No matter how fast you go, you can never truly outrun your past. This current era of DC films spanning from Man of Steel (2013) to now has always been marred by a need to haphazardly catch up, lurching forward to keep pace with the immensely profitable shared cinematic universe of its main competitor, Marvel Studios and the illustrious “MCU,” with its own series of interconnected superhero films, unofficially deemed as the “DCEU,” or “DC Extended Universe.”
With the mixed critical reception and scattershot box office of its initial entries, excessive studio interference and constant executive reshuffling attempted to keep its horse in this race, and it resulted in an even more inconsistent output, from exemplary genre outings like Wonder Woman (2017) and The Suicide Squad (2021) to nadirs like Suicide Squad (2016) and Black Adam (2022). Countless controversies also compounded this, including the jettison of Zack Snyder and the alleged crimes of actor Ezra Miller (For the purposes of this review, the only focus will be on their performance and not misdeeds). Needless to say, another overhaul is in place, and James Gunn, director of the Guardians of the Galaxy films and The Suicide Squad, is set to oversee a complete reboot, with The Flash serving as a loose finale to the turbulent DCEU.
Much like the saga his solo film is ostensibly punctuating, Barry Allen (Miller), the super speedster clad in red spandex known as the “the Flash,” is too hampered by his tragic history to charge completely charge forward. He may occupy a gloriously mythical life like Justice League teammates Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), but unlike those stoic and fully-formed individuals who embrace their trauma in the name of heroism, he dons the mask to evade it, as if whizzing through the air fast enough as the Flash will make him forget the turmoil and loneliness that will always exist with Barry. It’s a plucky, adolescent naivete akin to Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, and his origin story is just as harrowing, though Barry may have discovered a way to erase the murder of his Uncle Ben.
It was at a young, innocent age when Barry shared an idyllic life with his loving parents Nora (Maribel Verdú) and Henry (Ron Livingston), and it was devastatingly then when Nora was mysteriously murdered by a supernatural force and Henry was wrongfully incarcerated for the atrocity. In an intense moment as he grapples with how arbitrarily his family was shattered, seemingly quicker than what his superpowers can achieve, he breaks the barriers of time and space themselves and discovers how to travel back in time. The seasoned Bruce Wayne (Affleck), who knows a thing or two about dead parents, cautions Barry against the unintended consequences of time travel and stresses that pain is an inherent part of all our stories, but he simply can’t resist, traversing decades ago to prevent Nora’s death and rupturing not only the structural integrity of time but also the multiverse itself.
Seismic shifts have occurred as he tries to return to the present but ends up in 2013, a timeline now with no superheroes in operation. His family is intact, but an alternate version of Barry (also portrayed by Miller), a petulant one with no powers or self-sufficiency, has taken his place. Look over there, Batman (Michael Keaton, reprising the role from the 1989 and 1991 movies) is reclusive and jaded. Yikes, there is no Superman to be found but a Supergirl (Sasha Calle) locked away in a Russian prison. Oh no, the villainous Kryptonian Zod (Michael Shannon) from Man of Steel is about to harvest and destroy the Earth with no one to stop him! Barry will have to reconcile with his past self- both literally and figuratively with a life he never got to have- and assemble a motley crew to take down Zod and restore the timeline.
Just like its franchise, The Flash constantly feels like it’s being pulled in a frenzy of different directions when the main plot kicks in, but Andy Muschietti, director of Mama and the recent It films, at least exhibits some giddily pulpy theatrics and establishes a solid emotional core in the first act. The opening action sequence at a hospital robbery is unabashedly zany as Barry, waiting on a particularly sluggish coffee shop worker to whip up his bagel, zips to the hospital in cartoonish fashion, and it all culminates in time screeching to a halt as Barry uses the Speed Force to save several babies plummeting from the nursery floor, live wire juggling them and several objects mid-air. So many superhero movies are oppressively dour, yet the usually grim Batman even assists him in a propulsive yet disarmingly silly chase scene. But in between these bouts of playful action and some whizz-bang physical comedy bits, Miller finds effective pathos as Muschietti deploys a cornball sincerity evocative of classic comic book trappings to explore Barry’s internal conflict.
The Flash seeks to wrestle with what defines our lore, but as Barry inadvertently tears the multiverse asunder, that thoughtful genesis is lost in its debris of frenetic pacing and cluttered storytelling. The doltish alternate Barry is living proof that simply excising a single event will not radically repair his life, and instead of expounding that, the film opts for erratic plotting and some craven IP mining, along with a portrayal of the second Barry that never goes beyond grating caricature. That somewhat graceful dash of the initial third is supplanted with an incoherent plod into the “we have to go get this to go there and meet this person” of it all, desperate to check off cheap gags and tricks with supposed commercial appeal but little meaning. Without a clear emotional impetus, the spry stylings turn insufferably brash. Muschietti seems to be overcompensating, filling every scene with hyperactive framing, jittery editing and a bombastic score, but it nonetheless registers as a vacant cacophony. I was downright exhausted by the end.
This series of often pandering sequences masquerading as a movie is full of paradoxes both intentional and unintentional. What at first seems to be a cautionary tale against the void of nostalgia becomes a pretty ghoulish embodiment of it, and that’s not just because of the shoddy visual effects throughout, especially during the scenes that are supposed to be a nightmarish funhouse reflection of this void but are ultimately something that would be put to shame by PlayStation 2 graphics. Reduced to spouting empty superhero platitudes and classic lines, Keaton’s Batman is absolutely squandered, unless you enjoy a scraggly Bruce Wayne using a hackneyed spaghetti metaphor to explain the tangled nature of Hollywood’s latest fad, the multiverse. Supergirl doesn’t fare any better as she is used more as a narrative crutch, though Calle has an alluring presence. The muddled, undercooked threads of the two Barry’s and these characters lead to a vacuous climatic battle that you’ve seen more than the vast expanse of the multiverse could ever even fathom.
In an admittedly touching scene near the end, Barry’s difficult choice echoes that all of our stories are perfectly imperfect and love should be preserved in adversity, but that’s after one of the most ghastly sequences of forced cameos I’ve ever seen, which includes CGI that reanimates DC characters played by actors who have long been deceased. The ratio of inspired to uninspired elements is staggeringly disproportionate, and The Flash too often careens toward the latter to actually slow down to develop the former. Especially for this troubled franchise, it’s an irony as tragic as the backstory of its protagonist.
Grade: C-
The Flash is now available in theaters.
Photo Credit/Warner Bros.
