Flash! Ah-ah! Wrecker of the Universe!
It has some strong elements, but this should not have been the first Flash movie.
I’ve wanted to watch a big-budget Flash movie since 1992, but The Flash is not what I would have expected. Nor would I have expected this particular story to just be called The Flash. A movie like this needs a colon and a subtitle, because there’s more going on than just a Flash movie. It’s more like a Justice League movie that focuses on the Flash.
Plenty of people seem to have enjoyed it, and maybe you also did or will. I hope so, but even though it had its moments, it didn’t quite work for me.
There’s enough to fill an eight-episode HBO miniseries, but it’s compressed into just under two and a half hours. The movie is too ambitious for its runtime, even as long as it is. This type of problem has plagued other recent superhero movies, and here it’s compounded by another issue that’s tormented this DC series since Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice: rushing ahead without building a solid foundation.
The first Superman and Batman team-up should not have taken any cues from The Dark Knight Returns, and the first Flash movie should not have skipped all the way ahead to Flashpoint (more on the comic below). It’s like if Civil War was the first Captain America movie instead of the third.
Before now, we’ve met this version of the Flash only as a supporting character in Justice League (albeit two different versions of that movie). And the Ezra Miller Flash is very much a supporting character. This Barry Allen comes across as too neurotic, and this Flash relies far too much on Batman (their dynamic resembles that of Spider-Man and Iron Man in the MCU, but it receives less development).
This results in a Flash who’s fine as part of a team but not especially compelling on his own—a protagonist who can’t carry his own movie, not even when he’s two Flashes.
Anyone who’s watched the early seasons of the CW’s Flash series will recognize the basic story. Barry’s mother was murdered when he was a child. His father, though innocent, was convicted of murdering her. Eventually, Barry discovers he can go back in time, which tempts him to save his parents. He succumbs to that temptation (either late second season or early third), and things go wrong.
I can’t often say this, but the CW show did it better. True, the series went off the rails eventually, a fate shared by many long-running shows, but the first season was mostly great, and it remained strong for a couple more years. It had time to develop Barry and his various relationships—with his parents, with his foster father, with Iris, with some friends, even (and most interestingly) with the man who murdered his mother.
(Movie SPOILERS ahead.)
The movie succeeds in establishing the relationship between Barry and his mother, Nora Allen (Maribel Verdú), but not much else in terms of character development. We barely get to know this Iris (Kiersey Clemons). There’s no foster parent. And we never learn the identity of the killer.
We meet characters who could have been interesting, such as a new Supergirl (Sasha Calle). She’s a very different Supergirl, one loosely influenced by the 2003 comic book miniseries Superman: Red Son, which reimagines Superman as having first crashed to Earth in Soviet Russia instead of Smallville, Kansas. But in this movie, it’s Supergirl who made it to Earth instead of Superman, and the Russians imprisoned her, leaving her with doubts about whether Earth is worth protecting.
The character left me with the now-familiar reaction of “Okay, that’s all good, but where’s the rest?”
As expected, the best character is Michael Keaton’s Batman. But most of that interest comes from having already met him all those years ago.
The movie suggests that this Batman lost his way sometime after bringing peace to Gotham City, and his adventure with Flash helps him rediscover an important part of himself. But, unless I missed something, we never learn what caused Batman to give up or what motivates him to put the costume back on now. If he was so successful, then what disillusioned him? Plus, he has no meaningful connection to any other character in this movie.
Let’s compare to the comic. Of all the movie’s influences, the five-issue miniseries Flashpoint provided the most direct inspiration.
The miniseries came out in 2011. Barry Allen was resurrected just a few years earlier, after an unusually long stint of being dead. Writer Geoff Johns added a new twist to Barry’s backstory—that his mother was murdered when he was a child, and it was the time-traveling Reverse Flash who did it. The villain so hated him that he violated the time stream, retroactively destroyed Barry’s childhood, and introduced this new pain that infected the rest of his life (a “revenge in reverse”). In the present, Barry has only recently learned this.
(Spoilers ahead for the comic now.)
As Flashpoint begins, Barry finds himself in a changed world. Details are different. He doesn’t have his powers. No one’s ever heard of the Flash. And his mother is alive and well.
Barry doesn’t know why everything has changed, but he soon learns that most of the changes are not for the better. There’s no Justice League. Aquaman and his Atlanteans are at war with Wonder Woman and her Amazons, and their conflict threatens the entire world. Cyborg is the only superhero the public trusts. And Batman is harsher and older and not Bruce Wayne.
In this altered world, Thomas Wayne is the one who survived the mugging, not Bruce. The man watched his wife and son die, which set him on a course to becoming this world’s Batman.
So, when Barry meets him and reveals that he comes from a world where Bruce survived instead, this Batman has a clear, understandable motivation for wanting to help. He’s a grieving father who has an opportunity to die in the place of his son, so of course he’s going to take that chance.
Thomas Wayne is the comic’s strongest element, but he complements Barry’s storyline, which prevents him from overshadowing it. He provides a focal point for this new world, solidifying it and allowing its scars to feel more meaningful. We meet alternate versions of other familiar characters, but we get to know and understand this Batman.
Barry initially assumes that the Reverse Flash is behind this new timeline. But he’s mistaken. As his memories gradually return, Barry realizes that he’s the one who screwed up the timeline in an attempt to save his mother, so it’s up to him to set things right. He needs to turn his back on this dying world, catch up to his past self, and convince himself not to save his own mother.
Normally, a superhero should save both the individual and the world (other than an occasional failure that re-motivates the hero and raises future stakes, such as Spider-Man failing to save Gwen Stacy or Batman failing to save the second Robin). But a superhero can’t go back in time to undo a tragedy. No one gets to change the past, not even a superhero.
The comic has a strong theme about accepting the past and moving forward, not backward. And this is the part of the movie that works the best, at least when it focuses squarely on Barry and his mother.
But this movie about moving forward relies too much on nostalgia, which sends some mixed signals. As fun as it is to watch Michael Keaton play Batman again, it would have been more dramatically interesting to see him play the Thomas Wayne Batman—that would have given us the nostalgic nod while also spinning it into something fresh.
Flash also brings back Michael Shannon’s General Zod from Man of Steel, and he attempts the same scheme in altered circumstances. That supplants the comic’s Aquaman vs. Wonder Woman world war, but it’s not an improvement. Aquaman and Wonder Woman are clearly established as Flash’s friends, so seeing these corrupted versions of them hurts. Zod is someone else’s enemy. He ties into Supergirl’s story, but he’s too distant from the protagonist.
Zod isn’t the real antagonist, though. Barry is both the protagonist and his own worst enemy. And while there are some interesting aspects to how that plays out, the comic again pulled it off better. In Flashpoint, since we know the Reverse Flash killed Nora Allen and she was never supposed to die, we can’t fault Barry for attempting to fix the timeline and save his mother … and when he fails, it adds a painful cost to all the good he’s done as the Flash. But in the movie, for all we know, Nora’s murder was just a random act of senseless violence, akin to the Waynes’ murder—a tragedy, but a definite part of Barry’s history. Going back in time under these circumstances just makes him seem foolish, like he’s never watched a movie about time travel.
Flash ends on a cameo gag, and though it is funny, it also serves as an appropriate ending for the DC Extended Universe before it reboots into something (hopefully) more focused.
When Batman becomes George Clooney, it’s time to move on.