Welcome. If you’ve never read my blog before and you just found this and you’re expecting a fair, unbiased, positive review of The Flash, then go away. If you decided to read this because you loved The Flash and you want someone to reinforce your opinions on the quality of the movie and the acting abilities of the lead actor, read a different review. If you don’t know a lot about superheroes and you watched this or will watch this because it seems interesting and you don’t care about characters who have been around forever being properly represented or bad people being allowed to star in big studio movies, you will find none of that here. But if you came here because I’ve been ranting about this movie for years, and you want to see what a sad man who cares too much about comics has to say about The Flash, then you’re in luck. Because there’s no positivity to be found here unless you like Michael Keaton or Michael Shannon. I’ll start off with a non-spoiler review and clearly mark when I start talking about spoilers, as usual. Let’s get into it, I guess. Enjoy?

The Flash stars Ezra Miller, Michael Keaton, Sasha Calle, Ben Affleck, Ron Livingston, Maribel Verdú, Michael Shannon, and Kiersey Clemons. It was directed by Andy Muschietti, who also directed IT, IT Chapter Two, and Mama, a horror movie I’ve heard is good. The script was written by Christina Hodson, who previously wrote Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey, a movie I like. The screenplay was also written by Joby Harold, who previously wrote the screenplays for King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, which is a movie I hated, Army of the Dead, which is a movie I thought was boring, and Obi-Wan Kenobi, a TV series that I thought could have been decent if the writing was much better. I personally would not have hired this guy to write a superhero movie, let alone one about my favorite comic book character. But maybe I’m just saying that because I’m in a bad mood and he looks really smug in his photo on IMDb.

Quick Plot Rundown –
Barry Allen is really sad that his mom is dead and his dad is in jail. But he’s the fastest man alive so he can do something about it. After accidentally running so fast that he ends up in a weird CGI bubble void full of warped approximations of the actors we’ve already seen, he realizes he can travel back in time. And he goes to Batman and says “I wanna save my mom.” And Batman says “Don’t do it, or I might not be played by Ben Affleck the next time you see me.” But Barry Allen ignores this advice and saves his mom, only to end up in an alternate 2013 where there aren’t any metahumans and Michael Shannon’s General Zod is back to take over Earth and see if anyone still remembers Man of Steel. So Barry Allen has to take on Zod and fix the timeline with a little help from a more annoying version of himself from 2013, Batman who’s inexplicably Michael Keaton again, and Supergirl. These aren’t spoilers, this is all in the trailers.

General Non-Spoilery Thoughts –
Obviously I didn’t like this. Surely there’s no amount of confusion as to whether or not that’s the case. I held off on this review a bit because I was planning on doing a double review of this and Asteroid City, the new Wes Anderson movie. The thinking was that I love Wes Anderson and the positivity I felt for that would surely balance the negativity I feel towards this. But then I watched Asteroid City and I didn’t love it? I enjoyed it, but not as much as his other stuff, and I don’t have enough to say for a blog post. So you’re stuck with a slightly late review of this.
In theory this movie is not terrible and I understand why someone could enjoy this. But I hated it. And I didn’t hate it because I went into it thinking I would dislike it. I didn’t even hate it because Ezra Miller has done some really weird and not great things and they seem like a not great person. I hated this movie because this version of Barry Allen, as portrayed by Ezra Miller, has always been a version of this character that I disliked and found irritating and hard to watch, even before they started doing weird things. I never understood why they cast Ezra Miller as this character, and there are two Barry Allens in this movie, neither of whom stop talking for the majority of the runtime. I hated this because they never should have adapted Flashpoint for the first Flash movie. I hated it because I’ve read several articles over the last few years about the person starring in this movie, about the bad CGI cameos they threw into this movie that were all spoiled ahead of time on the internet, about Warner Brothers’ unwillingness to distance themselves and the movie from the actions of the lead actor or make it clear that they don’t condone the really weird actions of someone that’s playing a superhero that kids love. I have been poisoned by so much of the depressing things surrounding this, but even without all of that this movie feels long and boring and the two main characters are hard to watch and the CGI is really bad. This doesn’t feel like a tribute to a decade of excellent and cohesive superhero movies existing in a cohesive universe, because DC never managed to do that, did they? This is their last ditch effort to reboot the universe and try to get James Gunn to save everything before people just stop watching DC movies altogether because they’re mostly terrible. So yeah. Fuck this movie.

Characters –
Barry Allen AKA The Flash and Younger Barry Allen AKA The Flash – Ezra Miller
So as I said above, and all the trailers have constantly displayed, there are two Barrys. There’s the Barry Allen we saw back in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, which seems to be the version of that movie this is a sequel to. In between that movie and this one, Barry has gone from being childish and annoying and unsure of his abilities to being childish and annoying but he’s more confident and slightly wiser. They introduce an interesting element to this movie that is essentially just a visual aid to remind the audience that The Flash has a high metabolism and needs to eat lots of calories all the time. This time around he has a meter on his suit that tells him when he’s low on energy. I thought that was cool. This Barry is weird and unlikable and his coworkers are mean to him. But alternate 2013 Barry is more of a thoughtless prick that’s less aware of people around him because his mom didn’t die and his father didn’t get framed for her murder and that tragedy didn’t turn him into a lonely weirdo. At the same time, alternate 2013 Barry is more talkative, more annoying, more hyper, and overall more unlikable. Both versions of Barry learn lessons in this movie. Neither of them are interesting. And I honestly don’t think I have much else to say.

Bruce Wayne AKA Batman(Old) – Michael Keaton
He’s the best part of this movie, and he’s not even really in it that much. I like Michael Keaton and I was worried, based on the trailer, that he’d mainly be doing callbacks and saying lines from his movies, but the only two lines I caught were in the trailer. While I was glad to see him back, the explanation for as to why Batman is suddenly super old is just that altering the timeline makes things messy and that’s a stupid justification. There’s a bit during the big Zod and the Kryptonians action sequence that you see in the trailer where he fights a giant Kryptonian by jumping onto him, slapping explosives on him and then clinging to the other side of the monster’s body to shield himself from the blast. That’s a really cool little moment that I enjoyed, but that does not justify the movie.

Bruce Wayne AKA Batman(Youngish) – Ben Affleck
He’s barely in it and even though his suit is blue and gray (Love that.) I am not a fan of the overall design of his new costume, which is weird. But he looks good as a person. So I don’t know.

Kara Zor-El AKA Supergirl – Sasha Calle
She’s good but she’s barely in this movie and she’s only here so they can have a Super character.

General Zod – Michael Shannon
Michael Shannon is the best and clearly didn’t want to be there and seemed to be half-asleep during some of his performance. Good for him, though. He doesn’t need to put effort into this movie.

Nora Allen – Maribel Verdú
Nora Allen, in the comics, used to be alive until she could be used to motivate Barry Allen’s character by being dead. She’s also good in this as a really nice mom, I guess.

Henry Allen – Ron Livingston
This is a recast. In both versions of Justice League, Henry Allen was played by Billy Cruddup, but he was making that Apple TV show about news anchors and COVID and Jennifer Anniston and Steve Carell. I’ve heard mixed things. Ron Livingston is in Office Space, which is a great movie, and I always liked him. He’s got a very fun goofy dad energy in this, even when he’s in prison, wrongfully accused for killing his wife.

Iris West – Kiersey Clemons
Iris is only in the actual movie for one scene, but she’s referenced quite a bit as someone Barry had a big crush on. I like Kiersey Clemons. I don’t know.

Score/Soundtrack – The score was composed by a man named Benjamin Wallfisch. I thought the score was a little overbearing and constant in this. I might have been wrong.

Cinematography – The Director of Photography on this movie was Henry Braham. This movie looks terrible, but that’s because the CGI is awful. In terms of visual style, this movie certainly fits with Zach Snyder’s DC output, and not in a bad way. So that should be commended.

This is the bit where I say I’m gonna spoil stuff in a red font and that you should leave if you don’t want spoilers for a movie you don’t want to see.

I’ve done it for every other one of these so I can’t not do it now.

Run from the spoiler machine.

It’ll get you if you’re not careful.

Spooooooooky.

I want to make sure my tone comes across. Imagine everything I’ve said in a very monotone voice.

And then get out if you haven’t seen The Flash, because it’s spoiler time!

The Flash Spoiler Review
Okay, so the Flash saves his mom by going back in time and putting a can of tomatoes in her cart. When she was murdered, Nora Allen was making spaghetti, and she needed a second can of tomatoes, so Henry Allen went to the store. He could’ve been caught on the security camera, thereby exonerating him and corroborating his alibi (Even though if he had actually killed Nora, which he didn’t, he still would have had time to get back and kill her) but he wasn’t and so instead of waiting or looking for more evidence, Barry changes everything. Because the can of tomatoes is in her cart, Henry doesn’t leave and Nora just doesn’t die. So after creating this alternate reality, the Flash decides he’s going to form a Justice League to fight Zod and protect this reality he created where his mom is alive.
The team he assembles is him, another him, Michael Keaton, and Supergirl. What a team. They fight Zod and it goes badly and Batman and Supergirl die, so second Barry goes back in time so they don’t die but then they die again and he keeps doing it to save his friends(?) but it’s an event that has to happen. And he tries to reverse time for so long that he becomes old and full of shrapnel and he runs back in time and pushes main Barry into 2013 so he can meet alternate Barry, give him powers, and then create the Dark Flash he’s become? Ugh. Also because he tries to do this it causes multiversal explosions or something and a bunch of big CGI planets fly around with CGI recreations of dead people that played DC characters before. So young pre-evil 2013 Barry is killed by regular Barry and Barry kills old Barry by blasting him with lightning? And then main Barry takes the tomatoes out of his mom’s cart after talking to her (Because she doesn’t know him, but he’s wearing clothes that still have tags on them) but he moves the tomatoes to the top rack of the shelf so his dad looked at the security camera after all. But the police and lawyers and everybody still couldn’t tell that was the case until the modern day so the timeline is preserved. And at the end, Barry talks to Batman. But which one?

The Villain
Terrible. And they stole the dumb villain reveal from Lightyear, another terrible movie.

Which cameos shouldn’t have been in this movie but were anyway?
There’s a planet where you see George Reeves, the man who played Superman and then possibly killed himself? He died under suspicious circumstances with no surviving family members or relatives to contest the legality of his appearance in this as a CGI man. Then there’s an Adam West planet where you see CGI Adam West climbing a building, CGI Christopher Reeve and CGI Helen Slater as CGI Superman and CGI Supergirl, and CGI Nick Cage as a CGI imagining of what his Superman was meant to look like, fighting a giant spider, which is a Hollywood in-joke. Who were these cameos for? Nobody knows who these people are anymore. Nobody knows the significance of Nick Cage vs a giant spider. People my age and younger don’t know about George Reeves’s tragic past. Also Wonder Woman is in this and they redo the lasso joke that was in the Joss Whedon version of Justice League for some reason. Stop doing that joke.

What does the ending mean?
Barry goes to talk to Bruce but it isn’t Ben Affleck or Michael Keaton, it’s George Clooney. And he doesn’t have a costume on, he didn’t dye his hair to make it look darker. It’s just George Clooney, as is, looking small in a suit like he just came from a Nespresso ad, grinning his signature charming grin. And Barry is confused, because what universe is he in now? Exactly. What’s the main DC universe? Is Ezra the main Flash? They added nothing to clarify the state of the universe going forward, because there’s no way Clooney will be the main Batman going forward in James Gunn’s universe. I did love his inclusion if only because he is very charming and nice to see. So I don’t know, in summation.

What happens in the post-credits scene?
Barry tries to talk to Aquaman about multiverses and Aquaman gets blackout drunk and takes a nap in a puddle. Again, why that scene? What’s this new universe going forward? I mean, it’s because there’s still an Aquaman movie they have to release. Ugh.

Where does this rank for me among the six multiverse movies that have come out since 2018?
Right at the bottom. Easily. Let’s count ’em down.
4. The Flash
3. Spider-Man: No Way Home
2. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
1. Everything Everywhere All At Once, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
I know equal first is a cop out but I couldn’t choose. But overall, the multiverse premise isn’t tired, DC is.

The Parmesan Problem:
So when the two Barrys run into Michael Keaton he’s got long hair and he isn’t Batman but he can still kick two idiots around a kitchen. He’s making pasta when they find him, and he has a giant block of parmesan in his kitchen. Like head sized. Which my father and I appreciated. We both love parmesan cheese. But when Michael Keaton puts the bowl of spaghetti on the table and grates the cheese, he barely puts any on there, and it’s all on one side of the bowl! What are you doing, Bruce??? I mean, you don’t need to drown your pasta in cheese like I do, but it’s not a garnish, and you need to portion the cheese out over the bowl, not put it all in one area. I mean, I guess he grew up with a Butler, but that really made me angry. And the Flash wouldn’t wipe the sauce stains off his mouth. Ugh.

Overall Rating – 1.5/10(It gets slightly higher marks because of Keaton, I guess. And I kind of liked Barry’s coworker/friends that were mean and one of them is a villain in the comics and the other is a love interest.)
Rudd Rating – 7/10(Paul Rudd would’ve been great in this as anybody.)

Sorry this is late. As I said above, the Wes Anderson thing. But yes. I can be done with this movie now, because clearly everyone else is and it’s making no money. Yesss.