The Flash Is a Case Study on How Studios and Actors Can Ruin a Really Good Movie
How do you solve a problem like Ezra? It’s impossible to talk about The Flash without taking into account its star’s off-screen antics. Despite laying low in the year leading up to its release, Ezra Miller’s legal troubles have hung over the film like a specter. Some people have been upset at Warner Bros. decision to keep Miller and release The Flash while junking other projects like Batgirl. The Flash’s production took longer than most superhero films, its release date repeatedly pushed back, and its marketing hamstrung by the need to minimize Miller. It’s a real shame because The Flash is arguably the best DCEU film since Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
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The Flash’s tepid reception at the tills isn’t all on Miller, though. The irony of it all is that The Flash, whose plot revolves around a hero going back in time to fix things but eventually breaking everything, is, unfortunately, a film that is simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. If The Flash had been released in 2018 as Snyder had originally planned, it might still have benefited from the goodwill of the DCEU’s earlier films. Even the weirdly-paced and scored Suicide Squad, mangled as it was from director David Ayer’s original vision by erstwhile Warner Bros. execs who wanted a more MCU-like film, made bank at the box office.
But the MCU, even with its misfires, gets the benefit of the doubt from its audiences because there’s a plan. Kevin Feige’s long game paid off in such a big way that Warner Bros. kept scrambling to replicate it without putting in the work. Snyder had a plan, but the folks up top kept messing with it every time a film didn’t meet their exceedingly high expectations. Warner Bros. became so reactionary in its management of its properties that it lost sight of what made Warner Bros. the best studio to make superhero films with. More than any other big studio, Warner Bros. was always the best place for auteur-driven stories, where Tim Burton became a household name and where Christopher Nolan delivered some of his best work. Warner Bros. was always best when it let its directors tell stories the way they wanted to.
It’s now 2023, and Warner Bros. is now Warner Bros. Discovery, headed by the ruthless but efficient David Zaslav, whose scorched earth approach to getting his media company in the black has left many projects (and employees) in the dust. Zaslav appointed James Gunn, who was behind The Suicide Squad and its spinoff series Peacemaker, and producer Peter Safran, to steer the new DCU. There’s so much uncertainty about the future of DC superhero films that in the era of interconnected, transmedia storytelling, audiences are less inclined to invest time and money into stories that eventually don’t mean anything.
When the biggest, most exciting part of Black Adam is a cameo by Henry Cavill, who fans have wanted back with the cape for years, the best way to erase all the goodwill built up over several films is to unceremoniously fire him. Warner Bros. revolving door leadership has finally caught up to its movies, and audiences are tired.
If it were any other film, say Shazam: Fury of the Gods or even Black Adam, enjoyable as it was, it wouldn’t have been such a tragedy. But Andy Muschietti’s The Flash is a genuinely good, wonderfully crafted film that it’s heartbreaking to see how badly its doing through no fault of its own. The Flash is better even than pretty much all the superhero films released last year and this year so far with the exception of Matt Reeves’ The Batman and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.
The thing is, Ezra Miller is wonderful. Miller’s Barry Allen is a neurodivergent introvert who’s vastly different from the CW’s Grant Gustin, and their charm carries the entire film, even with peak Michael Keaton, who reprises Batman, and the absolutely super Sasha Calle, who more than delivers as Supergirl, in the same frame. Miller is so charming, talented, and magnetic on screen that every scene with them is a delight. And when you double Ezra Miller, you double the fun.
The Flash is a reminder of what superhero movies should be, with just enough organic humor, an adequate number of easter eggs and fan service, and solid performances from really talented actors. Never mind that Michael Shannon was dialing it in and it seemed like General Zod was bored out of his mind; he gets a pass for being Michael Shannon. Besides, Calle delivers more than enough emotion for all the stoic Kryptonians invading Earth, anyway.
Yes, the film is another multiverse story, and maybe audiences are tired of the whole multiverse thing. Absolutely fair. It’s arguably difficult to tell a better story than Everything, Everywhere, All at Once or even the Spider-Verse films. But The Flash manages to tell it differently than either of those stories while paying homage to Back to the Future and Warner Bros. superhero film history in the process. The pace is brisk, the jokes funny, and the action scenes enjoyable in the same way as a Looney Tunes skit. On top of that, The Flash is an emotional romp, too, without feeling forced or unearned.
It’s a familiar story, one that comic readers should be familiar with and anyone who’s watched enough superhero movies would know. For some reason, personal tragedy is part of the superhero starter kit; Batman’s parents were gunned down, Superman’s planet exploded, and even Spider-Man in every universe loses an uncle or other loved one. In Barry Allen’s case, their mother was murdered and their father accused of the crime. Standard superhero stuff.
But the Flash can do something that few superheroes can: they can run so fast they can go back in time. So Barry gets the brilliant idea to save their mom because, why not? But if you’ve watched enough time travel, multiversal science fiction — and there’s been quite a lot of that lately — you’d know that some things are meant to happen, and if they don’t, everything goes down the toilet. The Spider-Verse calls them canon events. Needless to say, the death of Nora Allen (Maribel Verdú) is a canon event, and undoing it breaks the universe.
None of this is new. These are all familiar story beats. But The Flash manages to tell it in a way that doesn’t feel trite or tired. Muschietti delivers a genuinely heartwarming, even heartbreaking, story that’s refreshing to watch, proving that superhero fatigue isn’t real. The CGI is wonky at times, but it doesn’t even matter because it’s wonky in the parts where wonky CGI seems fitting. The Flash broke the universe, after all.
Ultimately, The Flash is a testament to how one studio’s greed and ineptitude, even more than the antics of a star who clearly needs professional help, can kill a film. The Flash never had a chance, a wonderful film sacrificed at the altar of Warner Bros’ profit-obsessed corporate merry-go-round, one more domino to fall after Black Adam (which wasn’t terrible) and Shazam: Fury of the Gods (actually kind of terrible).
In another timeline, Warner Bros. Discovery trusted the process and followed Zack Snyder’s somewhat flawed, yet consistent, vision and The Flash deservedly breaks $1 billion at the box office. In another timeline, Ezra Miller is as much a darling in real life as they are on screen. In this timeline — our timeline — however, the DCEU is a tangled mess of spaghetti and tomato sauce (you’ll need to see The Flash for the reference), the culmination of years of corporate meddling and keeping up with the MCU. As it turns out, we happen to be in the timeline where everything is broken. And that’s too bad, because The Flash is a film that deserves a better universe.
