Review: The Flash
*sigh* The following review may contain minor spoilers, reader’s discretion is advised.
Welp, we got another superhero movie, and oh boy was it a doozy.
The Flash is the latest and apparently final film in Warner Bros’ DCEU before the whole dang thing gets rebooted for good. It’s also the fifth superhero film to come out this year and it’s definitely not the last. Granted the last two superhero films we’ve had were absolute bangers in their own right, so I guess it’s only natural for a movie to put an end to the current winning streak, and which better movie to do that than the one with one of the most troubled production history I’ve seen in a long time.
The Flash could’ve been worse considering what it went through behind the scenes, but as it stands this film was quite the mess.
The film starts out promising enough; we got some decent humor thrown in and a charismatic performance from residential menace Ezra Miller. But the moment Barry enters the “Speed Force” and we see that poorly rendered CGI Flash running in a goofy manner, I literally guffawed out loud in that crowded theater.
Dear lord was the CGI bad in this one; we got it all: CGI Barrys, CGI babies, CGI animals, CGI cameos, it’s a smorgasbord of every kind of dated CGI imaginable. It doesn’t help that most of the film takes place in broad daylight so the bad CG is in full display here; ironic that the one DCEU film that decides to ditch the dreary gloomy imagery that became a staple in this franchise is the one that suffers for it.
The film’s plot fares no better; when it comes to multiversal timey-whimey mumbo-jumbo this story’s as convoluted and inconsistent as they get. The film sets up a lot of in-universe rules as to how the film’s time travel works and decides to follow none of them; things happen in the story for the sake of plot and stakes to be established. Hell they were hardly able to manage justifying why alternate timeline Batman is played by Michael Keaton instead of Ben Affleck.
The cast of characters overall were pretty scattershot. Ezra Miller as the two Barrys were overall serviceable; Miller was able to hit the emotional beats pretty well and they managed to be pretty entertaining in some scenes. Michael Keaton as Batman is exactly how he played Batman in the Tim Burton movies, only here he’s mainly there for fan service reasons. Sasha Calle as Supergirl was unfortunately nothing more than a plot device to move the film forward, Michael Shannon returns as Zod but without the camp that made him at least fun to watch the first time, and Ben Affleck and some other familiar faces were there to provide fan service while cashing in their last ever DCEU paychecks.
Overall much like its lead actor The Flash was problematic as hell. It’s got some fun action scenes and witty jokes here and there to keep it from being a complete waste of time, but a lot of it’s been done leagues better literally two weeks ago by the far superior Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. There’s also Guardians Vol 3 that’s still in theaters that, while not quite as good as Spider-Verse, is still a lot more fun to watch than this cobbled together mess.
Watch those two movies if you’re looking for some superhero fun in the theater this summer; there’s literally no reason to watch this film unless you’re a die-hard DC fanboy that cares only about brand loyalty, in which case I don’t know what else to say to convince you otherwise. Hopefully the new DC cinematic universe will fare much better when it gets the ball rolling, but until then it’s time to finally put this bipolar universe to rest.
Final Verdict: 3/10