How you feel about The Flash is maybe the ultimate movie Rorschach test. If you’re someone like Tom Cruise, you think it’s the greatest movie of all time. If you’re a Zack Snyder DC diehard, this is the culmination of all that came before. If you’re a fan of not grooming children, not assaulting people, and not claiming you’re the messiah, then you feel icky all over watching this film and it’s star, Ezra Miller. I’m sort of in the middle: it’s probably the 2nd best DC movie, but it also makes me feel rotten saying that because of how everyone’s not taking the star’s actions seriously. So, 3.5 stars I guess.
When we last left Barry Allen (Ezra Miller), the Flash had become a full fledged Justice League member, saving the world alongside his compatriots Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot). After the opening harrowing rescue, Barry realizes he can go back in time. Brilliant, since his big life’s mission is proving his dad (Ron Livingston) didn’t murder his mother (Maribel Verdu), which he can now prevent. But as we all know since Back to the Future II, messing with time means you might end up in another timeline.
As a movie, The Flash at times is pretty great! That’s because Director Andy Muschietti actually builds the story around the character. This Barry Allen is a nervous jittery motormouth as established by the Snyderverse. That makes the initial sequence just a delight of nervous silly energy, going over the top putting babies and cute puppies in bigger and bigger koinkydinks that Barry has to figure out in clever and maybe stupid ways. For emotional heft, Muschietti gives us Barry Allen’s tragic superhero backstory: he lost both parents on the same day essentially. That’s right: no world ending phenomena, no gods battling till the death. A kid just misses his mom and dad, and wants to be a family again. For a long time, this combination of silly action and understandable emotional angst really make the movie a delightful romp, as Barry takes advantage of his gifts to glimpse into a world and life he wishes he had, and what happens in that timeline.
But being a superhero movie, we can’t just do simple and small. The stakes have to get bigger. And bigger. And bigger. By the time we get to the big finale of The Flash, we’ve completely abandoned Barry’s simple initial quest until we HAVE to resolve the story. So what’s left? Since Muschietti and James Gunn know this version of DC is coming to and end, we get just an avalanche of fan service. Even I was impressed at every little piece of the DC universe speed forced into like a 15 minute window of movie time, and even some fan fiction as well. What’s funny though is most of this fan service is going to make kids parents go bonkers, but not the kids themselves, as The Flash is cramming in decades of comic book history, not just the DCEU. So basically, the ending will either leave you with sheer elation, or you whispering to the person next to you “who is that?” or “I didn’t know they were a superhero!” Either way, those momentary dopamine hits are built on sand, meaning they go away as soon as they arrived, and leave you feeling a tad empty inside, waiting for the next hit instead of being invested in Barry’s journey to be with his mom and dad.
So what’s next for Barry Allen? Presumably James Gunn will figure it out. As for this version of The Flash, I can honestly say I was delighted with the movie I saw. I didn’t see Tom Cruise’s greatest movie ever made, but I did see a fun idea of what might have been for a DC comics universe of films, and a decent capper on the end of this DCEU era. Including their big Oscar win of the best cheer moment in 2022 beating moments like Keanu dodging bullets, Jennifer Hudson, Avengers, and Spidermen…still funny today!