The Flash

It’s the job of a crit­ic, in my hum­ble opin­ion, to meet every film on its own terms, and eval­u­ate it accord­ing­ly. While some ded­i­cat­ed key­board war­riors may claim crit­ics are pre­dis­posed to neg­a­tiv­i­ty – par­tic­u­lar­ly regard­ing com­ic book movies – I’m always hope­ful, when I set­tle down in my cin­e­ma seat, that the film I watch will be good. Life is short, fre­quent­ly dif­fi­cult, and I don’t like to waste my time. For this rea­son, I’m fre­quent­ly dis­heart­ened that stu­dios seem per­fect­ly hap­py to waste it for me. Any­way, The Flash.

To say he’s the fastest man alive, Bar­ry Allen’s big screen out­ing has tak­en a curi­ous­ly long time to come togeth­er. First float­ed in 2014 and then plagued by delays, drop-outs, stu­dio tur­moil and star Ezra Miller’s var­i­ous crim­i­nal exploits, the film seemed to be suf­fer­ing from the same curse that has haunt­ed DC’s cin­e­mat­ic slate since The Sui­cide Squad. Though, unlike some of its sib­lings, at least The Flash has made it out of the DC vault – even­tu­al­ly direct­ed by Andy Muschi­et­ti (of IT Chap­ters One and Two fame) from a script by Christi­na Hod­son (whose snap­py work on Birds of Prey gar­nered pos­i­tive reviews).

The Flash picks up where Jus­tice League (or Zack Snyder’s Jus­tice League if you pre­fer) left off, with Bar­ry Allen (Ezra Miller) liv­ing in Cen­tral City and work­ing in foren­sic evi­dence analy­sis, while moon­light­ing to assist his super­hero pals with all man­ner of scrapes. The film’s open­ing sees him utilise his slow-mo pow­ers to quite lit­er­al­ly save a load of babies (and a dog) from a col­laps­ing hos­pi­tal, in a tongue-in-cheek sequence which would work bet­ter if the wee infants in per­il didn’t strong­ly resem­ble the uncan­ny CGI tots from The Sims 2. When you are required to spend a fair amount of time star­ing at an image, par­tic­u­lar­ly one ren­dered in HD on an IMAX screen, its flaws become more appar­ent – a recur­ring issue with the fair­ly ropey VFX work in The Flash, as his super speed pow­ers mean it’s nec­es­sary to slow down every­thing around him (much in the same way we’ve seen in oth­er super­hero films).

In his per­son­al life, Bar­ry is still very much an awk­ward twen­ty-some­thing, teased at work by col­leagues for poor time­keep­ing and friend­less­ness. He recon­nects with school­friend Iris West (Kiersey Clemons), now a reporter, who takes an inter­est in Barry’s efforts to clear his father (Ron Liv­ingston, replac­ing Bil­ly Crudup) Henry’s name for the mur­der of his moth­er Nora (Mari­bel Verdú). When Bar­ry realis­es his efforts to do this via legal means are like­ly to fail, he uses his pow­ers to go back in time and pre­vent Nora from dying in the first place, in the process cre­at­ing branch­ing time­lines and open­ing up the DC cin­e­mat­ic iter­a­tion of the mul­ti­verse – a process Mar­vel began in Doc­tor Strange that has paid div­i­dends for their film strategy).

After land­ing in a time­line where his moth­er nev­er died, Bar­ry cross­es paths with an alter­na­tive ver­sion of him­self, who is younger, sil­li­er, and a total new­bie to the super­hero gig. Real­is­ing he’s man­aged to turn up on the day that Gen­er­al Zod (Michael Shan­non) invad­ed earth look­ing for Super­man back in Man of Steel, Bar­ry sets out to find the rest of the Jus­tice League, in hopes they can stop the destruc­tion he knows is com­ing. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, in this alter­nate dimen­sion, things are a lit­tle dif­fer­ent, and when he goes look­ing for Bat­man, he finds a retired Bruce (Michael Keaton) with a long grey­ing beard, holed up in Wayne Manor cook­ing spaghet­ti in his bathrobe.

What fol­lows is a vari­a­tion on the old ​‘get­ting the band back togeth­er’ trope, as Bar­ry attempts to train his unruly pro­tégé, coax Bats out of retire­ment, and seek the aid of an alter­na­tive uni­verse Super­man (or Super­girl, as he dis­cov­ers Kara Zor-El is Krypton’s last hope in this real­i­ty, played by Sasha Calle). Com­ic afi­ciona­dos will know that the film takes some of its cues from the 2011 Flash­point run which has become well-known in the DC uni­verse, though the resem­blance is fair­ly min­i­mal. While the comics saw Allen tasked with repair­ing dam­age done to the time­line by, er, Reverse Flash, here the pri­ma­ry antag­o­nist is, depend­ing how you look at it, either Gen­er­al Zod (again) or Bar­ry him­self, who cre­ates the frac­ture by going back in time to save his moth­er, despite clear­ly know­ing this is a bad idea.

It’s unfor­tu­nate for DC that the idea of chang­ing the past, or seek­ing an alter­na­tive real­i­ty where things have turned out dif­fer­ent­ly, are ideas we’ve seen explored fair­ly exten­sive­ly in recent super­hero media, first in X‑Men: Days of Future Past but notably Spi­der-Man: No Way Home, spin-off tele­vi­sion series Loki and Doc­tor Strange in the Mul­ti­verse of Mad­ness but also Best Pic­ture win­ner Every­thing Every­where All at Once and upcom­ing Indi­ana Jones sequel Indi­ana Jones and the Dial of Des­tiny. Per­haps this obses­sion with riff­ing on exist­ing real­i­ty is a symp­tom of crav­ing famil­iar­i­ty in an uncer­tain world, or – more cyn­i­cal­ly – a result of stu­dios more inter­est­ed in IP than orig­i­nal sto­ry­telling. If the mul­ti­verse and these diverg­ing time­lines presents infi­nite pos­si­bil­i­ties, why does it feel like all of them are ulti­mate­ly the same?

Any­way – Miller pulls dou­ble duty as Bar­ry and Bar­ry II, who are dis­tin­guish­able by the length of their hair and con­trast­ing super suits. Bar­ry I is ini­tial­ly pre­sent­ed as an awk­ward, pos­si­bly neu­ro­di­ver­gent twen­ty-some­thing who feels deeply alone in the world owing to his father’s incar­cer­a­tion and mother’s death, but his char­ac­ter­is­tics seem to melt away when Bar­ry II appears, a zanier, more imma­ture ver­sion of him. There’s lit­tle sug­ges­tion that his moth­er liv­ing and father nev­er going to prison has result­ed in him being that dif­fer­ent, but the film doesn’t do much to unpack exact­ly how Bar­ry II’s life has diverged, apart from remark­ing on the fact he has a date with Iris West in this real­i­ty. Your mileage with The Flash as a char­ac­ter may vary depend­ing how much you enjoy the Whe­do­nesque ​‘Uhh, that just hap­pened’ brand of hero which has become de rigueur, but don’t get too attached either way – there’s every chance Miller won’t be repris­ing their role.

Keaton brings a lit­tle grav­i­tas to pro­ceed­ings as he dons the Bur­ton cowl and cape again (though the alleged­ly ​‘icon­ic’ ​‘Let’s get nuts’ line remains baf­fling) as an age­ing Bat­man. If any­thing it’s a shame we don’t get a lit­tle more insight into his tra­jec­to­ry, as he remarks that he retired because Gotham’s crime rate had plum­met­ed, but there are a lot of cameos to fit in, so them’s the breaks. There’s not much in the way of per­son­al­i­ty for new­com­er Sasha Calle’s Super­girl, who briefly faces off against Zod in place of her cousin Kal-El. She’s pre­sent­ed as sto­ic and slight­ly venge­ful after being treat­ed with hos­til­i­ty after land­ing on earth, but arguably comes around on human­i­ty much faster than most peo­ple would if they had been locked in a Russ­ian bunker for years. There are a few oth­er notable cameos from the his­to­ry of the DC cin­e­mat­ic uni­verse, rang­ing from the dis­taste­ful to the begrudg­ing­ly fun, but at this point these appear­ances feel less like a nice sur­prise and more like a cyn­i­cal box check­ing exer­cise in the super­hero con­tent machine.

At any rate, new DC head hon­cho James Gunn has made clear his plans to reset the DC film uni­verse going for­ward, so The Flash can be treat­ed as a stand­alone time trav­el caper. It’s unfor­tu­nate­ly not an espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing one – the heavy reliance on CGI is notice­able, par­tic­u­lar­ly because the work is quite ugly (the area from which Bar­ry is able to access the past is a jagged kalei­do­scop­ic eye­sore) and while the film ben­e­fits from not hav­ing a sludgy abun­dance of fight scenes, the ones it does fea­ture are still large­ly indis­tin­guish­able from any oth­er film.

If you’re a die-hard DC fan will­ing to over­look the rote sto­ry­line and pub­lic men­ace that is Miller, the quip­py per­for­mances and the nos­tal­gia bait of Keaton et al might raise a smile. But it’s dimin­ish­ing returns here, as stu­dios strug­gle to make a con­vinc­ing argu­ment for why audi­ences should care about any of these char­ac­ters when they only seem to exist as mech­a­nisms for a cyn­i­cal busi­ness strat­e­gy. No stakes, no Gods, no mas­ters. Just infi­nite uni­vers­es of IP stretched into infi­nite con­tent, as far as the eye can see.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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