‘The Flash’ Review: Not The Greatest Superhero Movie Of All Time, But Not The Worst
Ezra Miller (left, center) & Sasha Calle in The Flash. Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures/™ & © DC Comics © 2023 Warner Bros. Ent. All Rights Reserved. TM & © DC.
Editor’s note: This review will not go into detail on the actions of The Flash’s star, Ezra Miller, none of which we condone. Click here for information.
To get this out of the way, The Flash is not the greatest superhero movie of all time — and it isn’t the best since The Dark Knight, regardless of which studio executive tells you it is. After being stuck in development hell for the better part of a decade — for reference, Ezra Miller was cast in the role before the CW series started airing, a series that concluded its nine-season run before the release of the film — The Flash is running onto the big screen and is loosely adapting Flashpoint, arguably the most famous comic story revolving around the character. We follow Barry Allen (Miller), the fastest man alive, a Justice League member, and most importantly, The Flash.
Ezra Miller (left, right) & Michael Keaton in The Flash. Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures/™ & © DC Comics © 2023 Warner Bros. Ent. All Rights Reserved. TM & © DC.
The film opens as Barry is called upon by Alfred (Jeremy Irons) to save a wing of hospital patients from a falling section of the building before rushing across town to convene with Batman (Ben Affleck) and stop a briefcase full of chemicals from falling into the river (and water supply), all in the time it takes a barista to make his sandwich (I mean seriously, seven minutes to make a glorified PB&J, are you kidding?). This initial conflict, while not crucial to the film’s story, tells us just about everything we need to know in regard to how the action is going to be approached. Director Andy Muschietti (It, It: Chapter Two) uses (slightly excessive) slow-motion to highlight Barry’s speed, doing so throughout the entirety of the film, as opposed to remaining in real-time, letting us witness how fast Flash moves. This, coupled with Christina Hodson’s (Birds of Prey, Bumblebee) script, highlights what we really need to know from these opening minutes: almost every moment, regardless of the intended effect, will be filled with quips and one-liners — many of which undercut the darker moments throughout the film — however comic-accurate they may be.
Aside from showing a lack of care about tone, these early action sequences highlight one of the film’s most frustrating issues: bad CGI. Though not all visual effects are rough to look at, the film particularly struggles when it comes to digital faces, and when you have the same actor playing two characters for the majority of your movie, that may or may not be a problem. There are multiple moments where it’s incredibly clear which Barry Allen is actually Ezra Miller — whose performance is fine, nothing truly incredible — and which is a stand-in (I mean, look at the still at the top of the page and try and guess).
Ezra Miller (left, right) & Sasha Calle in The Flash. Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures/™ & © DC Comics © 2023 Warner Bros. Ent. All Rights Reserved. TM & © DC.
As The Flash progresses, it becomes clear that the film’s biggest issue is the narrative it tries to tackle, not fully committing to the emotional side or the comedic side, as the tone flip-flops back and forth, undermining itself over and over again. On top of this, the film uses the characters of Zod, Supergirl, and Michael Keaton’s Batman merely as plot devices, failing to characterize them effectively or give them any depth. When it comes to Zod (Michael Shannon), the character is entirely underused, making Shannon’s return (seemingly the only time he’ll come back to the character) feel wasted.
Though the tone and use of music in fight scenes makes an effort to convey the feeling of reading The Flash comics, it undercuts the film’s tone — or the one that it should be going for — primarily during the final battle (which is way too long, does too much, and has some of the most morally wrong cameos I’ve seen to date). This battle, which makes up the majority of the third act, is primarily a rehash of the conflict from Man of Steel, just with Sasha Calle’s Supergirl swapped in for Henry Cavill’s Superman. There’s a clear effort to return to the multiverse/time travel nature of the story in the later moments of this sequence, but it feels convoluted due to how quickly the specific conflict gets introduced and resolved. It’s clear from these moments that The Flash works best when, instead of being a smörgåsbord of DC characters and stories (none of which are balanced, tonally or time-wise) and is just a story about Barry Allen, with the more grounded scenes working better and feeling more tonally cohesive.
To be entirely straightforward, The Flash, from an objective viewpoint, is not a good movie. It’s a tonal mess that throws around too many ideas and characters, with certain moments leaving a sour taste. That said, for anyone that was a fan of the CW series or, like me, grew up with it, it’s hard not to like the film because it feels like something we’ve seen before (in a good way), though it makes a clear distinction between its adaptation of the Flashpoint story from the (one-episode) CW arc. There’s a handful of characters that, for most viewers, will just be new introductions, but for those who know the Flash mythos, they will be familiar faces. There’s nothing too wrong with The Flash — it’s an average superhero movie that poorly adapts its protagonist’s most famous story and makes some questionable story (and cameo) choices. It’s just unfortunate that it had to open after Across the Spider-Verse.
The Flash arrives in theaters on June 16.
This review was made possible thanks to Warner Bros. who invited us to an advance screening of The Flash for review purposes.
