The Flash (2023)

Kinda sad that Miller's best showing as Barry Allen and is also his worst (alternate Barry -- how in the world did that little kid become even more annoying than Pauly Shore at his worst while having both parents around?...) and this is (hopefully) his last time around.  As bad as a lot of the CGI work is, the fx teams' work on the twin fx are the best I think I've ever seen.  The glimpses into the Multiverse were fun even if the effects weren't the best, though it was weird that Jay Garrick was used and he and George Reeves got the black and white treatment instead of full color.  Was a nice inside joke seeing Cage vs the infamous giant spider but the whole thing felt kind of wrong without Lynda Carter (and some of the other notable DC actors -- I really thought the green Earth was going to spotlight Ryan Reynolds...).  The Aquaman tag didn't work for me, I'm guessing the idea was to show Barry taking Arthur out to celebrate his no longer causing him not to be born?... Is that what that was?...).  Still trying to figure out how the Batgirl movie was supposed to fit in with this considering Clooney is now Batman instead of Keaton though I guess it really doesn't matter now, anyway...

Now just hoping to get some time away to see Blue Beetle before it gets to max...

Under normal circumstances, I would give that a positive review. It's a good movie. But considering how we got here, that's not good enough.

How do I approach this review? Do I talk about the failings of the DC Extended Universe? The business decisions that led to those failings? Ezra Miller's real-world grossness making the movie unwatchable on some level? How wrong the movie did by Earth 89?

Damn, I'm gonna have to go through it all. The problems didn't start with David Zaslav at Warner Discovery, but he definitely made things worse than they would have been.

Let's start with the DCEU's biggest failing, the one it could never recover from, and how we got here.

Zack Snyder's "Man Of Steel".

In hindsight, it is an outright terrible movie. But I think because it wasn't as terrible as "Superman Returns" fans gave it (totally unwarranted) relatively positive, if guarded, feedback. It could lead to interesting things down the road, so the feeling at the time went. Now "Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice" was terrible, and Ben Affleck AND Ezra Miller were entirely miscast. But there are people who believe Snyder's four hour version of Justice League fixed all of the problems of Joss Whedon's. I don't agree with that. I think though they are different in story and tone, they are about the same quality, which makes the 4 hour runtime of the Snyder cut seem MUCH worse. Still, I read the online treatment to how the Snyderverse was supposed to go. And it DID sound interesting. And it also sounded like a slog that nobody would actually enjoy. And the main problem with Zack Snyder's Justice League, and ALL of his DCEU movies is that they are not remotely enjoyable. So, yeah, the franchise was started by the wrong person, and its uneven tones throughout the different movies ruined certain movies that would have been otherwise decent if the fact that Snyder's stuff was so polarizing didn't make the suits micromanage everything in response.

Let's talk about how stupid the casting of Ben Affleck and Ezra Miller were next. I think what people think about Affleck in hindsight is that he was nowhere NEAR as bad as they feared. His Batman does the annoying Batgrowl (and sucks ass for it), but his Bruce Wayne was quite decent. Even if both those things are true, he's still miscast and miscast for an infuriating reason. He was cast so people would buy tickets to the movie. Whether or not he actually did a decent job, you will never convince me there didn't exist another lesser known actor of his age that wouldn't have done ten times a better job. He wasn't cast because his was right for the role. He was cast to boost ticket sales. And the suits WONDER why the Extended Universe failed, and why fans mostly turned up their noses at it? That why.

In a lot of ways Affleck's casting is more understandable than Miller's. Maybe it's the fact that Miller turned out to be a sex abuser that turned me fully against them, but the truth is I never understood why they were cast as Barry Allen to begin with. They are ALL wrong for the role, from both looks and voice. And maybe, MAYBE if Snyder had had the sense to cast a more Barry Allenish actor, that actor wouldn't be getting in trouble with the law and causing so much bad press that a LOT of people skipped the movie rather than financially support a literal groomer. If Miller hadn't been miscast to begin with, this film would have about 8 strikes going against it instead of about the 23 it actually suffered from.

Other strikes involve how badly Zaslav has mismanaged Warner Discovery. The cancelation and destruction of the Batgirl movie was both unprecedented and unforgivable. The fact that James Gunn defended something so indefensible says he is the wrong person to guide the franchise from here on out. The truth is Zaslav writing off artistic endeavors for taxes and screwing creators not only out of royalties, but out of their works being able to be seen legally, made it so that nobody wants to work at that studio anymore. Nobody trusts a studio where they can sign a contract to make a new series or movie and a single guy can break that contract and screw you out of not just your paycheck, but all the time, hard work, and effort you put into the project. Worse, other studios and streaming services have started to adopt this unforgivable, art-destroying practice. It makes the current writer's and actor's strikes 100% necessary.

They canceled Batgirl but somehow this movie, which Ezra Miller basically garnered nothing but negative (and even criminal) press for, moved forward and finally hit theaters. I am the reasonable type of reviewer who believes it's inappropriate to measure a given project to other better projects in the franchise. Things need to be judged on their own merits. But considering the amount of destruction Zaslav and Miller created in their PR wake, the movie needed to simply put, be the best project in the entire Extended Universe. I would argue it needed to be the best DC movie of all time. And to truly justify the risk the studio took on not recasting Miller, and as more and more headlines of their despicable behavior came out, maybe it actually needed to be better than Avenger: Endgame, and be the best superhero movie of all time.

This is the movie DC staked its entire reputation on. It risked the wrath of people disgusted at powerful sex abusers like Miller always somehow being given free passes by the law, and fans furious at Zaslav's destruction of art, to make it to theaters and be judged on its own merits. After all that, and all the movie has going against it, those merits simply aren't good enough.

I think I would be remiss not to mention how furious I am at how Michael Keaton's Batman was treated. He is far more comfortable in the suit than Affleck ever was, and yet by the end of the movie, it's essentially stated that Earth 89 is doomed at that point from Zod's invasion. Who said I would be okay with that? Who said they had the damn right to destroy Batman 89's Universe? We had been led to believe Keaton was gonna replace Affleck in the new movies going forward and they killed him off instead? That is infuriating on every level.

Unless they are telling me the Flashpoint timeline is NOT Earth 89? But if it's not, what's the point of using Keaton at ALL? Seriously messed up and confuses an issue that shouldn't be confused.

Do you know the worst thing about Clooney at the end? I could (eagerly) accept the idea that a new DCEU timeline retconned itself into Earth 89. You want to tell me Batman And Robin and the Bat-nipples are current things in this franchise going forward instead? Just kill me now, okay?

For some reason a lot of fan-oriented DC projects think it is REALLY cool to either cast Nic Cage for a Superman cameo, or do a callback to the ridiculous robot spider thing for the aborted Superman Lives. Psst! DC! No fan actually wants or cares about either of those things. I am not geeking out that a Universe I didn't care about and that actually sounded totally stupid is now canon. It's weird that you think I would be.

Speaking as a Star Trek fan, let me offer DC some movie advice going forward.

After Star Trek: Nemesis bombed and Enterprise fizzled on TV, Paramount simply shelved new Star Trek projects. I think it probably should have been for ten years, but they managed four before the first Kelvin Timeline movie, and I think that time and distance made the difference. A lot of current Star Trek IS a bit polarizing, but a lot of it is also beloved. And critically acclaimed or hated, there is no question the current Paramount+ stuff from Kurtzman is both widely watched and financially successful. It's literally the thing keeping the lights on on that streaming service.

My suggestion for DC is this: No movies for ten years. If you can't help yourself, make it five. Cancel or shelve all current projects that haven't already been filmed. Also shrink your live-action and animated TV output a bit and make DC projects few enough so that DC's fans can keep up with all of them without feeling overwhelmed. During this time in the wilderness, talk to creators who understand the material, but even more, understand how to adapt this kind of material into a great movie. Loving comic books is not enough. Loving great movies is not enough. Not even loving BOTH is enough. The proper writers and directors for these projects need the ability to take a static premise like a superhero comic, and adapt it to a moving premise like a film, and lose as little in translation in the process as possible. This is a difficult as hell thing to pull off, and I will strenuously argue there are few producers, live action and animated both, able to thread that needle successfully for a single project, much less multiple projects in a long-running franchise. Find that producer, DC. That writer. That director. (Hint: This person is almost certainly not James Gunn). Cast actors right for the roles, not right for the marquee.

Until you are willing to put in the time and effort and WORK to do all that, take a break. And if you come back early, stay away from Cinematic Universes. Zack Snyder and DC thought they could create the first Avengers film in the second damn Superman film. No, DC. It doesn't work that way. And you won't make the money the Avengers movies do if you don't understand that. The Avengers movies worked because Kevin Feige Paid His Dues for each one he worked up to. If you are too lazy to put in the work to do all that, don't even attempt it. But really the best advice I could give DC is to stop making movies for a few years.

"But... but... that's just leaving millions of dollars on the table! Maybe billions!"

A fine argument if every single one of these movies wasn't costing Warner Discover a TON of money, bad press, and financial losses. Nobody likes or trusts DC movies anymore. Give the audience enough of a breather to have them forget why they don't like them. Yeah, you can squeal you are missing out of five to ten years of mucho boffo box office dinero. Or you could understand the biggest likelihood is that you are sparing yourselves five to ten years of inevitable financial ruin. Don't whine that you can't make billions of dollars without these movies. Realize that if you make them as they currently stand you will LOSE billions of dollars instead. It's really a no-brainer, which is why DC won't do it.

Here is DC's future: They will have a stern and nervous board meeting discussing a total reset and course correction. And once the first movie from James Gunn bombs (and considering how both The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker wound up I'd be shocked if it didn't), Warner Discovery's boardroom will have yet ANOTHER serious and angry meeting, firing James Gunn, and bringing in... Zack Snyder. And after Snyder's first bomb, they'll bring back Geoff Johns. And then Joss Whedon. Rinse. Repeat.

Bad producers only fall upwards at DC. Gunn's Suicide Squad was one the studio's biggest failures up to that point. It being put on HBO Max the same day as theaters didn't help its box office any, but the truth is, few people actually liked it, and an R-rated DC movie without an actor as charming as Ryan Reynolds or Hugh Jackman centering it just will not work. It would have bombed anyways. Already proven with the Harley Quinn flick by the way, of which Margot Robbie was a producer, despite her only previous appearance as Harley in the first Suicide Squad movie being in a film that was widely panned and disliked. But despite delivering DC's biggest box office bomb at the time, Gunn is put in charge of EVERYTHING. Does that make ANY sort of sense to you? Again, people who make bad movies and TV shows only fall upwards at DC. So no, I don't expect DC to learn anything from this, and I expect them to keep doing the same thing over and over again and getting the same results. And having serious boardrooms meetings after each bomb. Uh oh, guys. DC is taking this seriously now! After this movie bombed, DC is gonna make DAMN sure Blue Beetle is up to snuff and promoted properly and...

You see where this is going, right? Are you as disgusted at all this as I am by this point? I have heard so many damn excuses over the years for why DC movies suck. And none of them hold up to scrutiny. One of the best online quips I've heard about DC versus Marvel is that DC is like "Wonder Woman is too confusing for a movie!" and Marvel is all, "Here's a raccoon with a machine gun." Another bogus excuse is that supposedly the technology and special effects did not exist to team up Batman and Superman or to make a Justice League movie until now. But both Batman and Superman had their own movies decades ago, and neither cost a mint to make. Wonder Woman was done on a damn TV budget, as was the Flash. You're telling me it would somehow be prohibitively expensive and impossible to put them in a single movie together? What is it, the Patty Duke show or something, and we can never see them onscreen at the same time? Or is it Geoff Johns' favorite brag, that DC movies are serious melodramas exploring heavy themes? Yeah, that's right, Geoff. That's just what I want from my demigods in brightly colored Underoos: A depressing movie that is no fun. It's no wonder Marvel ate these guys' lunches for so long. They pretty much had the field to themselves. Instead of a Superman movie quoting Nietzsche and wallowing in his alienation from humanity, how about Superman punches out talking gorillas instead? Because if you ask me the only reason to even bother telling stories about demigods in brightly colored Underoos is to have them punch out talking gorillas. There is absolutely nothing else a superhero franchise can show me that I am remotely interested in. Because talking gorillas need to get punched the hell out. Grodd's Objectivist b.s. NEEDS to be shut all the hell up out of here.

And if Marvel doesn't really do a ton of talking gorillas getting punched out, they at least have the second best thing in raccoons with machine guns. Somebody out there understand their priorities at least. Weird it's actually James Gunn for this specific thing. How is it he can make a great Marvel franchise and does nothing but ruin DC? I don't get it. At all.

So that was The Flash. It was Pretty Good. And my impression of it is negative because after all THAT, Pretty Good is Not Damn Good Enough. Not anymore. Not for this. 3 stars.