Has the movie been discussed here? Did anyone see it? I know it was a historic flop so many people may have avoided it. I actually really enjoyed it. I know his powers are kind of lame but they really did some interesting things in the movie… and I later found out it was a re-hash of something that happened in the CW show? Is that true?
I liked it. There was some dodgy CGI, but it was dumb nostalgia fun. Once Keaton-Batman shows up, it's a Batman movie anyway. If you hate Ezra Miller, you can view the ending as a come-uppance.
What did you think of the “you-know-who” wink wink cameo at the end? I think that turned a lot of people off but I have to say that I really liked that.
I will watch it, and I am not totally put off on the controversy. The whole DCEU just seems to not be able to get the chemistry between it's heroes. One of the fun things about avengers was the back and forth between Tony, Thor, Bruce, Black Widow, Captain america, and others. It made me want to watch the side movies I did not really care for. Once they realized a sarcastic Thor was fun, it really made the end. Maybe if they brought more of the Batman is brooding thing into the whole thing which would give Flash some more involvement in the interpersonal relationships that would be great. Instead this seems like a stand alone movie with some cameos because the trunk of the DCEU (Justice League) crapped out. There are no power stones or grimace out there which is going to bind this all together that a non-comic fan can see. The thing about the origins of the avengers is it started with the teseract, which built into the power stones, which basically was the whole arc of the avengers. Once you have the arc you can throw some hero building in there with movies like this. I will give it a chance, but why do I care about flash if I do not care about flash? Even if I never cared about captain america, I had to because I care about the whole power stone thing, and that was because Tony Stark and the hulk hooked me. Eventually Thor, guardians, and dr. strange pushed further interest. WW has me wanting to see more, even with the flop. Flash and Cyborg seem interesting, but the Superman and Batman really did not get created by SvB IMO.
I thought it was...fine. Not at all the disaster some claim, not anything like as good as it aspired to be. The action set pieces were generally too long and tried too hard. The bits intended for comedy generally landed well (except the microwave/baby bit) - for example the whole bit where you Barry was shocked to learn Batman's secret identity. If you've got a sentimental love for Keaton's Batman then they scratched that itch thoroughly (I personally don't, even though I was a critic of the casting when it was announced, IMO Keaton's best work in the Burton Batman films was as Bruce, rather than in costume) But I'll probably never re-watch. As far as the final appearance of Bruce - I liked it a good bit. While I have someone else in mind as Batman in "The Brave and the Bold" (assuming the description of what those movies are intended to be) - that being Anson Mount - and some speculate it would be Jason Ackles who's the front runner... if it was this guy I'd be FINE with that.
I'm sad to say I missed it. So much going on IRL. Really wanted to see it. I feel like it is a bit like...what was the last Abramsverse Star Trek Movie? They finally figured out the franchise, but by this point they'd alienated too many fans. Given that it was set in a multiverse with Zod as the villain and Keaton Batman, and what they can do with deepfakes, I really, REALLY wanted Reeve Superman to show up and say "General, would you care to step outside?" I don't know how they could've fit that into the story, but damn, it would've been beautiful. I would've cried.
Flashpoint was originally a big comics crossover event that ended with a big reboot/retcon of a lot of DC titles under the heading New 52, similar to Crisis on Infinite Earths. I believe the CW show did some version of both. I didn't care for the movie, I felt that the time travel and multiverse special effects were poorly conceived and poorly executed, the way Supergirl and Keaton Batman were re-introduced ended up being massively disappointing, and the overall story was something better suited for an episode of a tv show than a tentpole summer blockbuster. Also Ezra Miller was serviceable, but I don't feel like he brought anything to the role that most television "nerd" actors like Jim Parsons or French Stewart or Andy Dick couldn't have done just as well. (And Andy Dick also would have done all the crimes!) The comic book Flashpoint also replaced Bruce with Thomas Wayne's Batman, who started his crusade against crime after his son was killed in crime alley.
It definitely didn't deserve the pre-hype it received, but it also didn't deserve to be a box office bomb. I thought it was entertaining enough. I think at this point, the DC cinematic universe has become such a mess that even hardcore fans will just wait for streaming.
So the Flash is now on Max, and I checked it out. I agree with WAB: alright movie but not deserving of the pre-movie hype of "Best Superhero movie evah!" from the studio nor deserving of being a major box office bomb. Some thoughts about the movie: 1. There was no reason to make Barry so awkward and annoying. It was perfectly easy to make Barry nerdy and adorkable if that was the direction they wanted to take without making him out and out grating to the point where they have to lampshade it by having even him acknowledge that he's grating even to himself. I think that it would have been better if they played it like other takes on Flashpoint, and Barry just found himself in a verse where he didn't have any powers and he was going to live a normal life but realized that he needed to set up the accident again. 2. The producers made Barry half-Latino now. I am not sure how I feel about this. I am surprised I didn't hear any commentary from the usual suspects about how suits race-swapping and "go woke, go broke" (which gets ignored when any "woke" movie performs well at the box office, but I digress.) On the one hand, there's arguably no need for a character's race to be worn on the sleeve at every point. But with one of the animating forces of this Barry being missing his very Latina mom, one might think that heritage would manifest itself more than it has. Also, the complaint that he is being treated like the janitor of the Justice League lands differently when Barry's half-Latino. 3. The notion of "Barry's dad did it and the one piece of evidence that clears him is if he looks up at the security camera at the specific time" is a bad plot device.In the modern Flash stories, it's Reverse-Flash who goes back in time to kill Mama Barry, and it makes some sense why the cops don't believe Barry that it wasn't Papa Barry, because he describes yellow flashes killing her and that doesn't match up with any plausible explanation. It's easier to conclude that Barry is just confused or disassociating or just wants to believe that his dad didn't do it. And you can paper over things by assuming that Reverse Flash planted evidence suggesting Papa Barry did it. Here, there doesn't seem to be any inherent reason to discount Barry's account that Dad went to the store to get tomatoes for the sauce and that someone else did it. And we aren't given any indication that this was anything but a random burglar who attacked Mama and bounced. So I don't know how you get beyond a reasonable in the face of Barry's insistence that it wasn't Papa Barry. But also, there almost certainly would be corroborating evidence that Papa Barry had made that purchase at that time, including but not limited to: 1. the memory of store employees that Papa Barry had just been there 2. other video camera footage from within the store (one would have to think that they have more than just the one camera on the tomato aisle, and that Papa Barry would have been picked up by some of them) 3. Papa Barry's receipt for the tomato sauce purchase and store records that someone purchased tomato sauce around when he said he had. And then there would be a lack of evidence that would be tough to explain, such as the lack of blood on Papa Barry's clothes. 4. It's a very bad thing when the guest-stars and cameos all upstage your main star. I enjoyed seeing pretty much every superhero cameo more than Barry. 5. The notion of Zod being the bad guy was interesting. But for pete's sake, given foreknowledge of who Zod is, when he will strike, what his weaknesses are, super-speed, another Kryptonian, and the ability for near-infinite re-dos, the ability to travel to different points in time, Barry should be able to come to a solution to the Zod problem. Especially since Flash can go further back in time than Zod's first appearance, gather up a bunch of Kryptonite and incorporate it into his stabby armor. He can figure out where Diana and the rest of the Amazons are. He can use the power of the Mother Boxes, or at least a Mother Box, and use them to stave off the Kryptonians. He can adapt the red sun technology used to keep Kara prisoner for years apparently into offensive weapons. No, you can't handwave it as a fixed point/inevitable intersection. The fact in the main reality Clark was able to survive and defeat Zod suggest there's no reason why Zod has to kill Kara and Bats every time. 6. I felt bad for the actress playing Iris. I mean not so bad, because for what was probably three to four weeks' work, she probably made more than most of us will make in like 3 years. I don't see an actual figure online, but one I saw for the Supergirl actress was that she got paid $500k, and I would think that Iris probably got paid about $300k at least then. Anyway, Iris isn't given really a chance to have much in the way of personality or agency. It wasn't clear from the tiny bit of her that made it into Justice League that Barry knew Iris prior to encountering her during that save, and now we know that they went to college together and he had a crush on her but was too nerdy to make a move on her. I think that makes the face caress of her a little creepier. 7. Having Barry get his powers before Superman becomes publicly known and failing to intervene substantially/successfully in Zod's emergence raises unfortunate questions. Like why wasn't he able to better save people during that. Even Bruce was able to direct people to safety with his no-powers self. Surely even as a novice to super-speed, he could have brought people to safety, brought medical people and supplies to help, etc. etc. It didn't seem like there should have been any difficulty rescuing the two people who were shown either. But even assuming that what we saw was Barry's best at that point, why does he still suck at superheroing two years later when we see him in Justice League? I'm not going to go back and watch that movie but didn't he say or at least act like this was the first time he was using his powers in a crisis? 8. The special effects were particularly bad for this one. Normally, I don't care about such things, but they struck me as just off. 9. The Flash's powers aren't lame at all (although they do tend to portray them in a lame way apart from the CGI, with Barry starting off in weird awkward stances). The trouble is that he is too powerful if you consider the implications of all he can do: move faster than anything with the reaction time to match, vibrate through solid objects and make things vibrate through solid objects, travel through time. To make non-speedsteers at all a challenge, you have to either depower him significantly, make him an idiot by not doing the things that should obviously be within his knowledge that he can do, or have the bad guys get insanely lucky.
On that last point, that feels like a pretty common problem people have with doing Flash in such a way that's he's nearly unbeatable. I just started a rewatch of the (magnificent) Justice League animated series and literally in the first episode Wally TRIPS on a ROCK. This isn't a thing someone with his powers would ever do. Then later he falls into some kind of goo and apparently forgets that he could have vibrated out of it and Jon ends up rescuing him. I'm not faulting the show so much as just observing that it seems a harder power-set to write for than some of the others. (of course, I say that knowing that almost all of the metas come with their own set of "Why didn't he just...?" questions)
The best part was Keaton Batman with all of his familiar toys. The second best part was Supergirl. Ezra Miller is fucking obnoxious in every way, and should never have been trusted to carry an entire movie himself.
I just realized, Flash #2 wearing a spray-painted batsuit has to be a wink at 90's Flash being red Batman '89 with powers.
Possibly - there's also the more recent Red Death comics where an evil multiversal copy of Bruce hijacks the Flash's body when the latter refuses to use his powers to go back in time and prevent Thomas and Martha's murders - which is pretty much what Flashpoint is about from Flash's perspective. He gains all of Flash's powers and uses them to completely eradicate crime in his version of Gotham, with Barry's consciousness only able to watch and scream from the depths of their shared mind.
