Best of 2023: The Flash Is a Bloated, Unholy Mess That Goes Downhill Fast
Looking good!
For a period of time that somehow seemed to simultaneously stand still and spread out into eternity and the farthest reaches of the universe The Flash was a tentpole blockbuster but also a 200 million dollar question mark and ethical quandary.
The giant question mark concerned whether The Flash would ever be released. Should it be released? If The Flash was finally released after a seeming eternity of controversy, anxiety and toxic buzz what would the response be? Would critics and audiences be able to put all the nonsense and noise aside and judge it on its own merits? Would it be a hit? Could it possibly be a hit?
In a post MeToo world should you release a massive superhero movie that would potentially make Ezra Miller rich, famous and incredibly powerful at a time when they seemed to be bottoming out personally and emotionally? Is that amoral? Does it reflect terribly on the studio that produced and released it?
Warner Brothers got an answer when the movie debuted on June 16th, 2023, a little over twenty months after it finished shooting. But it was not the answer that they wanted.
To the surprise of seemingly no one, The Flash got mixed reviews and became one of the biggest box-office bombs in movie history. A film that was supposed to set up the next phase in the DC Cinematic Universe instead was the deadest of dead ends.
Despite inexplicably positive test screenings, audiences firmly rejected The Flash both because of the central role the wildly unpopular Miller plays in it but also because it fucking sucks.
Okay, that might be a little bit harsh. I liked The Flash more this time around than when I wrote it up for my Substack newsletter Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas. It sure helps if you don’t expect it to be good.
I went into The Flash during its theatrical run wondering if it could possibly be good enough to justify its existence in the face of a seemingly endless list of negatives, nearly all related to Miller and their exceedingly public downward spiral.
Studios want their stars to be on their best behavior, particularly when they have a big new movies to promote. At the very least they do not want them to be on some Charles Manson/Jim Jones type shit and that unfortunately was the vibe Miller was sending out throughout the film’s endless post-production.
I’m seeing double! Four Ezra Millers!
To get a sense of just how much trouble Miller got up to the Controversies and legal issues section of Miller’s Wikipedia page is longer than the sections devoted to his Early Life, Career and Personal Life and includes entire paragraphs on each of the following: Disorderly conduct, Choking incident, Hawaii incidents, Relationship with Tokata Iron Eyes and alleged messiah claims, Harassment allegations, Vermont farm incidents and finally Burglary charge.
That would almost be impressive if Miller wasn’t hurting vulnerable people and themselves. In a previous, less sensitive era, the press and the public would have found Miller’s antics deeply concerning but also hilarious, the same way they viewed the crimes of DMX.
We’re more more understanding now so Miller’s actions are rightly seen as a product of both mental illness and substance abuse. Of course there are plenty of people with mental illness and substance abuse problems who do not victimize other people and projects with their flagrant misbehavior. It only excuses so much.
Audiences have a child-like desire to believe that, on some level, the actors who play their favorite superheroes are the icons they play. Christopher Reeve had an impressive career outside of playing the Man of Steel, thanks to films of note like Somewhere in Time, Death Trap and Street Smart but he will always be Superman in the public imagination. The same is of course true of George Reeves and Henry Cavill.
Robert Downey Jr. has had an extraordinary career. He’s been nominated for multiple Academy Awards. But when he dies Iron Man is going to be in the headlines and the first sentence.
At the very least, we want to believe that people who step into the high-profile roles of superheroes are not the antithesis of the exemplars of truth, justice and the American Way they play for pay.
Miller’s massive bad press makes it impossible to suspend disbelief and see nerdy, lovable, mom-loving Barry West/The Flash rather than someone so incredibly troubled that Warner Brothers seriously considered shelving a two hundred million dollar movie rather than be complicit in their crimes and transgressions.
The disconnect is just too vast. You can’t cultivate a Caligula-like persona and expect audiences to buy you as the ultimate good guy. The world won’t accept you as a superhero if you behave like a super-villain.
Miller stole Justice League with their energy and goofy humor but The Flash suggests that a little Miller goes a very long way and Miller gives us a LOT of Miller. At a time when the public wanted to see zero Millers onscreen if at all possible The Flash disastrously gave them a double dose of them.
The Flash opens with nerdy, slight Barry West, who talks and acts like a sexier version of Horshak, the nasal nerd from Welcome Back Kotter, attempting to buy coffee when he’s called upon to help Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot from the “Imagine” celeb singalong) with some crime-fighting.
In a moment that is iconic in the worst possible way at one point Barry sticks a baby in a microwave oven in order to save it and a bunch of its generational peers. The babies that the Flash saves are pure nightmare fuel. They don’t look anything like actual babies. They’re not cute. They’re monsters that I can never un-see.
For reasons I cannot begin to fathom, the special effects in The Flash are often laughably bad. It’s as if their followed the lead of their speedy hero and traveled back in time. Only this time it wasn’t to save their mother but rather to steal all of the most primitive CGI programs of the 1990s and oughts so that they could horrify audiences in 2023.
There are times throughout when we just see the Flash’s head and shoulders popping gracelessly out of a bubble that look unfinished and accidental. But the worst is yet to come where special effects and AI are concerned.
The Flash cost several hundred million dollars to make and promote. Yet there are scenes throughout when it looks like it cost several hundred dollars. Forget measuring up to Black Panther and The Avengers: The Flash sometimes feels more like an Asylum knock-off (call it Super Speedy Guy) than an actual, legitimate film adaptation.
Gal Gadot returns briefly as Wonder Woman. She’s given an iconic introduction that promises that a hilarious wisecrack is on the way but instead she just says, “Sorry I’m late.”
That’s not a wisecrack! That’s just being polite.
Barry discovers that he can fulfill the fervent musical wish of a scantily-clad Cher and turn back time. He finds a way to take back the things that hurt his mom so she’d stay.
Barry’s dad (Ron Livingston) has been wrongfully convicted of killing Barry’s mother. The grief-stricken son figures that he can save his mom’s life and his dad’s life by putting a can of crushed tomatoes in her shopping cart so that his dad won’t be at the store buying one while she is brutally murdered by someone who subsequently framed him for the crime.
But before Barry/The Flash can travel back in time we first encounter CGI versions of Henry Cavill as Superman and Jason Momoa as Aquaman that look like they come from a Sega CD game, and not one of the good ones either.
The Flash has very little respect for the audience’s intelligence. It assumes that they’re too stupid and forgetful to remember things unless they beat them over the head with them over again.
For example one of Barry’s mom’s first lines is about how you can’t always fix problems and that sometimes you just have to let things go. That is, of course, the theme of the movie. When it’s repeated later in dialogue the filmmakers recycle the sound of her delivering those exact words deep into a third act that just keeps getting more and more inexcusable.
Barry travels back in time to save his mom and encounters his eighteen year old self. I’m largely the same person I was when I was eighteen. Not Barry. As an adult Barry is a nerdy virgin who can’t stop talking but when he was eighteen years old he was inexplicably a Pauly Shore-like surfer/slacker/stoner/bro-type dude.
Barry#2 spouts slang so outdated and wrong it brings to mind the famous Steve Buscemi “How do you do fellow kids” meme, like “mad trippy” and “dip-set.”
In this universe Eric Stoltz, who was originally cast in the role in Back to the Future but was replaced by Michael J. Fox during filming, ended up playing Marty McFly. That is almost clever but the movie feels the need to belabor it by having Barry have an entire conversation later about how Michael J. Fox actually played the role.
Barry wants to get the band back together and reunite the Justice League but he learns that the only member who is still in business in this alternate universe is Bruce Wayne/Batman.
Only in this world Bruce Wayne is a silver fox played by Michael Keaton. If I might give Keaton the faintest of faint praise he is far and away the best thing about the movie. His performance comes closest to justifying the film’s otherwise regrettable endeavor.
Keaton’s casting is blatant fan service but it works even if it feels more than a little pandering at times. Remember when Keaton said Batman’s famous catch-phrase, “I’m Batman” in Batman? He says it here as well! That’s fun. That’s something that you remember fondly from the past.
Do you similarly have fond childhood memories of Keaton talking about getting nuts? I’ve got wonderful news for you: he does the exact same thing here. Your inner child will be all, “YES! I know what that references!”
Keaton plays elderly Bruce Wayne as a sartorial cross between the Dude in The Big Lebowski and Peter Bogdanovich who just wants to be left alone to drink expensive wine and brood but returns to hero duty to help Barry un-do what he’s done.
The film’s other notable asset is Sasha Calle as Kara Zor-El / Supergirl. The movie doesn’t give her much to do but she has incredible presence. The movie only really comes alive when she and/or Keaton is onscreen.
A great superhero deserves a great supervillain. A half-assed superhero merits a half-assed supervillain. The Flash gives us TWO half-assed superheroes (or more!SPOILER) and gets an appropriately half-assed supervillain in Michael Shannon’s General Zod.
I love Michael Shannon. He is the best. He rules but he clearly does not care in any conceivable way about The Flash and his performance powerfully conveys his outright contempt for the film he’s in and superhero movies in general.
Shannon looks so CGI that he could have recorded his whole performance in fifteen minutes through a cell phone like Eric Roberts with A Talking Cat?!? and then let the special effects wizards create the illusion that he was actually onset, giving a fuck.
Also, this version of General Zod just gets punched a lot. That’s all he does. He’s not an epic bad guy from beyond: he’s a towering, extraterrestrial punching bag.
Barry’s attempts to save his mom threatens the very fabric of the universe. In a sequence that’s both wildly amoral/unethical and appalling from a story standpoint The Flash essentially brings all of the live-action Batmans and Superman’s back to represent the crises in various universes and dimensions. Yes, even the dead ones. ESPECIALLY the dead ones.
That means that George Reeves and Christopher Reeve both get tasteless posthumous cameos, as does Adam West. But that’s not all. The Flash has Nicolas Cage confusingly reprise a character that he never actually played as a giant-spider-fighting Superman with laser eyes.
The filmmakers have done nothing to earn these awkward and uncomfortable appearances from the dead and disinterested. It just feels like more shit the filmmakers are throwing against the wall in hopes that something, anything sticks.
The Flash ends with one last wildly anti-climactic, conceptually muddled cameo. Just when Barry thinks he’s gone back to not only his world, but a world where his father is found Not Guilty of murder he discovers that in this timeline George Clooney is now Batman.
Because he was in Batman & Robin! That was a thing that existed! So even though it’s infamous for being the most hated film in Batman history it’s resurrected for a cheap gag.
The final fatal flaw of The Flash is that it lasts two hours and twenty-four minutes. That’s nearly two and a half hours! That’s way too long for nonsense like this. There’s no reason this all couldn’t have been wrapped up in 100 minutes.
Is The Flash as terrible and misconceived as its reputation suggests? Yes and no. There are things that I legitimately liked about it, most notably Keaton’s performance, but there’s also a lot in it that isn’t just bad: it’s unforgettably, iconically, hilariously, egregiously wrong, particularly where special effects are concerned.
It looks like we’ve seen the last of Ezra Miller as The Flash. Despite what DCU honcho James Gunn might insist, that is no great loss.
Failure, Fiasco or Secret Success: Fiasco
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