I had high hopes for this movie because of the appearance of Michael Keaton as Batman. I am about to age myself because I remember when the very first Batman movie was released, starring Michael Keaton. To this day, I think he portrayed the best Batman, so I was excited to see him return to this role. I am also a fan of The Flash TV series, starring Grant Gustin as The Flash. I was all on board for the release of the DC Comics The Flash film. Maybe my expectations were too high because I didn’t love it like I thought I would.
The movie has the same premise as the show but starts with Barry Allen already working against crime for a long while. The Flash helps Batman catch some bank robbers in Gotham City at the beginning of the story. The Flash aka Barry Allen decides to visit his childhood home while he is there and becomes very sad remembering what happened there that changed his life. His mother was murdered by an unknown assailant and his father was accused of her murder. Barry’s father is currently serving time in prison as a result. is transformed into a meta-human with extreme speed by an explosion of a device called a particle accelerator. The Flash travels back in time to alter the events of that day and stops his mother’s murder from happening. Then, he returns to his own time to find that life has changed significantly. Not only are his parents still together, Barry is no longer the Flash and his foster father doesn’t even know him. He realizes that he must go back in time again to fix the problems he has caused. He realizes he must regain his speedster powers in order to fix the problems he caused. The first thing he does is to go back to 2013 to contact his teenage self. Somehow he must arrange for his 2013 self to be hit by lightning in order to regain his powers to his future self. He enlists Bruce Wayne from the past to help him recreate the lightning incident. I won’t go any further into the plot as to not reveal what happens.
The cast is a conglomeration of past DC characters taking advantage of cameo appearances and CGI renderings. I have a lot to say about the cast, but first, let me give you an idea about who shows up on the screen. First and foremost, Ezra Miller has the starring role as the Flash. Miller’s body double, Ed Wade, plays the teenage version of Barry Allen. Micahel Keaton reprises his role as Bruce Wayne/Batman as the Batman from the past. Ben Affleck and George Clooney appear briefly as Bruce Wayne in the present time. Jeremy Irons appears briefly as Bruce Wayne’s butler, Alfred. Sasha Calle plays Supergirl and Michael Shannon plays Zod from the planet of Krypton. Superman is CGI by several different people, including Nicholas Cage, Christopher Reeve, et al. Gal Gadot appears as Wonder Woman. Some pre-recordings of DC characters were used, including Jack Nicholson as The Joker and Adam West as the original TV Batman. It’s a confusing conglomeration of roles from past representations that did not add any substance to the plot. If you are not watching closely, you will miss some of them.
I know that Ezra Miller has played the part of the Flash in film appearances before; however, I did not like the way he portrays Barry Allen. Maybe I am biased by the portrayal of the Flash by Grant Guston in the TV series. Ezra Miller shows Barry Allen as naive and kind of goofy. It did not sit well from my perspective. Generally, many of the other cameo actors portrayed their roles as expected. Some of the cameo appearances, I didn’t see because they were so quick. Due to the plot that involved going back and forth in time, it was a little confusing to figure out who was who and why they kept changing the face of the characters.
The concept for this movie started years and years ago way back in 2004. Scripts directors and cast ideas were tossed around many times before filming finally began in the Spring of 2021 because all the delays caused changes in the scripts, directors and cast engagements. Directors, cast and script changes were as confusing to the film as the cameo appearances of all the different actors playing the characters over time. After all of the changes, the film was finally finished but was almost canceled to controversies, arrests and legal trouble with its star, Ezra Miller. The stand-off between Miller and Warner Bros. concluded after Miller made a public apology for his behavior even though the apology came via his publicist. Finally. the movie was rereleased after all the hubbub and drama behind the scenes was worked out.
I give The Flash a 2 out of 5-star rating due to the confusion of cameo characters and the poor representation of Barry Allen. The best part of the movie is the plot. The plot was decent considering all the rewrites of the script. I think this movie is decent as a streaming feature, to get more bang for your buck out of it but don’t spend your money on expensive tickets to see it in the theater.
