The Flash (2023)

Rating: 7.9

The Flash may not be the greatest superhero movie of all time… but it’s certainly a good one! While some aspects definitely didn’t work for me (*CGI choices*), I still had a good time with this movie, and thought the story, performances and direction were pretty entertaining. Even if I didn’t go crazy for it, this is definitely one of the better DCEU films… even if we basically saw this same story done better in a certain Spider-Man movie a few weeks ago…

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Film Info:

Premise: Barry Allen uses his super speed to change the past, but his attempt to save his family creates a world without super heroes, forcing him to race for his life in order to save the future.

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Warner Bros

Directed by Andy Muschietti

Screenplay by Christina Hodson

Screen Story by Joby Harold, John Francis Daley & Jonathan Goldstein

Cast: Ezra Miller, Sasha Calle, Michael Keaton, Michael Shannon, Ron Livingston, Maribel Verdú, Kiersey Clemons, Ben Affleck

Runtime: 2hr 24min

Rating: PG

Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

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IMDb Rating: 7.3/10

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 66%

RT Audience Score: 84%

RT Critic Average: 6.3/10

RT Audience Average: 4.2/5

Metacritic Score: 56

CinemaScore: B

Letterboxd: 3.0/5

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Fun Fact: In contrast to the infamously troubled production of Justice League (2017), Ben Affleck said that he had a great time reprising his role of Bruce Wayne/Batman in this film.

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Review:

written by Tyler Park

Warner Bros would have you believe The Flash is the greatest superhero film of all time — after all, they did get Tom Cruise, Stephen King, and James Gunn to endorse it! Let me just cut to the chase real quick; it’s not. Actually, it’s far from the greatest superhero film, and I wouldn’t even say it’s the best DC film. But it’s actually a good movie! It isn’t bad at all! It’s somewhere in the middle between “all-time great” and “downright terrible” — an entertaining movie that made some great choices, and some not-so-great ones, that in the end left me saying: “Yeah, that was a good movie”. Just good, no more, no less.

It’s unfortunate that this film has some unnecessary real-world baggage attached to it because of Ezra Miller’s problematic actions last year. I want to be clear I do not condone Miller’s actions at all and hope they truly do the work to recover and face the consequences, but in writing this review I am commenting on the talent I saw on screen. Praising the film, or even Ezra’s performance does not mean I support Ezra in their personal life. Thousands of other people devoted months, even years of their life to getting this film made, and it would be a great disservice to them to not give it a fair shot due to the actions of one person. That being said, if you feel you cannot see this film due to the nature of its star’s actions, I totally understand.

I do have to say, I really liked Ezra Miller’s performance in this film! Ezra’s take on Barry Allen/The Flash in the DCEU has been one of my favourite elements in the franchise, and it’s no exception in this film. They have great comedic timing and use this ability to really make their take on Barry stand out as a memorable character, and they can also really commit to the dramatic moments! What made it stand out even more here is that for many scenes in this film… Ezra is playing off themselves. Because of the time travel nature of the film, there is a situation where Barry meets an alternate version of himself… and the two Barrys become the main characters of the film. So this isn’t just one scene that Ezra had two roles in… he had to play nearly the whole movie as two separate characters in the same scenes. And they did a great job!

The return of Michael Keaton’s Batman was also quite momentous for this film, and both the filmmakers and Keaton delivered some satisfying moments for fans of the 1989 Batman movie! But as exciting as seeing Keaton back as the caped crusader was, the standout from this movie was Sasha Calle as Supergirl! She absolutely killed it in this role — from the very start she had presence, strength, and the heart of Kara! I just wish we got more of her in the film, she genuinely was as good as Henry Cavill was as Superman! It was nice to see Ben Affleck return as Batman one last time too, even if it was only for mere minutes, and it just makes me wish his take on the character got more opportunities to be onscreen in the DCEU.

Trust me… there were a lot of other surprise appearances in the film too! In the moment, they were quite fun to experience, but upon reflection, many of them seem quite hollow and useless. Unlike Spider-Man: No Way Home, for example, a movie that did cameos and surprise appearances the right way, the characters that appear here don’t come to help our main character resolve the conflict, they instead just show up for one second and the filmmakers hoped the audience would clap. It really is cheap nostalgia-bait, and the movie didn’t even need these cameos. Really, you can’t even call them cameos, a “cameo” implies actor participation and this movie painted familiar faces onto CGI scarecrows and hoped you’d go nuts for it. There should be a new word for that because it felt a little soulless and genuinely took me out of the story.

The film didn’t even need its nostalgic elements to be enjoyable. The story, based on the popular Flashpoint story arc, was good enough on its own. I enjoyed Barry’s personal journey more than the parade of cameos and time-traveling hijinks. The film is lots of fun while still having melancholy, emotional undertones. The setup, story, and stakes are both personal and epic. And that’s without all the nostalgic moments. Even though this same story has basically just been told in a much better way in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, I still thought it worked here and found the message of letting go of the past to work quite well. I even loved that its climax hinged on an emotional, character moment rather than a physical fistfight between the hero and the villain. It genuinely challenged Barry’s character and showed his growth over the film. I thought overall the writing in the film was quite good, especially when compared to most of DC’s other efforts, and other recent superhero films.

However… (yeah I know I just praised the writing… but now I’m gonna bash it a little bit) the writing is still very flawed. First, it’s absolutely ridiculous that The Flash is a movie about letting go of the past, but it's so in love with its own cheap nostalgia bait: the parade of immoral, dead-eyed cameos. There’s also some really forced dialogue, some glaring plot holes…. oh yeah, and the ending (after the climax) totally reverses Barry’s character growth over the film. The movie ends in a way that makes everything we’ve watched both cease to exist and cease to matter. Barry learns some things, yes, but the entire mission of the film is proved to be both empty and devoid of meaning or purpose. It was doing fine until the epilogue, and then it just threw its thematic weight, and pretty much the entire DCEU, out the window. It is rich that this hits just after Spider-Verse, a movie that thoughtfully meditates on how tragedy defines heroism and whether we can change that. Where Across the Spider-Verse says maybe, this makes Barry’s tragedy into an immutable “canon event” and rests on a contrived theme about moving on.

But I digress. I still think the story was overall quite good, or at least it worked for me.

And I liked Andy Muschietti’s direction too! A mix between the fun and wonder of Richard Donner's Superman films and Back to the Future. Andy Muchietti showed us with IT that he knows how to get the character development and emotional weight needed to get the action to matter. And it definitely had some Tim Burton vibes too! Sure, it is very different if you were expecting Zack Snyder’s style, but for the most part, Muschietti’s vision worked for me. I didn’t agree with every choice, such as the needle drops, some overly brightly lit set pieces (Batman isn’t a character who works in broad daylight), and the style of the CGI, from the running “Speed Force” sequences to the look of the chronobowl in the time travel sequences. My god… that CGI was not my favourite. Most people seem to complain that it was bad CGI or that it looks unfinished… but you can tell it is actually supposed to look that way. It was a choice, and I very much disagree with it. I thought it looked terrible, they should’ve either made it look fully photorealistic, or committed to a stylistic look and made it look even more stylized. I think leaving the characters we see in that environment looking so uncanny — like characters from The Polar Express — wasn’t the right call... but that’s just me. The CGI didn’t ruin the film for me, it just made for an odd viewing experience of those scenes.

Despite many flaws and choices I didn’t agree with, I still think Muschietti did a fine job here! He delivered one of the better films in the DCEU, it has many moments of great humour, some true emotion, is tightly paced and overall is pretty fun! I actually enjoyed this one! It’s far from the greatest movie of all time, and it was a mistake to try and advertise it as such, but it’s surely a fun time at the movies. While I didn’t love it, I am still glad the movie got released and we got to see it! It’s not great, it’s not horrible… it's fun and flawed.

After seeing how much better movies like No Way Home and Across the Spider-Verse have done this concept… this just felt hollow. I can’t rave about The Flash when those movies are out there to enjoy. But if you’re a DC fan who wouldn’t mind seeing those done again in the DCEU… then you’d probably enjoy this! It’s an entertaining watch, just not perfect by any means!

I know I’ve praised some elements, and absolutely crapped on others. I know my thoughts may not seem solidified yet. But my feelings are genuinely mixed on this movie! I can’t explain it any better than I did.

The Flash is not the greatest comic book film ever made. But it is a great comic book film, delivering everything you’d want from a comic book film despite its flaws!

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Trailer: