Jonah Naplan June 15, 2023
“The Flash” is a highly enjoyable Frankenstein’s monster of a comic book movie. And for the most part, the good cancels out the bad. It showcases some inventive CGI, and also some horrific. It has some excellent ideas, and also plenty of convoluted ones. It has some great, powerful scenes, and also many distasteful moments. And it all revolves around the hero at the film’s center, with its heart in the right place.
Great ambition is hard to pull off. Even some of the best and most ambitious comic book movies ever made are noticeably in over their heads at certain points. It’s not the worst thing in the world for a movie to have flaws, as long as their ratio to stronger elements is balanced. Unfortunately, “The Flash” proudly displays its flaws and hands them to us on a silver platter. It’s a movie with entertainment value undeniably comparable to that of “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” but it keeps resetting itself over and over again, spinning a confusing web in the viewer’s head, as the title character runs circles around us in a dizzying blur.
Yet we must consider it a miracle that the movie is still as delightful as it is, given its contingencies and franchise expectations. Miraculously, “The Flash” also simultaneously manages to set a retro tone, not just because it was shot entirely with digital IMAX cameras, resulting in a full frame aspect ratio of 1.90:1, but because the story and characters, removed from the vast narrative, feel refreshingly traditional and light on their feet. When “Top Gun: Maverick” was released last year, it was near impossible to not come across a mention of the phrase “they don’t make em’ like this anymore,” in a discussion of the film’s greatness. “The Flash” is certainly no “Maverick,” but I think it plays so well because of that same reason.
Is it a must-see? Only if you’re a comic book fan. For everybody else, you’ll have a good time, and probably won’t be confused, but you may wish that you were doing something more useful than watching this diverting but otherwise inessential piece of entertainment. It doesn’t help that you’re in for no short bargain. “The Flash” runs considerably lengthy for a solo superhero movie, at nearly two and a half hours, and that runtime could be tedious for anybody who’s not necessarily on the edge of their seat, watching intently for the many wonderful surprises the film has in store.
For the rest of us, we’re swept away. In an impressive strategy of trickery and manipulation, “The Flash” makes us suspend our disbelief that it’s not one man we’re following, but two—the second an interdimensional copy of the other. With the dark cloud of real world brushes with the law floating around in this movie’s skyline, Ezra Miller plays Barry Allen, the not-so-common man with a personal life just as quietly devastating and chaotic as his professional. And of course, Barry’s alter ego is the speediest kid on the track team, the Flash, a fan-pleasing, nerdy, and elegant superhero who can also be quite clumsy.
On a level of practicality, the Flash’s imperfectness drives home an important point. Superheroes—well, except some—are people too. They have human problems, human names, human features, and human feelings. They breathe oxygen to survive, require food and water, worry about their loved ones, have opinions, have grievances, and are late to work when a cafe is slow at making their sandwich. The last of those checklist items is the predicament our fast walking and talking protagonist finds himself in at the beginning of the film. His “work” in this particular scenario could refer to two different things—the first is his job job that pays, working as a forensic chemist at the Central City Police Department. The second is his job, the crime-fighting, people-saving hero. At this point in the timeline, Barry is an associate of a stern Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck), and is called to action by the billionaire’s butler, Alfred (Jeremy Irons) in the opening scene of the film.
After a dizzying montage that takes Barry from Central City all the way to Gotham, our hero suits up, sprints into action, and saves an accumulated rabble of projectile babies from crashing down to Earth, in the wake of a collapsing hospital. I am of two minds about this relatively unrelated cold open. Director Andy Muschietti, best known for his two “It” movies, has a pattern of showing children in danger, and his latest level of extreme—putting infants in near-death situations—is certainly…a choice. “The Flash” is chock-full of bold moves like this, but I’m not entirely sure this is a good one. The CGI rendering of these tots is crummy, as is much of this movie’s FX work—but we’ll expand on that later. Most importantly of all, the more and more I think about this sequence, the grosser of a taste it puts in my mouth.
But needless to say, far more important things happen in “The Flash” once that sour start runs its course. As we know from the comics and previous movies, Barry’s father (Ron Livingston) is on trial for allegations of murdering his wife—Barry’s mother (Maribel Verdú). As unfortunate fate would have it, Barry’s father has been wrongly accused, and the turn of events that unfolded on that fateful day were a wrong-place-wrong-time scenario. Barry’s mother had forgotten a can of tomatoes at the grocery store for a pasta dish, and upon realizing this, sent her husband to go retrieve some. This can of tomatoes is very important. It is this film’s odd duck MacGuffin. It doesn’t have the potential to shatter worlds, or erase half the population, or even grant someone powers. It is merely a can of tomatoes. But the filmmakers would like you to know it’s important. It is an important can of tomatoes.
What’s so noteworthy about these tomatoes? Well it could be argued that they mean the difference between Barry’s mother’s life and death. If she hadn’t forgotten them in the first place, then she wouldn’t have had to send Pops to the store, and he wouldn’t have been gone while she was attacked by a burglar and stabbed in the chest with a knife. Barry relives this horrifying moment via flashback, where he soon surmises the inciting idea that drives this plot. What if he ran so fast—think the ending of Christopher Reeve’s “Superman: The Movie”—that he could enter a “Chrono-Bowl” encapturing all realities, and turn back time to zoom to the grocery store, add a can of tomatoes to Mom’s shopping cart, and then come back to present day, hopefully preventing her from ever dying in the first place? It kills two birds with one stone! Mom’s still living and breathing and Dad isn’t incarcerated anymore! Huzzah!
No. No huzzah.
Barry does turn back time as intended, and completes his task on the day Mom was murdered, but on returning home, he is violently pushed from the timeline, landing in an unknown reality. This, of course, is the version of Earth belonging to a younger and more annoying rendition of Barry (also played by Ezra Miller) who is energetic, manchildish, and a mama’s boy. Here is where Miller (though very good in the movie, regardless of real world issues) pulls off an impressive high wire act. In the occasional shot where the two Barrys are together, sometimes one is CGI rendered, while the other is not. But for the most part, Miller plays both roles to their peak, strategically making the second Barry more immature, while the first Barry’s exuberance is toned down. It allows our Barry to realize why so many people find him annoying, once he’s actually put face to face with himself.
After a hilarious series of events that transforms the second Barry into the Flash as canonically planned, Earth begins to shake when General Zod’s (a returning Michael Shannon) terraforming World Engine enters our planet’s atmosphere. But Shannon is not the only returning Michael. Our Barry knows what will inevitably go down if Zod’s plans go untouched, so he makes it his mission to assemble a sort of makeshift Justice League in order to fight it all out. Most of our Earth’s superheroes do not exist yet in second Barry’s world (and some of the actors in popular movies have been curiously switched around, too), save for the Caped Crusader. But this Batman is not Ben Affleck, nor Christian Bale, nor Pattinson. It’s the old, tired, and grizzled Michael Keaton.
Keaton does commendable work here, providing the film with its most subtle performance. He’s never been my favorite Dark Knight, but he did do a fine job in the role. Here, it seems as if he’s never left. Keaton is able to strap on the boots and cape as if they were an old friend. His presence is like hearing a song you’ve heard thousands of times for the first time again. He’s excellent.
Mooting possibly even more gravitas is the addition of Kara Zor-El, this world’s Supergirl (Sasha Calle). She holds incredibly well on her own, rocking superstrength and a cool stare. She’s found skinny and starving in a Siberian prison in her first scene, but quickly rises to badass territory when freed. The real Justice League this is not, but sure, they’ll do in a pinch.
One of this film’s greatest pleasures is noticing the minute and non-minute details that differentiate the two Barrys’ worlds from each other. Some of these are thrown at us and come as a surprise. And as an audience, we laugh, cringe, and clap. One joy comes from the creative reimagining of Zod’s attack that combines all the aspects we’re already familiar with and adds plenty of new ones to the mix. It also features some excellent CGI and some horrendous CGI. But the worst of this movie’s computer generated images comes from the abyssal Chrono Bowl that is almost a content-crammed tornado, stuffed with possible outcomes, character beats, and renditions of superheroes.
Some of these ideas were explored, and explored better in the recent “Across the Spider-Verse,” another elephant in the room that distracts from the bigger picture. So too distracting is paying attention to the two Barrys in any given shot, and being immediately able to decipher which is the real Ezra Miller and which is a lifeless anomaly in the corner. “The Flash” can also sometimes be hypocritical of its own logic. It’s a feature length lecture about the importance of keeping continuity for the good of humanity, but then it goes behind our backs and does the very same things it warns against. The time traveling and reality-shifting itself is entertaining, but it’s all stretched out ad nauseam to the point that we lose track of what’s in front of us.
“The Flash” works best when it tries and succeeds at being simple. The funniest and most crowd-pleasing moments do not feature characters throwing punches. They showcase witty dialogue, excellent performances, character dynamics, and the occasional emotional beat that may require a tissue in the final act. There is so much movie here, so much going on, so many characters, narratives, and plot points to take note of. Your head is spinning, your brain hurts, you have to go to the bathroom. But at least you have a smile on your face.
Now playing in theaters.