VOD film review: The Flash
Review Overview
Keaton
7Character
5Consistency
3David Farnor | On 29, Mar 2024
Director: Andy Muschietti
Cast: Ezra Miller, Sasha Calle, Michael Shannon, Ron Livingston, Maribel Verdú, Michael Keaton
Certificate: 12
Somewhere out there is a version of our world in which we don’t have endless multiverses being explored by superhero franchises. But that isn’t the timeline we’re in, a state of affairs that feels apt for a fragmented society in which people increasingly try to picture an alternative scenario in which things are less bleak – not to mention an industry that increasingly seems to only trust existing IP when it comes to spending money. And so we find ourselves facing The Flash, a solo outing for Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) that functions as a sequel to Justice League and a stunted prequel to a DC cinematic universe that has now been halted and taken in an entirely different direction.
That muddled backdrop is ironically fitting, as we find Barry frustrated and stuck on the sidelines of the superhero scene – he’s basically become a janitor to the big boys, cleaning up the messes that Batman (Ben Affleck) is too busy for. And so, as he fails to prove the innocence of his dad (Ron Livingston) in the death of his mum (Maribel Verdú) and grieves the loss of her, he winds up winding back the clock using his super-speed powers… and lands in a parallel timeline in which his mum isn’t dead, but in which his younger self (also Ezra Miller) isn’t the hero that Barry 1 has become.
There’s a lot of fun to have in the interactions between Barry 1 and Barry 2, even if Barry 2’s defining characteristic is simply being more annoying than Barry 1. Putting aside the problematic offscreen situation surrounding Miller, it’s a reminder of why they were cast in the role in first place, able to channel both hyperactive humour and a more grounded vulnerability – they draw out a surprisingly moving note of tragedy and trauma in Barry 1’s journey through trying to reconcile his adult self with his inner child.
Screenwriter Christina Hodson, who penned the enjoyable Birds of Prey, smartly skews the story into a more introverted story of Barry vs himself than a conventional blockbuster. But the multiverse framework inevitably takes us into what now feels like boringly familiar territory – we get a string of cameos from other versions of DC characters, most notably Michael Keaton having a ball as Batman (here a retired Bruce Wayne living in a rundown version of the Tim Burton Gothic manor). Some of the other slices of playful fan service you’ll have to see for yourself, but there’s also a brief turn from Sasha Calle as an underused Supergirl and Michael Shannon’s Zoe pops up for pointless set piece of two with some occasionally underwhelming special effects.
The more the movie tries to nod to wider corporate requirements, the more it begins to lose focus and ultimately lead nowhere – a fact that’s doubly true given that DC’s new film chiefs, Peter Safran and James Gunn, have no plans to follow up with any of this multiverse-building. It’s when the film is centred on its protagonist that it’s at its strongest, particular in an early sequence involving a coffee shop, a microwave and a heap of babies raining from the sky – director Andy Muschietti brings a cartoonish fun to these moments that feels in sync with this eccentric antihero.
But The Flash suffers from coming after Spider-Man: No Way Home and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which used their canon-busting antics to ask more probing questions about genre, fate, conventions and character formation. The magic of cinema is that multiverses automatically exist through the creation of multiple adaptations of source material – not to mention the what-ifs of failed incarnations – without the need of a franchise to explicitly address this. When studios remember that fact once again, and we move out of this expanding (yet reductive) stream of IP-repetition, The Flash will likely fare better in hindsight.