The Flash (2023)

PG-13 for typical superhero stuff.  There's a bit more language than your typical Marvel movie (unless it's a Guardians of the Galaxy movie) and less than a typical DC movie (that's probably not based on anything).  It gets pretty violent, but oddly less so than Man of Steel.  It's just a lot more personal deaths than Man of Steel.  Also, Barry himself is pretty crass.  It's weird when the main character of your movie tells a decent amount of off-color jokes while not technically being defined as a gross character.  It really tries riding that line.  Still, PG-13.

DIRECTOR: Andy Muschietti

First, I finally saw it. That's probably the biggest win.  Secondly, outside of an active voice against Ezra Miller, I don't know how you could hate this movie.  The worst thing I can see is not vibing with it or just not loving it.  That's pretty much part of me right now.  It's not my favorite superhero movie.  But my bigger point is that it is fun. Honestly, my kids didn't really want to see this initially. They don't love DC movies.  It's not me telling them.  I want them to watch everything.  But even when it comes to comics, I want them to get into a little bit of everything. But my kids actually really liked The Flash. Sure, my son was massively confused and I can't blame him.  I have to say, I left having had one pretty darned good time.

My son's confusion about the movie is completely a sympathetic reaction to the movie.  I know a lot about The Flash.  I've read comics for as long as I could remember.  I watched most of the CW show.  I know me some Flash.  Considering that this is the first Flash movie, they really cut deep into the lore of The Flash.  I'm going to get pretty spoilery up-front, so please excuse me.  On the grand scale of things, one of the more recent massive Flash storylines was "Flashpoint".  The premise of Flashpoint was that Barry Allen was going to undo the murder of his mother. In the comics, Eobard Thawn, the Reverse Flash, decided to change Barry's origin by framing Barry's father for her murder when he --in fact --murdered her to tortrue Barry.  There's a lot of time-travel stuff going on here.  Barry tries to undo that action by time travelling himself, causing an odd timeline where the DCU is a nightmare.  It doesn't really explain how Barry undoing Thawne's act causes Aquaman and Atlantis to go to war, or causes Thomas Wayne to become Batman, or how the government would capture Superman as a young man.  But it happens.  

The Flash is very much "Flashpoint".  I don't care if it does different beats than the comic does. It would make more sense that The Flash would address Man of Steel sooner than any new storylines from the comic.  I'm even going to give the movie points for trying to explain the changes to the timeline better than the comic did.  (I get a secret joy that the character that explains timeline variations is Michael Keaton's Batman, despite the fact that Michael Keaton explained to journalists that he has no idea what is going on in this movie.)  But I honestly pity any new audience member having to come in and see The Flash.  Sure, you get get behind the jokes and the action sequences, so it's not like there's nothing enjoyable for the uninitiated. But there's a lot of things you have to accept about the plot the second you buy a ticket to this movie.  If time travel movies aren't confusing enough, this one gets even weirder.  Do you know the thing that is kind of just skipped over?  We're all just expected to understand that Barry can time travel.  That's such a thing that every recent adaptation of this character loves to touch upon.  It's something that shouldn't really happen.  (I mean, look at "Crisis on Infinite Earths".)  

But I'll also say that the complexity that makes The Flash so watchable is the same thing that makes me love Back to the Future Part II.  There's something incredibly easy about citing Back to the Future in a time travel movie, by the way.  Talking about how small changes affect big changes makes The Flash something very different than what the trailers looked like.  Honestly, the trailers did nothing for me.  It looked like a CGI explosion nightmare.  While there are a ton of explosions in this movie and more CGI nightmares than I can shake a stick at, I'm going to give the movie massive props for giving the film a ton of character and plot points because that's the stuff that will stick out for me.  I don't care about digital characters punching each other.  I care about Barry learning what it means to be a hero.

One of the things that the DCeU has done to Barry (which is not a complaint, just an observation) is that he seems like the intern of the Justice League.  The movie calls him "the janitor", which is just a confirmation.  The Justice League and the Avengers, while meant to be parallel concepts, are different in the sense that any League member seems like a top tier superhero while the Avengers just has a lot of temporary members.  Anyway, no one seems to respect Barry because he's frankly a lot.  The other movies annoyed me with Barry, even though I wanted the movies to have a sense of humor. But this is the movie that made Barry's neurodivergence something real and gave us time to understand who Barry is.  Again, the big win for The Flash is giving us the chance to understand characters who weren't exactly deep before.

It's the juxtaposition between the two Barries that makes the character come alive.  Barry actively hates himself.  With The Flash, that dislike makes a lot of sense.  Barry, like far too many superheroes, is a character defined by tragedy.  Yes, Young Barry is actively annoying.  He hasn't had that tragedy.  He's just the right age for the greatest sense of entitlement.  But the point is that OG Barry both hates himself and is jealous of people who have normal lives.  I mean, look at the disdain that Barry has for the barista covering for his favorite employee.  He almost has that "nice guy" syndrome where he thinks that he's the common man when he almost has a disdain for anyone who isn't a superhero in this movie.  I will stress: OG Barry is the likable protagonist in this movie.  We have Young Barry in the movie to remind us that Barry could have been way worse than what we've been getting out of these movies.  And it is characters like Young Barry that stop OG Barry from enjoying the idea that Barry's (Note:  I had to stop writing and now I'm picking this up days later.  My train of thought was...?) powers were something devoid of consequence.  I mean, the reason that the people who like this movie like this movie is because it is a story that focuses on Barry's trauma and his love of family.  It's why that final scene with Barry's mom is so touching.

I do have some questions about that scene with Barry's mom.  I know a lot of people really liked that scene. It's vulnerable and it's a touching end to what ultimately could have been a movie about superheroes punching each other with a little bit of time travel.  Okay. That's fine.  There's a heavy implication that Barry's mom knew that she was hugging adult Barry there. I mean, the camera stresses that Barry's disguise has all of the price tags in that moment.  Now, there's supposed to be this thin chance that Barry's mom was just hugging a stranger who needed a hug.  That scene doesn't read that way.  Instead, Barry's mom became really cool with the notion that time travel was not only possible, but that her adult son felt the need to visit her just to cry on her shoulder.  There's a lot to accept in that moment and it's just part of her life.  Anyway, I love the scene.  But I'm also very much like...really?

I desperately want this blog to be done because my daughter is begging to play outside right now and I can't ignore that.  I want to talk about Michael Keaton as Batman.  I could talk about Sasha Calle as well, but I have nothing to say outside of the fact that I liked her way more than I thought I would, but her character is a bit underdeveloped and thankless.  But what I really like about The Flash is that this is the first Michael Keaton movie where he's Batman where I finally understand a little bit about what his Batman is.  I don't hate Batman or Batman Returns.  I actually kind of like both movies.  Part of me loves Batman Returns.  But as I mentioned in my blog about Batman, it is too much about atmosphere and not enough about character. Andy Muschietti might be the first guy to figure out his Bruce Wayne / Batman is.  I love that.  It's weird, because I don't think we'll ever have a proper continuation of this story, even if we get a sequel.  That Clooney thing was a major get, right?

Finally, I don't get the need to swear up and down the multiverse with this movie.  It feels largely unearned.  Spider-Man: No Way Home completely stuck the landing with an earned multiverse.  This feels like winks and nods that don't make a ton of sense.  Also, Nicholas Cage as Superman is the most intense inside baseball fan service that, in no way, feels like it should exist outside of the concept of "we could do it."  How many more Supermen were there that actually should have gotten nods beyond "Hey, remember that Nicholas Cage was almost Superman?"  

Anyway, the movie is more fun than I thought it would be.  Barry, like Jasmine from Aladdin, is simulatenously a genius and an idiot somehow.  But who cares?  It's way more fun than people care to admit.  Yeah, the CG is garbage and the explanation for why the effects are so bad is terrible. But I don't care.  The Flash is mostly a solid film that just came out too late and in the wake of Ezra Miller.  It's weird that they haven't been fired immediately, but that doesn't affect the quality of the film as is.