The Flash (2023) Review

the rating: ****

the story: Barry Allen attempts to rewrite his own history, and instead breaks the timeline.

the review: It's going to be completely impossible for anything resembling a reasonable popular consensus on the DCEU to exist for years, decades.  Its proximity to the height of the MCU created a huge distorting effect in much the way DC and Marvel in the comics have competed for top placement for sixty years.  Simply put, their coexistence could not be reconciled by the mere weight of pop culture.  The Flash is a last attempt to conclude the DCEU, in the most dramatic way possible, and to my mind a hugely successful one, although it has features that are admittedly hard to appreciate.

Chiefly, its special effects, especially the crucial depiction of the Speed Force, where Barry Allen watches outside regular time the effects of his speedy travels.  After the high water mark of Quicksilver's appearances in the X-Men movies, the superpower of speed was always going to be difficult to depict in a truly satisfying way.  Actually, The Flash opens with a scene that tops them, improbably saving the lives of a bunch of babies while looking like it's the last thing on his mind.  I work with babies.  This is the kind of scene that will win easy bonus points for me.  Otherwise, Barry looks unreal on his feet, in ways Spider-Man never did slinging through New York City in the Sam Raimi movies that set the new bar for the genre twenty years ago.  But it's because, dude's ability is running.  This is never going to look awesome.  Not if you're forced to depict it.  

There's really no way around that.  But the story itself is absolutely killer.  Geoff Johns first wrote this story in the breakthrough event comic Flashpoint, which has already been adapted twice, once in the Flash TV series (third season) and the animated movie Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox, which like the comic depicted Barry brutally electrocuting himself with lightning to try and get his speed back.  For me this is iconic material.  For me, when Barry has to say goodbye to his mom at the end of the film, it means more than Rocket Raccoon, the b-plot in his starring role for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, gets some kind of comeuppance.  It's earned.  

And around that, you've got Barry, the version of Barry Allen that could only exist as portrayed by Ezra Miller, essentially first and foremost essentially starring opposite himself.  And then you've also got Michael Keaton returning as Batman.  This was heavily promoted in exactly the opposite way as Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield showing up in Spider-Man: No Way Home (uh, spoiler?), since you can't hide such a crucial point.  In a lot of ways, it's almost the whole point.  We're in an age where seeing old stars in old roles is supposed to be the selling point.  This isn't even nostalgia but awareness that some franchises were abandoned, or changed, too quickly.  Keaton only made two Batman movies, and while one of them isn't as fondly remembered as the other, everyone was always bummed he didn't appear in the other two.  It's the same impulse that brought Connery back to Bond, eventually, at least for one more movie (even if it's technically unofficial), forty years ago.  This is really nothing new.

The movie climaxes on Barry's fight against himself, a third version who couldn't let go.  It's not really the fight with Zod, the deaths of Batman and Supergirl, although this part of the movie is directly addressing the DCEU, the controversial way Man of Steel ended, the "original sin" that needed erasing a decade ago.  Most MCU movies only ever have the one kind of ending.  Guardians 2 had "Mary Poppins," which is what redeems it for some fans.  That's a rare exception.  Usually the villain is meant to be the villain, and the hero just needs to defeat them.  They don't really learn anything.  They just move on to the next one.  For a long time, that formula worked, and a DCEU trying a different narrative was cognitive dissonance: "That's not what these kinds of movies should be doing!"  They're supposed to be emotionally simplistic.  Their ambition is just building to Thanos!  

In a lot of ways, the implosion of the DCEU resulted in something far more interesting.  The Flash might have been envisioned in its basic shape this way all along, but it has far greater symbolic meaning.  You get to see all those digital cameos, and even the official ones, because this is an ending.  Its story takes on greater resonance for it.  Barry needs to let go, and figure out that it's better that way.  Same, The Flash.  Same.