The Flash
In cinemas now
Rave reviews were all over my social feeds following the initial press screenings for The Flash. Naturally, I was intrigued. How could a movie with such a troubled production history and a criminal as its lead actor be as good as people were saying? And how would it manage to balance the insane fan service with a sincere storyline?
Sadly, this proves to be a film that isn’t at all worthy of praise. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that this is one of the worst comic book movies I’ve ever seen.
Barry Allen’s Flash has been one of my favourite superheroes for many years, but this film doesn’t do the character justice. Even if we ignore all the terrible actions of Ezra Miller, their performance here is just objectively bad. Barry Allen is not endearing, clever or relatable, he’s just irritating. And while Christina Hodson’s screenplay does occasionally acknowledge that fact, it doesn’t make the character any less annoying. I also didn’t buy into the emotional core of the story because the writing was painfully simplistic, with plot points easy to see coming from miles away and all the emotional beats bordering on cringeworthy.
Not only did I not gel with the story of the characters, the fan service here was also awful to endure. And it’s proven that fan service and cameos can be done right when the characters have an impact on the story and aren’t just there for people to clap and cheer in the cinema.
Michael Keaton returns as Batman and that should’ve felt like a huge moment, but I felt absolutely nothing because he doesn’t have any significant emotional journey or affect the narrative in any meaningful way. There are also other cameos that felt incredibly hollow where people we know stand around on an incredibly fake-looking landscape.
The CGI is also incredibly shoddy, with many parts reminding me of old PlayStation graphics. For a 200-million-dollar blockbuster, there is absolutely no excuse for it to look this bad. I feel great sympathy for the overworked VFX artist who had to animate creepy CGI babies.
The Flash is a disappointing, boring, laughable, disposable mess and another swing and miss for the DCEU. Can we please get this over with and get James Gunn’s Superman now?
