THE FLASH: 2nd Opinion

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This contribution comes from long, long, long-time Outposter and one of the original; gang who left a certain movie website all those years ago on that glorious night of The Bannening – Poopy Pants. He has seen this week’s most talked-about movie and he has something of a different opinion to EggyWeggs, and his unbridled hatred of all things DC that doesn’t come from Zack Snyder. So what did he think of The Flash?

The Flash – 2nd Opinion

These days, I very rarely get excited about a movie release, but Michael Keaton coming back as Batman? Cmon’ and take my fucking money you WB suite-wearing think-tank bitches.

We were robbed of Michael Keaton, not by Schumacher or Kilmer, but by Tim Burton himself. Batman ’89 was clearly a fluke, shadow directed by a producer. I got chills being back in this Batman ’89 world. Burton could have kept us there, but he’s a shameful hack fraud.

We’ve all been waiting for a ‘real’ Flash movie since the 90’s TV pilot, which was right at the same time as Batmania. Now, 34 years later, here is a Flash movie, with 1989 Batman. It’s fucking weird man! Everything in this movie is weird. It’s a great origin movie for Flash without being an origin movie. It’s a great Affleck Batman movie, without being an Affleck Batman movie. It’s a great Michael Keaton Batman movie without being Michael Keaton Batman movie. And it is quite possibly the best time travel movie ever!

Spoilers For The Flash

The action scenes are an exercise in good character development. Flash traverses different cities and landscapes and you get a real feel for the different locations that the different superheroes live in. He’s performing incredible feats of heroism, while at the same time getting annoyed about being forced to catch the falling debris caused by Batman, as well as getting pissy that he’s starved for calories and needs to take a Flash-style speed break for junkfood as babies are falling around him. I loved it!

We get a good look at Ben Affleck’s Batman & Bruce Wayne. He is gruff and angsty as hell. I wish we had a proper full movie with him. There’s something a little sad that. We find out why Barry’s father is in Prison… or maybe it was just me who found out? I had no idea. But it’s a real issue for Flash and in a running rage of being unable to help, Flash enters a time warp.

Let me just say, I love time travel movies and I’ve devoted quite a few drinking and smoking nights to philosophical discussions on the subject. The time travel effect, for me, was unexpected and awesome. This is a very cartoony movie, and I don’t mean the CGI, I mean the script and the direction and the music. I appreciate all that This is, after all, a comic book film. I’m not a fan of Snyder or the Nolan real-world and darker vision. I like the bright colours and the urgency of racing against the clock.

Flash has this optical illusion effect like he’s running in slow motion, and as he goes faster it looks like he’s going backward. All his experiences start to whiz past in a really creative spherical time warp. It’s really quite good, and this is where a lot of the rubbery bad cgi complaints will come from, but I really didnt care about, because it’s surreal as fuck and it makes a clear point about what is happening. I can’t think of a better time-traveling effect.

He changes the past, and while it’s not really apparent at the time, things are fucked up. It should be apparent because we have two versions of the Flash and Michael Keaton is suddenly Batman – who does a fine job explaining the skewed timeline – but enjoy it while you can, because make no mistake, things are about to get more fucked up than we could even imagine. And then it’s going to get a lot worse.

Ultimately, Zod turns up but Superman is nowhere to be found. Supergirl can’t find him. They can’t win without Superman. For all the great action that takes place, it becomes apparent this whole fucked up situation simply can not be unfucked, they desperately try even harder to unfuck it, but it just makes it even more fucked up to the point it starts to affect alternate timelines. This is where the convergences give us a slew of rubbery cameos.

It’s interesting to me that I didn’t much care for Spider-Man No Way Home and its bleak, world-destroying ending. It was kinda ugly and depressing for me. But here, in The Flash, DC got it right. It was surprisingly touching and actually felt like the end of the current DC universe. It’s gone. Done. Over, and poor Flash is stuck with Clooney Batman.

4 and half out of 5. Fuck y’all, I enjoyed it.