Well, The Flash is now on streaming, and I finally got the chance to see it. I have to say, I’m glad I didn’t see it in the cinema. That would have been a huge waste of my time, going to the cinema, parking, buying confectionery…
The Story
I’m not going to go into massive spoilers. Overall, the story is about Barry Allen, played by that loveable rogue Ezra Miller, trying to stop his mother from dying in the past. He has found he can run so fast he can run through time.
This didn’t work for me. We have seen a lot of time travel movies and there are usually holes in the plot. I think one of the best movies for doing it right was Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home. They had to slingshot around the sun and gain enough speed to travel through time. This worked going forward, but it didn’t explain going back in time.
In The Flash, you find out very early on, Barry can run so fast that he ends up in a… well… control room of time and space. This was stupid, that there was a bubble in space and he could just wander around and pick where he wanted to jump in time too. I don’t think I’m explaining this very well, but it was silly.
While Barry is in this time control room, he gets knocked out of it by ‘something’ and ends up in time and space at the point where he first got his powers. He goes to see his mom, who is still alive at this point in time. Another, younger, Barry is there, and it leads to all kinds of hilarity.
It turns out that older Barry interferes with his younger self getting his powers. This means old Barry is now powerless and young Barry has the powers now. It also turns out that he’s in another multiverse. This annoyed me. In pretty much all other time travel movies, they all stay in the same universe.
Spoilers
Somehow, in The Flash, there is now a multiverse just like in Spider-Man: No Way Home. Batman is now Michael Keaton, Superman never made it to Earth, Aquaman was never born and Cyborg isn’t Cyborg. Why has all this happened? To make the plot move forward, don’t question it, just accept it. The weird thing is, Batman seems to understand timelines and multiverses, so he explains it all.
Zod still turns up though, looking for Superman, but Superman is now Superwoman, Kal-El’s cousin or something. Zod still needs the codex thing set up in Man of Steel, which they then completely forgot about for the rest of the Snyderverse, go figure.
End Of Spoilers… For A Moment
The overall story isn’t bad, but the problem is the inclusion of the ‘memberberries. The only reason they brought back Keaton was for the fans to point at, and remember. It didn’t work on many levels though. Keaton’s Batman was great for fighting low-level punks in Gotham City. Now he’s fighting Zod and other aliens in a mass battle. It just wasn’t the same.
With better writing, this movie could have worked. There are moments of greatness, but overall, it’s covered with many layers of dog shite. There is that Taika Waititi-type humor all of the way through and it doesn’t work, ever. The jokes, and comedy, are all forced and just awful. I love how DC never wanted to be like Marvel, but The Flash is full-on Marvel. Unfortunately, it is Thor: Love & Thunder Marvel.
The Cast
Weirdly, Miller is actually very good in this, well, half the time he is as older Barry. The younger Barry is a retarded moron who’s on the autistic spectrum. Older Barry works as a criminal investigator. Younger Barry couldn’t find his ass with both hands. They were far too different from each other.
This brings me to Superwoman. Mild spoiler, but Henry Cavill isn’t in this. Antje Traue from Man Of Steel is back as Faora-Ul. Sasha Calle plays Kara, Kal-El’s cousin. She is not all that hot in the movie, she acts like a grumpy teenager and has a mopey, emo haircut. She is the polar opposite of Henry Cavill. If she is the new Super-person in the new DCU, I’m out.
Keaton is good as Batman, but then again, he’s good in everything he does. It’s a pity he’s only there for fan service.
The CG
People have mentioned the CG, and overall, it’s perfectly OK. The problem with CG is that when it’s bad, it’s really noticeable, and there are many noticeable moments in this. In the time control room, all of the characters look like cartoons.
The opening sequence made me think of when slow motion is done correctly. Quicksilver, in the kitchen scene and when he saves everyone from the X-Men house blowing up. Both of these scenes are amazing. Of course, there is CG, but you just don’t see it.
In the opening of The Flash, there is a scene where he rescues babies from a collapsing hospital. You can definitely say that no babies were hurt in the making of this movie since all of the babies were CG.
Spoilers again, but the end of the movie is an utter embarrassment. You see other multi-verses, including Christopher Reeves as Superman and Helen Slater as Supergirl, Adam West as Batman and even, wait for it, Nic Cage as the Superman that never was. It worked in Spider-Man: No Way Home, but it didn’t work in The Flash at all.
What made it worse was the CG of all of these characters looked like it was made for a video game. Not a very good video game. In fact, I’ve seen far better graphics in a videogame than this. It was terrible.
Overall
I won’t lie, I watched The Flash knowing it was potentially not very good and I went with low expectations. Even with such low expectations, it was still really, really bad. I got the feeling that this wasn’t written, but instead, they had a focus group with a bunch of 8 years olds. They had them all shout out things they wanted and just went with it.
“Batman should fight Zod in a plane with guns and missiles. Superman should be a girl. There should be two Flashes and they both run around.”
You get the idea. The movie is all over the place with no real aim or anything to really focus on. As I said, there is a decent idea underneath it all, but it’s very badly executed. The only reason it is worth the watch is to see how bad it is, a hate-watch, if you will.
The Flash is streaming and probably best avoided.
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