Yahoo Sports The Flash review: This superhero movie proves multiverses have outrun their welcome
The Flash may be the fastest man alive, but DC has been hilariously slow at adapting its iconic characters and stories onto the big screen. To wit: The first time a superhero encountered the concept of a "multiverse" was in a Flash comic (1961's The Flash #123, a.k.a. "Flash of Two Worlds") and yet this new timeline-hopping The Flash movie can only seem redundant in the wake of Spider-Man: No Way Home breaking pandemic box-office records and Everything Everywhere All At Once winning a bunch of Oscars. Rather than the beginning of a cool, new idea, The Flash now feels like it should be the last word on movie multiverses.
The Flash stars Ezra Miller as Scarlet Speedster Barry Allen, reprising their role from the two versions of Justice League. Now, as many are probably aware, Miller (who uses they/them pronouns) has had a weird couple of years, involving arrests and legal complaints in multiple states. But since the actor is apparently undergoing mental-health treatment (which their superhero character implores a traumatized nurse to do within the first scene of this movie, oddly enough) and blockbuster movies like this are made by hundreds of people, it seems only fair to judge the final product by what's on the screen.
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures/™ & © DC Comics The Flash (Ezra Miller), The Flash (Ezra Miller), and Supergirl (Sasha Calle).
The movie begins at breakneck pace, with Miller's speedster being called upon by Batman (Ben Affleck) and Alfred (Jeremy Irons, still cashing checks) to help evacuate a major Gotham hospital that's just been attacked. Here, director Andy Muschietti and the film's writers (the screenplay is credited to Christina Hodson, with story credits for Joby Harold and the Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves duo of John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein) actually come up with a clever take on the Flash's powers: He really needs to load up on carbs before superhero activity!
This is a fun idea and matches the visual effects of the new film which actually show Flash running — as opposed to Justice League, where director Zack Snyder preferred to depict superspeed by having everyone else slow down around Barry. Unfortunately, this opening sequence devolves pretty quickly into CGI mish-mash, and Flash's main act of heroism (catching babies as they fall from the hospital's maternity ward) quite simply beggars belief.
The film slows down a bit after that, as Barry catches up with his incarcerated dad (Ron Livingston, stepping in for Billy Crudup). As viewers may already know from The Flash TV show, Barry is as defined by a traumatic dead-parent origin as Batman is — which may explain the insistence on using him for both the small- and big-screen versions of the superhero, when the Flash mantle has been held by multiple different characters in DC comics. Barry's mother (Maribel Verdú) was killed when he was a young boy and his father was jailed for it. Barry has always protested his father's innocence and strives tirelessly to prove it. Who killed his mom, you ask? Good question.
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures/™ & © DC Comics The Flash (Ezra Miller), Supergirl (Sasha Calle), and The Flash (Ezra Miller).
Dismayed by the consistent failure of legal appeals to vindicate his dad, Barry decides — after brief conversations with Batfleck and love interest Iris West (Kiersey Clemons) — to travel back in time and stop his mother from ever being killed. At first, this plan (adapted from the 2011 event comic Flashpoint by Geoff Johns and Andy Kubert) seems to work great! But rather than returning to the present day, Barry ends up stuck in 2013 alongside a younger version of himself.
Viewers who enjoy Miller's take on the character are thus welcome to a double serving (several scenes in the film consist of this one actor talking to themselves), while those who get easily annoyed by performative eccentricities might find it a lot to take. The upside is that, in the alternate reality created by Barry's time travel, Michael Keaton is still Batman.
Keaton was not the very first actor to play the Dark Knight on the big screen, but remains arguably the best (at the very least, 1992's Batman Returns is EW's pick for the best movie ever made to feature Batman and/or Superman). Thirty years later, he finally gets the chance to play the old man Batman of Frank Miller's legendary comic The Dark Knight Returns, and he breathes a lot of life into the proceedings.
At the same time, Keaton's presence proves how little DC movie history there is to draw from. While the Marvel Cinematic Universe has hours upon hours of viewer emotional investment to draw from for climaxes like this year's Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3, the DC movies can only keep harkening back to the Kryptonian invasion of Man of Steel — and the closest they can get to replicating the multiple Spider-Men of No Way Home and Spider-Verse is by literally duplicating Miller on screen. Some superhero fans will always prefer DC to Marvel, but this doesn't exactly reek of originality.
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures/™ & © DC Comics The Flash (Ezra Miller), Batman (Michael Keaton), and The Flash (Ezra Miller).
With all the other heroes of DC's Snyder era — Aquaman (Jason Momoa), Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), and so on — erased from existence by time-travel ripples, only Keaton, the two Barrys, and new arrival Supergirl (Sasha Calle) stand ready to protect the Earth from General Zod (Michael Shannon). From there, the film's final act takes some twists and turns, and there are a few other surprising multiverse cameos — fun, but also pretty flat. The "Cosmic Treadmill" of the original "Flash of Two Worlds" story — which Barry uses to travel through time — is here described as a "Chrono-Bowl," and looks just as unappealing as that sounds.
The Flash ends on a purposefully open note (and a pretty good joke), so that if the film succeeds at the box office, Miller's Barry can run again another day. If it doesn't, the precedent is set for a full continuity reset. Whatever DC movies await us in the future, let's hope they avoid multiverses. It's well-trod territory at this point, even for a speedster. Grade: C+
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