Review: The Flash (2023)
The pinnacle of soulless content made by corporate committee. I bet Batgirl didn’t kill her mother.
Ah, The Flash. There is a lot to unpack here. It is, for all intents and purposes, the slamming of the lid on the dumpster fire that has been DC’s attempt at a cinematic universe, the DCEU. While there have been a few good to great movies in its ten years of painful existence, the majority have been bad, bland, dumb, or a combination of the three. All this to say that my expectations weren’t exactly above ground level. But you know what? The Flash fits perfectly as the DCEU’s swansong, because it is bad, it is bland, and baby, it is very dumb.
As always, total spoilers below. Not that it matters in this case.
The story itself fits on a napkin. Barry Allen, aka The Flash (a mostly serviceable Ezra Miller, as long as you don’t think about their dickishness for too long) goes back in time to prevent his mother’s murder, screws up reality that way, realizes he can’t fix it, and in the end allows his mother to be murdered slash kills her himself (instead of going to therapy. No, really), and it’s not completely clear whether that actually fixes things. The end. There’s a few Batmen, a Supergirl, and a hint of Wonder Woman in there, but they’re more spices and garnishes than anything substantial.
A simple story is in no way a problem, of course. Even one that has holes in it can work (and let’s be honest, most comic book movie stories have holes in them) as long as it feels coherent. But here, there’s more hole than sense, and that is exacerbated by the pace of the movie, which isn’t just slow, it’s sloooooow.
Slow and shallow wins the race
I’ll admit, if there’s one thing I had expected from a Flash movie, it’s that it’d be zippy. Both Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Baby Driver, for example (no comparison to Edgar Wright is going to be fair, but he’s the best example), have an almost palpable rhythm to their editing, one you can put a metronome next to and I’m pretty sure it will stay in sync for the entire movie. Every cut, every beat, it surges forward, but remains completely comprehensible, because even if you’re not aware of it, that rhythm guides the viewer through the story. The Flash, on the other hand, screeches to a halt every other moment. The first time this happens, literally minutes into the first scene, I kinda got it. They wanted to be funny, and contrasting this speedster with some slow pacing could be fun. But then the first set piece happens, things collapse, people are in danger, and he just stands there, as the music plays dramatically around him. And this happens again and again throughout the movie, both in the big set pieces and in the (relatively) smaller moments: everything stops for a close-up or a wide shot, a dramatic orchestra in the background, and all that lasts a moment or two too long. It’s not zippy, is what I’m saying, it’s not zippy at all.
But a movie is a story, and a story is about characters. Unfortunately, nobody but Barry gets even a little depth. This is probably most evident in Iris West (Kiersey Clemons), Barry’s beau from the comics, who could be removed from the movie with barely any impact. Basically, she shows up, is like ‘hey, I know you from school’ and we learn that he had a crush. When he goes back in time, he meets his 18 year old self, who has a date planned with her that never happens. And at the end she also has a few seconds of being; very zen. She literally could have been a picture.
Round and around
Look, any halfway detailed plot synopsis will be overlong and will sound stupid, because it is stupid. But goddammit if I didn’t do my best to go along with this movie and try to understand it, or at least understand what they were trying to do. Because I have to assume that some snippets of logic still apply, even if there was a multiverse explanation somewhere in the middle by a Batman that ended with ‘it’s a big ol’ mess’. That Batman is played by Michael Keaton and is much older and more retired than Barry’s own Batman, played by Ben Affleck. The only in-universe explanation we get is that ‘big ol’ mess’ and a plate of spaghetti.
Anyway, Barry goes back to the past and saves his mom in a subtle way. On his way back to the future, he is pushed out of time travelling by a weird monster — let’s just call him Reverse Flash, because that’s what the director said — landing him ten years in the past. There he meets his 18 year old self, realizes that this is the night that he got his powers, but he has to intervene to make sure it happens, and in doing so loses his own powers. He loses his powers by being, once again, super slow. Seriously, for being the fastest man alive, he ends up in a lot of trouble that could simply be avoided by taking a timely step to the side. But, honestly, up to this point, I’m still fine with it. It doesn’t make a lot of sense and the causality in the time travelling remains super vague, so let’s just roll with it.
Oh, and general Zod (I am so sorry, Michael Shannon) is invading the Earth, as we saw in 2013’s Man of Steel, only now there’s no Superman to stop him, because multiverse and/or time travel! Luckily, there is a Supergirl (Sasha Calle), who is rescued from the evil Russians (so goddamn lazy). When Barry asks for her help, she quite rightly tells him she’s Kryptonian and the humans had her locked in a hole, so, screw you. This is after Zod has already landed, so his plans are quite clear. But when she goes to meet him, she hears him call her a traitor and conveniently sees him wiping out some humans. So she goes back to the others and all of a sudden it’s ‘We are a people of peace, Zod is not one of us.’ Seriously? That is fucking cynical, even for me. I like her design, though.
Barry tries to do the right thing (or is simply protecting his home? At this point it’s not at all clear if he can just zippety zoom back to his own reality while leaving them to die, or whether that would also doom his own reality. At no point will this become clear) and brings together Batman, Supergirl and BabyFlash. But he still needs his own powers back, so they basically just do that, without too much trouble, but with a lot of fanfare. It’s played off as a heroic sacrifice, but it feels like him falling back into the same self-destructive patterns that got him into this mess in the first place.
Pretty Pathetic
Anyway. The final battle commences, and it goes horribly. Supergirl and Batman die, uselessly. But, hey, the Flashes can time travel! So they go back in time and try again. It doesn’t work. In a sequence that feels a tad icky, Supergirl is murdered and has her corpse desecrated again and again; it’s basically a blood extraction, but still, if you brought her in just for that, it would have been a lot better had it been Henry Cavill as Superman, as that would have made an actual impact. This just feels, well, ick.
Barry realizes that this is a fixed point in time that cannot be changed, or whatever, but BabyFlash is not ready to give up, so he goes back again and again, growing older and weirder and becoming the Reverse Flash, the monster that we saw for two seconds before and don’t really know what to think about. So now there’s three of them: the Flash, BabyFlash and the Reverse Flash. Turns out that the Reverse Flash went back in time to kill their mother, so that the Flash would go back in time to save her, so that BabyFlash would be created and turn into Reverse Flash. The Reverse Flash, whose only reason of existence is winning the battle going on at that moment, I guess, who has been at it for literal decades and still hasn’t managed it? That’s pretty pathetic. Anyway, Reverse Flash tries to kill the Flash, to prevent him from re-killing their mother, but BabyFlash jumps in front of him. Suddenly, the causality turns out to be superstrict and Reverse Flash dies instantly when BabyFlash dies. And the Flash goes back in time to let the Reverse Flash kill his mom so that the Reverse Flash is never created. Right, a silly paradox on its own, but also a super weird message below the surface there.
Before we get to asking ourselves ‘so what are they actually saying?’, I do need to talk about what this movie considers the actual multiverse. You see, as BabyFlash goes back in time again and again, the multiverse starts crumbling. Why? Because. Seriously, this movie is not interested in its own logic. It starts crumbling because that’s what multiverses do when somebody messes with time in a non-approved manner* (* what is or is not approved may change based on the corner we have written ourselves into). So these huge orbs drift into view, and we get: the weird cameos.
The weird cameos
We are shown a few animated photos of other, older movie and tv Batmen, Supermen and a Flash. But the problem here is: Who cares, you weirdos?! They have less than zero relevance within the movie. There’s the Nicholas Cage Superman, from the 90’s Superman Lives project that never went into production, and you know what, sure, that’s fun, he even gets to fight a spider monster for five seconds. But the others are either dead, didn’t give consent or were AI generated (I’m not sure which is worse), or are dead and make it feel rather unseemly. And for what? Hollow nostalgia? Hey, look, a moving picture of that thing you like. They are given no meaning by the narrative, the only way for these things to mean anything is by having your viewers already care. And that’d be fine, if there was an emotional core somewhere in the movie. These have no depth whatsoever, no texture. Oh, and you can take that literally, ’cause it’s the early aughts CGI through and through. Smooth, uncanny valley skin, dead eyes. I’d like to say ‘AI generations with the extra bits lopped off’, but it looks like the Rock in the 2002 Scorpion King movie. I don’t particularly care. I like Doctor Who and subpar special effects generally don’t stand in the way of a good narrative. In this case, it wouldn’t bother me half as much if it didn’t expertly accentuate the soullessness of the rest of the movie.
Everybody dies
But, yeah, BabyFlash sacrifices himself and Reverse Flash dies instantly and all the damage to the multiverse is resolved. I do wonder whether a change of heart might have had the same effect. A simple ‘oh, god, you’re right, let’s take a moment and figure this out’ might have already killed the Reverse Flash. I mean, I know BabyFlash’s world was doomed, but I still think that it was nothing that a little time travel and a little therapy wouldn’t have solved.
Anyway, everybody dies except Barry, who makes sure his own id gets to kill his mother (I swear it’s going to be something as stupid as this the writer was going for), but he does get his father out of jail, after a smooth decade and a half locked up. I mean, he could have at least tried to just make sure he never got wrongfully accused in the first place, but some things are simply meant to be, and you won’t know what’s what until the world is ending in fire and blood. Oh, and when he comes back to his own reality, Bruce Wayne isn’t played by Ben Affleck again, but by George Clooney. What does that mean? Well, I’ll tell you: absolutely nothing. Another hollow cameo, one which I would have adored in a movie that had tried something, anything, to make a real emotional connection with me and had something more to say than ‘gotta kill your mom to become a man, son’.
Be nice to your mom
Because that is, in the end, simply what I dislike about the movie, even if it fits the ‘here is some hollow artificial content to make you feel good’ vibe it is clearly going for. The message is basically ‘you must suffer for greatness’ and that of course lazily translates as kill the mom. And I hate it, I hate that dumb sentiment, and I hate that a problem that can be solved by going to therapy is instead solved by killing your own mother, and then played off as a goddamn heroic act.
Look, the DCEU has been dying since its inception, due to a combination of bad decisions, bad luck, and a fundamental misunderstanding of why these comics are enduring stories. And those three things are very front and center here, what with the decision to scrap Batgirl in post-production while still going ahead with this one, then Ezra Miller revealing themselves as a goddamn asshole, and then making a movie that’s all flash and no substance. I can see where that last one came from, to be fair.
But, good news, James Gunn will spearhead the DC movies going forward, and that man has demonstrated a deep understanding of both storytelling and comic book movies. All of my adoration for him can be summed up by the opening sequence of his DC show Peacemaker. So, you know, good thing time keeps moving forward, and no pressure, James.
