The Flash | Review, 5 things I liked and disliked about it

Trailer Review

Cast and Crew:

• Director- Andy Muschietti.
• Barry Allen/Flash is played by Ezra Miller.
• Bruce Wayne/Batman is played by Ben Affleck and Michael Keaton.
• Kara Zor-El/Supergirl is played by Sasha Calle.
• Iris West is played by Kiersey Clemons.
• Zod is played by Michael Shannon.
• Nora Allen is played by Maribel Verdu, the mother of Barry Allen.
• Henry Allen is played by Ron Livingston, the father of Barry Allen.

Plot:

The solo movie of ‘The Flash’ starts right off with a hassle that is going on in Gotham. As Barry Allen watches Superman is busy saving the people from a volcanic eruption, he rushes to Gotham in his new suit. As Flash reaches Gotham, we see that the entire Gotham General Hospital has lost its base and is falling down. Soon Batman comes to the rescue and informs Barry that Falcone Gang has taken hazardous chemicals from the lab. As the Martha Wayne Institute is getting destroyed and there are a few infants and nurse inside who needs to be saved. On the other hand, there is Batman who is after Falcone Gang members trying to stop them. As Flash goes through an epic scene where he uses his speed to save everyone he could from the falling building of Martha Wayne Institute. On the other hand, Batman is trying to stop the Falcone Gang as they fight with him throughout the way they crash on a bridge and hang barely through the edge as Batman tries to save the Falcone member from falling into the sea as he has handcuffed himself to the briefcase. But soon Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) comes and saves Batman who is protecting the Falcone Gang member.

Later as everything is back to normal, we see Barry Allen goes back in time and visits the day his mother died. While coming back to the present, Barry enters the Chronobowl, he sees all the major events of his timeline. Soon Barry goes meets Bruce Wayne and explains to him that if he could change a few events of his past, he could save his mother from getting murdered and his father from going to prison for the death of his murder. Bruce tries to explain Barry that even the smallest change could change the entire timeline. As Barry ignores the advice of Bruce, Barry changes the events of his past, leading to major changes in the present time. From here, we see the challenges Barry faces in the new timeline he has formed just for the sake of the universe where his mother is alive.

Review:

As the final leg of the DC Extended Universe begins with The Flash, we are probably seeing these actors for the last time. We will talk more about this in the last section of the blog. Getting to The Flash for now, the movie explores one of the best comic book ideas that has ever been created, especially in DC Comics. Not being exactly like the comic and its animated movie, The Flashpoint Paradox, the writers and directors take a good try at attempting to explore similar situations in the movie. Where we see Flash reaches a world where there is a war going on between Atlantis and Themyscira.

But for the movie, Barry Allen changes the events of his life to save him from death. As his mother lives and his father does not go to prison for the death of his mother, we see other various events in the timeline change. As the main Barry helps the multiversal Barry get his powers and eventually loses his powers. The original Barry learns that Zod is invading and destroying Earth, so now he tries to contact other members of the Justice League and realises that none of them exists in this universe. At last, he contacts Bruce Wayne and reaches his Manor. We soon learn that Bruce Wayne is older now (played by Michael Keaton) and he has successfully ended all the crime in Gotham, which is now a peaceful and crime-free city.

Overall, the movie remains great. Yes, there are a lot of complaints about inconsistent, rough, and choppy CGI. The most consistent and exciting thing in the movie was regular cameos of heroes we know and some we saw years or even decades ago. The music in the entire movie remains awesome and according to what the situation required. And we will discuss more in this blog below.
Andy Muschietti does a wonderful job of exploring one of the most complex stories of DC Comics. Although he did a good job of portraying the character of Barry Allen/Flash, he excelled at portraying Batman. The stunt that were performed through both Ben Affleck’s and Michael Keaton’s Batman were not the most realistic ones, but this is what we expect Batman to be like. Stunts of Ben Affleck’s Batman, when he was chasing the Falcone Gang Members, were really exciting to watch, even though some scenes felt like the physics was not present at those particular moments. And when Michael Keaton’s Batman is fighting against the guards present at the place where Supergirl is held captive, or when he fights the Kryptonian giant, where he plants sticky bombs on his body and jumps around him was amazingly choreographed and even thought off. And according to recent news, Andy Muschietti is confirmed to be the director of the upcoming DC Universe movie, ‘Batman: The Brave and The Bold‘.

5 things I liked about The Flash:

Let’s get on to the things I liked about The Flash.

1. The entire concept that is explored in the Flashpoint comics and animated movie was twisted and explored in a certain way where we do get to witness a similar storyline, but not much is spoiled by the director and writers for their upcoming movies. We still don’t get an answer for who killed Barry Allen’s mother in the first place, and that is something that might be carried forward to the DCU where we will get to know about Reverse Flash. And I think we will soon come back to the story of Flashpoint again in the future where we will witness the murder of Nora Allen.
2. Introducing Supergirl and bringing back characters like Zod, Michael Keaton and George Clooney’s Batman, and even more characters at last in the Chronobowl. Featuring fan-favourite characters and having them play such an important role in the movie was a fan service attempted wonderfully by the writers. Although at the last scene in the Chronobowl, almost every character that showed up was built up with CGI, where every viewer had a complaint, but still it was a scene that nobody could have expected to appear. I wish the scene could have looked better as well.
3. The background music was good enough to keep the entire movie and scenes engaging. Whether there were emotional scenes, action sequences, or universe and time travelling scenes, every scene had a perfect background song and score.
4. The concept of the multiverse was explored and explained beautifully. Especially, the way Michael Keaton’s Bruce Wayne/Batman explains how multiversal travel works with the soggy spaghetti was wonderful. Marvel has been making Multiverse movies for more than a year now, but even they could not explain the multiverse, changing and interfering with the events, and how it changes not just the present and future but also the past as well.
5. The multiple cameos we see in the movie were fantastic to witness. Whether we saw the current DCEU characters returning for short cameos like Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, Jason Momoa as Aquaman, and Ben Affleck as Batman was pleasing to the heart of DC fans. And it also might be the last time we saw them playing their DCEU characters.
   More than that, characters and actors like Michael Keaton as Batman, George Clooney as Bruce Wayne particularly, Chris Reeves as Superman, and Nicolas Cage‘s Superman fighting a giant robot spider, were so stunning. Yes, I get that CGI was not good enough when they appeared, but it was a great attempt from the director and writers to at least consider it.

5 things I disliked about The Flash:

At last, here comes the last area where we discuss about the things I did not like about The Flash.

1. The first and foremost complaint everyone had with the movie was CGI. It remained something that everyone kept on spotting after every few minutes throughout the movie where the scenes created looked rough and choppy. But the thing I do get is that it is the second last movie of the DCEU as the last movie will be Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. So maybe that is why the money would not be allocated to this movie. It has recently been cleared by James Gunn in a podcast that Blue Beetle will be the first movie that takes place in the DC Universe, although the beginning of the DC Universe is set to kick off with Superman Legacy.
2. I just don’t get how the story of DCEU characters will end. There are so many characters that have been built over the past decade in the DCEU by Zack Snyder and many more directors who have worked for the DCEU. I was expecting to see an end for all the DCEU characters where their universe gets destroyed or something similar, but the director continues the story as Flash is yet to go back into his universe. Currently, Flash is still stranded in the universe where we see Geroge Clooney’s Batman and Aquaman is still Jason Momoa.
3. The continuation in DCU is still a mystery as no one knows how the writers will continue to take the story from the current DCEU to the new Universe they are creating. If the writers and CEOs had given a glimpse to us of Flash going to the new universe of the DCU, it would have given the fans a sense of stability. But currently, everyone is confused about how the DC Studios will progress their story from one universe to another.
4. The multiverse explored by Flash keeps on going on and still, we are not sure about how he will get back to the main universe. Even if Flash reaches the main universe, we are still not sure about which universe it will be, DCEU or DCU. We are not sure how the DCEU will fall off, or how DCU will begin.
5. The future for the actors like Ezra Miller, Jason Momoa, and Gal Gadot is still not secure in the new DCU. It is said that DC Studios will keep an eye on the performance of The Flash and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, and then they will consider if they will include the same actors in the new DCU or not. I think this should have been declared and announced if they were continuing, and if not, DC Studios should have made sure to bid a great farewell to all these characters, and The Flash was the perfect movie to do so.