Product Info

Studio

Warner Bros. Pictures

Director

Andy Muschietti

Genre

Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

Rated

PG-13

Theatrical Release Date (NA)

Jun 16, 2023

Film Length

2hr 24min

Purchase From

The Flash, based on the DC comic character Flash created by writer Gardner Fox and artist Harry Lampert (first release in 1939), is an action-packed movie that is not only filled with  nostalgia from familiar characters and actors from the last 30 years but also tries to push the limits, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, by trying to redefine what the typical time travel genre looks like.

Oversaturated Hero

It felt like the film tried to pack a lot into the 2hr 35min timeframe, which at some points made it hard to connect with the characters, and especially the new time travel concepts with which they were trying to engage the audience. Overall, it’s a good movie, and one of the better ones in the DC franchise so worth a watch, but it didn’t hit it out of the park for superhero movies the way they probably intended it to.

The Flash, played by Ezra Miller as Barry Allen, shows a character with personality traits that are divergent from society’s norms. The movie doesn’t say this directly, but it is implied that Barry Allen may be neurodivergent, which creates challenges in day-to-day life on top of the challenges of being a superhero and trying to prove his father’s innocence at his day job. He clearly has a lot on his plate with all that and being the underling in the Justice League under high profile superheroes like Batman, Aquaman and Wonder Woman.

Back in a Flash

Barry hoped to use video footage to exonerate his father, who was imprisoned for killing his mother, but upon discovering that the footage didn’t contain enough evidence, he decided to let off steam by taking a run. What happens when the world’s fastest man runs faster than he has ever done before? He breaks the speed of light and discovers his ability to time travel.

Against the advice of Bruce Wayne, also known as Batman, played by Ben Affleck, Barry decides to try to save his mother by finding a small loophole that would prevent him from having to interact with anybody from the past and therefore not create a significant butterfly effect and cause the world to go into an upheaval. This small chance of putting a can of tomatoes into his mother’s cart so his father never has to go to the store that fateful day would then save his mother’s life and make it so his father is never put in jail for her death. This small change he sees as the solution to all his problems. 

When he returns to the present and goes to his house, he finds his mother cooking dinner. Her death never happened, his father and mother are happier than they could ever be and his mother continues to dote on him like she had always done. He has seen the photos of birthdays, vacations, etc., of the happy years he had growing up. Since he himself didn’t live through it, he can only view still imagery as he time travels back from the past, witnessing his good life with his parents back.

Unfortunately, he is pushed back to around the time he is 18-years-old instead of mid- to late twenties where he had hoped to be. He discovers his 18-year-old self is going to find him in the middle of dinner with his parents and takes a quick exit to confront his younger self. To avoid any more alternation to the timeline, Barry covers his face while antagonizing his past self to find out what year he is in.

The 18-year-old Barry isn’t having that and fights him and pulls the fabric off his face. During this event, the audience are on the edge of their seats to see if older Barry and younger Barry interacting will cause some sort of break in the time continuum. To everyone’s surprise nothing happens… except young Barry fainting, which gives many laughs.

Many New Faces, Similar Roles

Moving forward, the older Barry realizes that today is the day he accidentally received his superpower. With young Barry having no plans to recreate the same events, older Barry is concerned he might be stuck in the same timeline as young Barry.

Through lots of goofy and silly antics, older Barry is successful in making sure that young Barry is at the right time and place to get the superpowers… unfortunately, it’s at the expense of older Barry losing his powers due to how the chain of events falls… or maybe because only one of them could have them at the same time… that part is unclear. 

As young Barry starts to explore his new powers, he has fun and makes lots of mistakes where he ends up naked repeatedly (don’t worry parents… all the private parts are covered) despite older Barry’s constantly trying to teach him and warn him. Young Barry is impulsive and hasn’t had the same experience of having to grow up too quickly after his mother was killed and his father was sent to jail for her death… essentially losing two parents in one day. 

Barry tries to find the Justice League superheroes and finds that some of them were never born and some he couldn’t find at all. Eventually, he finds Bruce Wayne, also known as Batman, played by Michael Keaton from the ‘90s Batman films (Batman 1989, Batman Returns 1992). That’s right… there’s a new face (and actor) for the character because of how Barry altered the timeline with that single can of tomatoes.

The movie is able to explain that the concept of time being linear isn’t necessarily true and, like a bowl of spaghetti, it can sometimes merge, but also sometimes when you change one part of it, that can also change the past (hence the different Bruce Wayne even though Bruce Wayne would’ve already been born in the timeline because older Barry didn’t go back as far as that on the timeline to change things back then). Though this is explained quite well using spaghetti, there was a disconnect when the movie tried to show it in practice, which made it hard to follow. Nevertheless, it takes a different perspective on the normal thinking of how time traveling works and multidimensions running parallel.

After much convincing, Bruce Wayne decides to come out of retirement to become Batman again and help Barry find Superman when the world comes under attack from General Zod (Michael Shannon, reprising his role from the 2013’s The Man of Steel). Zod is from Superman’s planet, Krypton, and hopes to get the blood of the only descendant that will allow for their world to be able to reproduce again.

The two Barrys and Batman go on a quest to find Superman in a secure facility that is keeping him a prisoner. When they finally get to Superman, they don’t find Superman at all but instead have stumbled upon Supergirl, who is the cousin of Superman. Just as powerful but having been kept a prisoner her whole life, she resents the human race and doesn’t care if someone from her world comes and destroys Earth. By getting to know this new Justice League, she is able to see that not every human is bad and agrees to help stop General Zod.

Through an unlikely series of events we find that the Barrys have to repeatedly go back in time in a short period to try to change the chain of events. It is then that old Barry makes the connections that some chain of events and circumstances can’t be changed. Essentially it’s destined to be that way even when one does everything to try to stop it from happening.

Lightning Does Strike Twice

The two Barrys, both played by Miller (they/them pronouns), were very well done. The Barrys were two of the characters the director and writers were able to use to evolve the storyline, with enough background and emotion to really feel connected to both young Barry and older Barry. Miller did a great job showing each character in both the young and free innocent Barry and the older Barry who had to grow up much too quickly. This shows the depth of their ability to act, distinguishing the one character from the other even though they shared overlap in personality types and responses. Miller did a good job at acting out these characters the way the writers and directors had envisioned. 

The CGI was outstanding. When Barry (both young and old) runs quickly, it’s beautiful with bright colors. The images used during time travel were very detailed and the CGI team was top notch in the way they illustrated time travel as Barry is running. 

Although it was busy in some areas because of how much detail and time was being captured, it somehow still worked and was very realistic, except in one scene where babies were in danger. This is the only scene where the characters in CGI intentionally looked like cartoon characters leaning towards real life. A bunch of real-looking babies falling from a window would’ve been too triggering and scary to the audience, especially those that are looking for family friendly movies,  so the director and CGI team made a good decision to go away from the overall theme of real-looking CGI in this case.

One of the drawbacks of switching up actors (and acknowledging that they weren’t the same) was that it was harder to connect with these new characters. It was kind of neat from a nostalgia standpoint to see Batman actors from decades ago, but switching up multiple times in different worlds/timelines was hard to follow even with the spaghetti explanation. Some concepts felt like they didn’t fit at all. Did it take away from the overall ability to enjoy the movie? Somewhat, but with all the other positives as well as a bit of humor thrown in periodically, it was still a movie worth seeing. 

The Final Run

The Flash is one of the better DC films but feels oversaturated with material, and sometimes it’s better to take things at a slower pace for the audience to catch up.

An early screening provided for this review.