Twilight of the Idols/A "Flash" in the Pan?

The Flash really does have some commendable elements. It has, at the center, a charismatic actor (albeit one whose personal and legal issues are of no small concern); it boasts guest appearances by other charismatic actors; and well, it has Michael Keaton, essentially showing everyone how to do this superhero thing. 

On the downside, it has a nearly nonsensical plot - or several; often janky CGI; character motivations that are kind of, well, dumb; and it is overlong, like many of its ilk. Still, I had a pretty good time, all things considered.

There's really not much point in going into great detail about the film. It is the last of DCEU as envisioned under Zack Snyder and as such, it's really not bad. Is it good, though? Eh. Again, I enjoyed it because it did move relatively quickly despite stretches where I really wanted a nap and overall the performances made it better than it was. There was enough eye candy but then I'd notice just how bad the CGI was and whatever emotional oomph or emphasis the showrunners were going for curdled into mud and/or something more exploitative.

I'm also unsure of whether this was a matter of too many cooks in the kitchen or if the ideas were half-assed from the start. 

Andy Muschietti did a fine job of keeping the plates spinning but I feel like he was fighting against a script laden with plot and plot armor that had it been trimmed, might have given more weight to what Barry Allen was going through and a resolution that might have landed better than it did. As it was, it came off as a pastiche of both Spider-Man: No Way Home and Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. That being said, many of the ideas in the source material (the Flash run under the title of Flashpoint in DC Comics) predate both those films. 

Even so, the similarities are striking; a young superhero wants to change the past to alter the present, seeks advice from an older and wiser superhero, and in general, proceeds to muck things up. Good intentions and all that.

The movie starts out promising enough; Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) is ironically late on his way to the office where he's a legal assistant in a forensics department tasked with closing cases and he has a reputation for being what some people call a stickler. His coffee order is interrupted by a call from Alfred Pennyworth that there's a major issue in Gotham that Bruce Wayne needs immediate assistance with and none of the other members of the Justice League are on hand to help. 

The conceit is amusing that Barry can change into the Flash, beat it over to Gotham, handle the situation and be back in time and street clothes to pick up his coffee order and make it to the office (still late, though, Barry!) Jeremy Irons reprises his role as Alfred, Ben Affleck returns one more time as Bruce Wayne/Batman (and reminds me that Affleck made a damned good Wayne and Batman and it's a tragedy he wasn't in better films.) We also get those cameos from those "other charismatic actors" and one is still wondering what rule of physics can Barry break that he can speed off several hundred miles away, spend a good fifteen to twenty minutes of screen time and return to his point of departure in what seems to be a nanosecond in time there. Oh, right, he's the Flash and he has discovered he is capable of going back in time.

He runs that by Bruce who attempts to dissuade him and of course, he proceeds to do the very thing he shouldn't do. He wants to prevent his mother's death and ensure that his father doesn't go to jail for a crime he didn't commit (he was found with blood on his hands and prints on the knife that killed his wife and convicted on circumstantial evidence - pretty damning circumstantial evidence, by the way). It also happens that his alibi that he went back to the store to get another can of tomatoes for his wife doesn't hold because even though he is seen on a security camera, he doesn't look up to provide visual proof that it is, in fact, him. Darn baseball caps and their big visors.

Barry admitted to Bruce that he's aware of the butterfly effect, but reasons that if he isn't seen, then hey, no harm done, right? Welp, he isn't seen, does put the second can of tomatoes into his mom's shopping cart and of course, does go to check on his family one last time. However, here, he is seen. By his mother. She comments on his hair and how good it looks (not so unlike Miles Morales' mom in the recent Spiderverse film...oh, the overlapping themes and plot devices we are heir to) but things are cut short when he sees his eighteen year old self approaching the house. 

By now, one could reasonably assume that Barry is adding butterfly upon butterfly to create a superstorm of epic proportions. He's able to whisk his younger self into the room their bedroom and unspools the whole mythology about becoming the Flash. I won't go into more detail because it's just plain laborious, but it isn't long before Barry realizes that the night is upon them when he attains his powers. He sets his eighteen year self up to get zapped by lightning and chemically enhanced but in doing so, latter day Barry loses his powers. Oh, and the additional issue? There are no superhuman superheroes in this timeline. 

They don't go so far as to actually use the term "variant", but they might as well have. General Zod is landing in Metropolis and looking for the Kryptonian that arrived on Earth years before to get a blood sample and begin the takeover of the planet by terraforming it into Krypton II and populated with Kryptonians birthed from the alien DNA. Of course, recent Barry is horrified; he's without his powers, his younger self needs training, and there are no "metahumans", It's a drag.

But there is a Bruce Wayne in this world and a Batman and the Barrys find him and draw him out of retirement. Keaton plays Wayne as a Howard Hughes recluse but not as divorced from reality. It is, after all, thirty odd years since we saw him last and in the world we're witness to here, he did a good job; Gotham is crime-free. However, once our Barry lays out what the stakes for the world are, Bruce dons the cape and cowl and says, yes, he'll help find the Kryptonian but once that's done, the Barrys are on their own. 

Again, plot-action-action; our intrepid team locates the Kryptonian in Siberia, finds a tortured woman in a very thick-walled holding sphere and yes, this is Kara, Kal-El's cousin and the Kryptonian that Zod is actually looking for. Having dispensed with her Russian captors, she takes off to find Zod and the Barrys and Bats head back to the Bat-cave where our Barry figures a way to replicate the factors that led to acquiring his powers. Long story short; he almost dies, of course, in doing so, but Kara comes back and assists, deciding that Zod needs to be stopped, humans are okay, and two Flashes and a Batman are better than none.

As I read back over this, I feel like this is one of the reasons why it's amazing that comic books have become source material for billion dollar money making franchises. Take a plot from almost any of the representative films of the genre and your draw may go slack. Of course, what makes any of these rickety things work are the performances, the CGI, hopefully slick camera work, rousing scores, and enough of a set-up to provide genuinely high stakes to create and maintain dramatic tension. The Flash does some of this. However, it's around here where the seams really start to split.

As the two Flashes, Kara, and Bruce battle Zod and his minions, things go south when Zod kills Kara and Batman dies, as well. Both Barrys go back in time and attempt to avert those story beats but to no avail. Our more mature Barry figures it out quickly enough; some timelines are meant to end in tragedy. It is simply the nature of that configuration of causes and configurations. Again, the resonance here is with the "canon events" of the (far) superior Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. 

Eventually, the younger iteration of Barry finally gets it and everything is now able to run its course, however tragic for all considered. Our Barry goes back into the timeline where he had placed the second can of tomatoes, takes it out and puts it back on the shelf. He meets his mother in the store and they have a touching moment (Maribel Verdú has a similar goodness that you see in Marisa Tomei's Aunt May; it's too bad there just isn't more for her to do here) and Barry returns to his timeline, reviews a video that was enhanced by Bruce under the aegis of Wayne Enterprises and shows his father looking up at the camera. This is admitted in the appellate court, and his dad is found innocent and now a free man.

Barry, ecstatic, calls Bruce who is just around the corner and when he gets out the car, it's really not the Bruce Wayne Barry knows (but one we all do and no, I'm not going to say who.) "You can't be Bruce Wayne!" 

There is much to like about this film, but like so many, the burden of covering so much territory almost hamstrings the characters. No. It does hamstring them. Characters are moved into place like the plot devices they're seen as being and thankfully, with a skilled ensemble, that can be overcome to some degree. 

This is Miller's film and they do a fantastic job. They play both Barrys at distinct individuals, both equally charming and annoying by turns, and there is a genuinely deep sensitivity as Barry 1 ("our Barry") meets with the various challenges and his past. Sasha Calle is also a revelation as Kara Zor-El and it's a shame we're not likely to see her in the role again. Or who knows? Gunn and Safran are looking for a new Superman/Clark Kent, but Gal Gadot and Jason Momoa don't seem to be ruled out from returning as their respective characters. 

The problem is that, and I know I mention this a lot, the overlong sequences bleed any dramatic depth from the work overall. The variable CGI doesn't help, either, and just the insertion of other iterations of the DC characters into a sequence does not make for any sense of significance other than that, well, here we are, we have a multiverse, too! And take a look at our IP!!! Cool, huh?!

No, it's not. When we see alternative actors in roles in the second Dr. Strange movie, yes, it is fan service, but it serves the idea of a multiverse better and capitalizes on the relationships between characters that even casual viewers get. Here, we're getting everyone from George Reeves to Nic Cage as Superman (and seeing Christopher Reeve made me sad and a put-off by using his image) and Adam West, et alia from that side, and so on. I didn't find this particularly interesting or necessary and even a little perplexing because it begs the question of just how different are individual variants (sorry, but it's a good term) in the DC multiverse.

Additionally, the CGI was remarkably wonky here; the uncanny valley was deep and wide in the faces, the various environments didn't feel finished and were as muddy as anything I've seen elsewhere. 

I suppose that had the Snyderverse continued, there would be other threads to pick up that were put down here, and while it would be nice to see Barry find some degree of happiness with Iris West (a game Kiersey Clemons), there is just too much other...stuff to deal with. Most of all, it's the lack of editing - not just the on-screen editing - but where are people to sit writing teams down and say, no, this doesn't need to be here, this is distracting, this is irrelevant, and this makes no sense, get it out of here?

Christina Hodgson, who scripted Bumblebee (the only interesting Transformers movie) and Birds of Prey for Cathy Yan (also, pretty good) worked from a screen story provided by John Francis Daley (Spider-Man: Homecoming), Jonathan Goldstein (also Spider-Man: Homecoming, as well as the recent Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves), and Joby Harold (Obi-Wan Kenobi and Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead). So what gives? To be sure, everyone on the writing side knows the assignment. They've all done strong work; but I wonder, again, if it's that collision of corporate executive notes, perhaps a not fully thought-out vision by the writers and the director, and frankly, just that not all ideas are created equal, but everyone wants to see everything all at once. And that often makes for a less than good time. 

In fact, there's a wealth of talent on the editorial side, the DP is Henry Braham, whose work is often wonderful (he's not responsible for FX, so the CGI is not his issue), and heck, there's an ace composer on hand in Benjamin Wallfisch. As I've said before, and will again, no one sets out to make a bad movie and The Flash is not a bad movie. The problem is that it's not a very good one, either; it is simply plagued by half-finished or just not fully thought through ideas and frankly, more than a few plot elements that could have been excised.

If this is the end of the Snyderverse, I'm genuinely sorry that it wasn't a better film. It had the promise of one (I loved the previews.)