For all but the most devoted acolyte, the DC Extended Universe has dissolved into a chaotic Dark Ages still unrelieved by any cleansing Renaissance (despite suggestions that James Gunn, incoming joint chief executive, wears Leonardo’s beard). Good luck remembering anything specific about Black Adam or Shazam! Fury of the Gods. Those last two DCEU films now exist in the mind only as a confused clutter of noise and fury. Like the Battle of Antioch.
The pre-release pandemonium surrounding The Flash promised no escape from plague or barbarian invasion. Over the past few years, Ezra Miller, who has already appeared as the franchise’s own Billy Whizz in a cluster of DC movies, was involved in a series of troubling incidents that ended with them undergoing treatment for “complex mental-health issues”. Andy Muschietti, director of the new film, says he has no plans to recast the role in any future sequels, but the affair still casts a pall over an already much-delayed project.
After all that, it is odd to relate that the film is more fun than anything else DC has unleashed since the pandemic. Don’t get the wrong idea. It is still a thundering mess that ends with the usual boring battle in a CGI sky. But, on a scene-by-scene basis, The Flash passes the time better than Gunn’s own puzzlingly lauded Suicide Squad. A lot of that is down to a juiced-up performance from Miller – the turn of a dancer and a physical comic – that keeps the energy high even during the film’s most muddled moments. Miller can’t manage Jim Carrey’s physiognomic contortions, but they have a similar capacity for antic mayhem.
The Flash, possessed of ultrahuman speed, is early on framed as subaltern to top brass of the Batman and Superman class. Alfred Pennyworth (apparently Jeremy Irons is still in these things) brings him in as locum for an otherwise engaged caped crusader when a hospital is under threat of annihilation. Miller sighs and puffs through the job with the weary resignation of a shelf-stacker who yearns to get a go on the tills.
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Later, Flash discovers an ability to travel through time and – it’s that stubbornly indestructible super-backstory again – renegotiate the murder of his mother and the unjust incarceration of his dad. Batman (Ben Affleck for the moment) warns him about the consequences of the butterfly effect, but nobody at DC will allow that advice to sink in. Think about it. What better way to send our character on a journey towards the unavoidable, voguish potentials of, yes, the multiverse?
The closing battle, which doesn’t look to have asked bad-guy Michael Shannon to move from a green-screened box in his apartment, again underlines the weightlessness of so much CGI action
The series’ embrace of the many-worlds tropes employed in the MCU, the Spider-Verse and Everything Everywhere All at Once is utterly shameless, but even the most resistant will manage a smile (or a smirk) at the variations worked on Superman and Batman lore. It has already been much publicised that Michael Keaton returns to the cowl. Just about everyone else associated with those roles – alive, dead or in between – also gets a fleeting turn. The words “I really didn’t think I’d be seeing you today” passed through my head at least four times.
All of which will fuel the ire of those who, perfectly reasonably, bemoan the rise of the nerdocracy. The closing battle, which doesn’t look to have asked bad-guy Michael Shannon to move from a green-screened box in his apartment, again underlines the weightlessness of so much CGI action. Everything and nothing is on screen.
For all that, The Flash is considerably funnier than it has any right to be. This critic could not contain a snort at an excellent closing gag. Others may throw refuse at the screen.
