The Flash
I had so much internal conflict about seeing this film. On the one hand, “The Flash” is one of my all time favourite comics and characters (although I do happen to like the Wally West Flash better than the Barry Allen Flash we get here and in the TV show). On the other hand, I absolutely do not want to support Ezra Miller over all their numerous legal troubles (feel free to Google). There's something to be said for “innocent until proven guilty”, but when you have a wrap sheet of allegations as long as Ezra Miller does, it's pretty easy to assume they're at least probably not a good person. And to a lesser extent, I just desperately want the Snyderverse fans to go away. I've never seen a more toxic fanbase in all my years. Not “Star Wars”, not “Star Trek”, not Marvel. The Snyderverse fans are the most toxic, horrendous group of fans I've ever seen. And with “The Flash”, the Snyderverse finally ends (at least for now).
I feel a lot of people had this opinion about Miller, as showcased by the film's total box office bomb. It's unfortunate, because this is easily the best of the Snyderverse films.
Take away all the legal issues and controversy and to just look at Ezra's performance here, it's actually great work. Ezra plays two main roles here, that are for the most part wildly different. Without getting into plot spoilers, they play two versions of themselves from different timelines. And it's not for a few scenes, it's literally most of the movie. So in that sense, it's a very involved role that Ezra handled extremely well. One Barry Allen is older and more mature after spending time with the Justice League. The other Barry is just getting his powers and is still a naive barely-an-adult. I'm sure this would have been a really fun project as an actor, but it would have been so much work. And again, regrettably, Ezra does great, but I really don't want to see them be The Flash again.
The Michael Keaton stuff in his return to the Batman role is my favourite in the film. He's great, which again makes it suck that this bombed and has so much controversy around it's star. Keaton is just an unwilling casualty of this whole mess. He does his best and his best is awesome. He fits right back into the role no problem, and the bits of nostalgia with his suit, his Danny Elfmanesque score, his classic Batmobile and Batplane. It's all just excellent. I hope if there is any sort of salvaging things from this film to explore in the future that Keaton as Batman is one of them.
Sasha Calle plays the alternate timeline's only Kryptonian hero – Supergirl. She does a fine job, but because of the way she's written she barely has any speaking lines. She's essentially a weapon to fight Zod. Her scenes are pretty fun, but it's really hard to have any measurement of Calle as an actress in the role since this basically boiled down to her screaming and throwing hands. I enjoyed her, there's just not enough development. And again, maybe she would have been given the full role in the future, but with The Flash's commercial failure and the Snyderverse's discontinuation, it's hard to imagine her being Supergirl again.
The pacing of the film is great, and it's frequently funny, but something that you may have already heard about is absolutely true, and that's that it has some truly unforgivable CGI. At this level of film making, it's ridiculous to see this level of CGI. Inside the speed force looked about as good as a Playstation 3 cut scene. It was embarrassingly bad. If the movie was rushed I might at least understand, but the film was delayed for years due to Covid and the desire to keep it in theatres, so why didn't someone catch this earlier? It really is so bad and confusing. Because there are a lot of sequences that look great, honestly. But that makes the bad stuff stick out even worse.
So what do we do about such an oddball film marred by controversy? Well, I think if you can watch it and detach yourself from all the scummy stories around Ezra, you'll manage to have a good time. And if you're worried about “supporting” them, well they already got paid for the role. So by not seeing it, you're not really doing anything to Ezra. Might as well watch it with the (maybe comforting) knowledge that Ezra will more than likely never be the Flash again, and that this is the end of the Snyderverse. And for me, that was enough. See it for Michael Keaton's Batman, and then happily move on to whatever form of the DC universe gets pushed out next.
8/10
