THE FLASH IS WARNER BROTHERS LATEST GAFFE IN THEIR FLAWED DC UNIVERSE

Superhero movies can be hit or miss depending on the character being portrayed and who is directing or producing the film. Marvel and Disney sit on top of the success levels. They had a formula put together and followed it while bringing in great talent and directors. They have had a few miscues but nothing that caused the entire structure to falter and collapse. Their main competition is DC that is run by Warner Brothers with a stable of great comic book characters like Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Green Lantern that most can identify. Over the decades some of their characters have had success on “the big screen” with Superman and Batman having the most and Wonder Woman having some good buzz the last few years. They have a problem over at DC and WB and that is they tried to hard to come in second. They didn’t have a good formula in place. Hell, they could have and should have stolen Marvel/Disney’s plan and gone from there. That being you introduce the characters individually and then bring them together. DC has been going back and forth on this and now are ready to upset the cart again in a bunch of ways. That’s what hurts “The Flash” on HBO Max.

Berry Allen is the main character play by Ezra Miller. He is supposed to be immature because basically he is a kid that got super powers before he could really handle them. In the comic and cartoon iterations he is immature but for the most part likeable. In the DC movies he is mostly annoying. His life has not been great even after he got his powers in a freak lightning storm accident. His teen years have been spent trying to prove that his father didn’t murder his mother and dealing with her loss. The premise of the film is he finds out in a moment of anger and running as fast as possible that he can actually time travel. Just like any movie around this plot vehicle things go from bad to worse. Only in his case it goes from bad to worse to horrific. The sad thing is that Marvel used time travel in it’s final movie so this feels like a stolen idea rehashed and over cooked. The one cool thing is that it draws in Batman as the only remaining superhero he would know but the big change is that it isn’t the Ben Affleck Batman we’ve had the last few years, but it is Michael Keaton from the 80s movies. It’s explained why in the movie and is a cool callback giving Keaton’s version a bit of finality after being replaced by Val Kilmer and George Clooney. The movie has Barry, along with an alternate universe version of himself trying to fix the past but it always comes back to a final ending that he can’t get past.

“The Flash” could have been so much better than it was. Not only was the movie weak in some points and Flash comes off as unlikable at times (especially his alternate form) is took away from the storytelling. Add in the fact that it draws a large amount of it’s scenes from a the previous “Superman: Man of Steel” it seems like you’re just watching a movie you saw before. For those of us that do some reading up on the happenings in Hollywood we know that most of the actors that have been portraying these characters for the last 5 years are all going to be replaced and the “DC Universe” is going to be rebooted. So, if you did actually get invested in any of these actors playing these characters they are going to start over again and you will need to learn again how they all come to be. Even the nerdiest of comic book nerds won’t do that unless everything they do from here on out is beyond perfect. Until then, it will remain the scattered heap that it is where a movie like this one is worth watching, but ultimately frustrates you as everything gets changed and not necessarily for the best. Not a bad movie just a bad environment for it to exist in.