The Multiverse Fever Dream of ‘The Flash’
If you’ve spent a lot of time on social media or follow entertainment news, you’ve heard about Ezra Miller’s criminal history and various controversies. On top of having a troubled star, The Flash is also a movie coming from a studio in transition where the fate of this current cinematic universe seems all but sealed. What I’m saying is, there’s a lot surrounding this movie that will probably influence how you experience it in the theater.
The story here involves Barry Allen (Miller) from the Justice League universe using his powers to travel back in time in the hopes of saving his mother. But as we learn from Back to the Future, which is referenced several times here, messing with the past can create enormous impacts on the future. And since we’re heavy in the throws of movie multiverse madness, altering the timeline also gives Barry an opportunity to interact with different variations of familiar characters like Michael Keaton as Batman and Sasha Calle as Supergirl.
The Flash was the most bizarre movie experience I’ve had in years. This is a film that contains Michael Shannon as General Zod from the grim Synderverse and a wacky Quicksilver-esque comedy scene with a CGI baby in a microwave. It’s visually weird and rubbery like those AI-generated movie trailers you see all over Twitter. There are cameos that feel like pure fan service and some that feel like they’re being used ironically. It’s a fever dream. At one point, I started to wonder if there was a gas leak in the movie theater.
There’s a real “last day of school” energy to this film where it seems like writers Christina Hodson and Joby Harold didn’t say no to any ideas, no matter how silly or bizarre. Some of these big swings work, but others result in that kind of strike where the batter spins all the way around like a cartoon. The script is filled with humor beyond what we usually get out of DC but not quite to the Marvel “everything is a quip” level. The wonky CGI only adds to the strangeness and at some point you wonder if it looks like an awkward video game cutscene for intentional comedy. We can never really be sure which parts of this movie are sincere efforts and which are “we’re graduating tomorrow, so nothing matters” vibes.
Miller, the controversial actor at the center of all this drama, is simultaneously charming and obnoxious here. The Barry we know teams up with a younger Barry from an alternate timeline and there is an entertaining distinction in how Miller plays each version. Trying to put aside all the real-life issues of the actor, much of this movie rests on how well you feel their jokes land. Sometimes their delivery is spot-on, other times too whiny or awkward. Miller’s performance is a strange one to watch, but at no point was I yawning or wanting to look at my phone in the way I usually do in an overly long superhero movie, so I suppose that counts for something.
The chaotic messiness of this movie actually makes it pretty damn entertaining. I’ll admit, I wasn’t bored for a minute of the two-and-a-half-hour runtime, though I did sometimes question if I was amused for the reasons the filmmakers wanted or if I was entertained in a train wreck kind of way.
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