The Flash review: a eulogy for DC’s Snyderverse, and beyond

If you’re watching a film about someone who moves incomprehensibly quickly, The Flash sure did arrive late. The DC Movie Plan from 2013 had originally planned a release in 2016, but that proved to be too ambitious. The Flash arrives a full decade later from a chastened DC that’s getting ready to restart its cinematic universe with James Gunn in charge. In 2023. The Flash now serves as one of the final films in the Snyderverse, a eulogy for the Zack Snyder era of DC — but also, surprisingly, for all DC’s page-to-screen adaptations. The result is messy and strange: It’s a bright, breezy film that is overwhelmed by corporate hagiography, a pat on the back for a bunch of movies that never really worked out.

A movie is not the best thing to watch. The Flash It was slow. To its credit, the movie’s two-and-a-half-hour run time moves at an impressive clip. It’s even more amazing when you consider that the plot is one of most complex in recent superhero movies that have a terrible lack of multiverse exposition. Although it doesn’t have the same clarity and resonance as, say, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Christina Hodson’s script keeps the story squarely focused on its protagonist’s emotional journey and treats the finer points of its metaphysical world-building as flavor, an excuse to do some Then, you can also find out more aboutThe comics book world

The opening briefly reestablishes Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) as a part-time Justice League member and full-time forensics lab analyst on a personal journey to clear the name of his father, Henry (Ron Livingston), who’s been convicted of murdering Barry’s mother, Nora (Maribel Verdú). The plot kicks into gear when Barry learns that the last big potential break in his dad’s case will not exonerate him. In a moment of anguish, Barry discovers that if he runs fast enough, he can surpass the speed of light and travel through time, observing history in a ring of space-time he calls “the chronobowl.” Ignoring a warning from Bruce Wayne/Batman (Ben Affleck) about the perils of altering history, Barry decides to time travel to prevent his mother’s murder and his father’s imprisonment.

Warner Bros.

Despite this emotionally charged premise, Andy Muschietti is (The following are some of the ways to get in touch with us. The following are some examples of how to get started: The Second Chapter)The film is infused with the Looney Tunes spirit, with the most goofy opening scene in the history of superhero films. It also uses the time travel premise in order to create a humorous and entertaining film. The FlashA buddy comedy that pairs Barry up with an older, more annoying version of him from his past.

Most of the film takes place in a new timeline Barry creates, where the decision to save his mother ripples outward to create a version of the DC movie universe with no metahumans, on the brink of its foundational disaster: General Zod (Michael Shannon) arriving as he did in 2013’s Man of SteelBut this time there is no stopping him. Barry is forced to recreate his superhero origin with his younger self, and to team up with the only known superhero in this timeline: Batman, but the one played by Michael Keaton in Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman And its sequel.

Here is where The Flash It stops being a “movie” and starts to become other things. There is the blatant nostalgia play in making Keaton’s Bruce Wayne/Batman the film’s biggest supporting character — a role Keaton, to his credit, does not phone in. But The Flash doesn’t stop there. Like Barry, the filmmakers run too far, too fast, and too wild, until their film nearly spirals out of their control in a confused tangle of meta-commentary and eulogy, contemplating the history of DC movie adaptations as well as the Snyderverse that began it, and that’s coming to a close shortly. (There’s still a second Aquaman movie and Blue Beetle on the way before Gunn’s universe, labeled the DCU, kicks off.)

In pivoting from time-travel caper into multiversal doomsday epic, Muschietti treats Barry’s emotional arc of acceptance less as the heart of The FlashBarry is growing from this experience in hopes that his audience will find it as rewarding. The substance is so important, but it’s not all. The Flash isn’t The following are some examples of how to use Barry. It’s for the DC stalwarts who’ll get all the meta nods and in-jokes. It’s a story of synergy between old and new, combining the two to try and attract DC fans across the generations.

What’s so peculiar about The Flash’s version of the multiverse shenanigans that have now taken place across three Spider-Man films, an entire Marvel animated TV series, and a Doctor Strange sequel is that so much of it leans on its audience knowing what might have been, and still craving it. It’s a film full of wistful what-ifs. What would have happened if Michael Keaton was the ultimate movie Batman? How would Keaton fit in today’s landscape? What if? the Snyderverse wasn’t coming to an end as the James Gunn era of DC begins to lay its plans? What if The FlashIf they could avoid having to discuss the controversy surrounding Ezra Miller’s stardom, could a successful franchise be created on the basis of their sincere and bighearted performance?

The Flash is a bright, colorful, imaginative film with enough verve to pop off the screen, even though it’s often nonsensical in its wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff. Its imagery is fun but also shows the same priority that Muschietti demonstrated in the It films. It’s a lot of The Flash gives way to computer-generated effects, not just for the depiction of super-people fighting to save the world — Sasha Calle puts in a rage-fueled performance as Supergirl, even though the film leaves her with frustratingly little to do — but for its longing glances at alternate possible pasts, as Barry travels through time and space to see what might have been.

The audience sees a guernica computerized of characters and people they might know. The fact that almost no real actors are playing these well-known faces or familiar properties is disconcerting. They’re just likenesses. Brands. Brands. The following is what you will find. The FlashIt is the largest, ultimate DC comics Movie. It feels smaller because of it.

The FlashThe film opens on 16 June.