouting catchphrases and performing standard dialogue. Keaton brings a cool factor that the rest of “The Flash” simply does not have.
For a film called “The Flash,” the action sequences with the titular character are incredibly monotonous, repetitive and fail to have the dazzling special effect in the same way that Fox was able to pull off with a similarly fast character, Quicksilver, in “X-Men: Days of Future Past.”
Even though the screenplay has a muddled quality to it after the film has lived in development hell for the better part of a decade, the most egregious flaws in “The Flash” come from its chaotic CGI, which does not look clean or crisp and has a very disorienting sensation to it that make action sequences uninteresting to watch and completely disengaging the audience from the narrative at several key moments.
Muschietti and his production team strangely treat the several iterations of Batman and other heroes scattered throughout the film with greater visual flair than Allen, which is a shame given how unique the powers of The Flash can make for dynamic cinema.
Because it is a DC property under the purview of Warner Brothers, “The Flash” will live on in perpetuity on the company’s Max streaming service, where completionists of DC’s filmography should actually see the film rather than wasting time and money going to the theaters.
This is especially true given that it’s unclear if anything in “The Flash” will matter in the long run as the entire narrative could be dropped and rebooted at any moment.
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