The Flash (2023) 2hr 24m
Dir: Andy Muschietti
Writers: Christina Hodson; John Francis Daley; Jonathan Goldstein.
Starring: Ezra Miller; Michael Keaton; Sasha Calle; Michael Shannon.
By Paul Bernardo paulieb2003@gmail.com
Lots of talk about this one. I finally got my hands on it, because I was not paying for this, tell you that right now. The Flash flat out bombed in so many ways when it was released, and honestly, deservedly so. This thing is a trainwreck. I am pretty sure one of the writer’s kids wrote it. It literally seems like an 8 year old wrote this script. So many holes, so many questions, so confusing and it just does whatever it wants, it’s ludicrous.
For James Gunn to say this was the greatest film he has ever seen in his life, proves he will say whatever his boss’s tell him to say. Shame, because that wrecks his credibility and integrity. He’s like the Trump of the movie world now.
So let’s start with the very obvious – the CGI or the VFX or whatever you call it – is used horribly here in this film and is used entirely way too much. You can tell when the characters become the CGI versions of themselves. You can visibly and easily see when Batman becomes a videogame, when Flash becomes a videogame, when Supergirl becomes a videogame – it’s insanely bad. I mean, we know they become CGI when they do crazy stunts, but this was the worst I’ve ever seen on camera, that was NOT a videogame.
Then the timeline scene where you see all the Supermen, for some reason, and not all the Batmen, or all the Wonderwomen or all of the Aquamen and whatever. Somehow they just chose Superman, and that looked incredibly bad. Like a videogame just beginning who had no funding at all.
The Flash battle scene looked ridiculous and was written even worse. “I’ll disarm them, you go around punching them”. Again, an 8 year old would say this and write this. Yes, Barry, let’s go punch the Kryptonians. Great idea. They won’t just get back up or anything. I mean it was so childish and void of any common sense.
Speaking of common sense – let’s get to the biggest problem of all. Barry fixes everything in the beginning and starts to go back to his time and his place in the universe. Something comes out from behind whatever and literally punches Barry in the face so he falls out of the time loop thing and into reality somewhere. Well, if you get punched out, why not just start running again and go back in? Obviously this was not your timeline, and if you see yourself in that reality? It’s really not your timeline. Barry should have just turned around, and started running again to get back into that time loop and go home. Why does he stick around to talk to himself? He knows there can’t be two of him! Why stay and have a chat? And so what the other Barry doesn’t have his powers, maybe that’s not his future at all.
Anyway despite all this garbage and ridiculous story – Barry stays with his himself, why we don’t know, until he loses his powers and can’t go back. Duh. We all saw that coming.
Now it’s a buddy movie – but there’s only one guy. So we have a buddy movie with the same actor. Fantastic. Anyone see Jack and Jill by Adam Sandler? That’s what we got here. One guy, playing one character, with different haircuts. At least Adam Sandler had the guts to wear a dress.
So there is no Superman, no Aquaman, no Wonder Woman, yet – there is a Batman. Why? We don’t know. The 8 yr old only likes Batman I guess. Oh and it’s the Michael Keaton Batman. Why? We don’t know. The 8 yr old must like Keaton. Aquaman’s father married someone else, and that’s the only thing that is explained. Keaton is indeed Batman here, why, we don’t know. So he decides to help find Superman, because Zod has arrived.
Wait – no one else is alive but Zod? Weird. Yea, but the 8 yr old likes it. So Zod is still exactly the same in this universe, even though no one else is. I mean no one else is. Why? Well you get tired of asking that every 3 minutes in this movie, so you just go along with everything at this point.
Keaton helps find Superman for Barry to kill Zod again. But wait – they found him in Russia. How did Russia capture Superman? We don’t know. They go, and it’s not Superman, it’s Supergirl. So how did they track Supergirl to Russia and how was she caught? We don’t know. So Barry saves her anyway and she is still powered by the yellow sun, so that’s good. She will go and kill Zod for them.
Things don’t work out and Barry and Barry 2 keep going back in time to fix things and keep going back to fix things and keep going back – just like an 8 yr old would write, until they give up. Then Barry goes back to his time and sees George Clooney as Batman – so now we are all confused and it ends.
So you are pretty much left scratching your head for 3 hours, and leaving the theater even more confused. I don’t see how James Gunn gave this movie such high praise, unless he was paid to do it. That is bothersome that he can’t even speak his mind anymore.
This script was beyond horrible, the CGI and VFX were even worse. I did laugh though – so the 8 yr old is good with jokes, and Ezra is good at delivering them. Beyond that, this movie is a complete dumpster fire that no fire department can put out.
If I had worse rating to give other than thundershowers, I would. This thing is a typhoon!!
