Film Review - The Flash (2023)

The Flash is the new DC film and stars Ezra Miller as Barry Allen aka The Flash who is keen to return to the point in time where his father (Ron Livingston) is not convicted of his Mother’s murder but Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) warns him that he could destroy the universe if he does so, well Barry does run fast enough to go back in time but ends up creating a world without metahumans just as General Zod (Michael Shannon) attacks Earth like we saw in Man of Steel so Barry seeks out this timeline’s Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton) to help him save the world.

The Flash is a movie that I am very mixed on, on the one hand it does have some good things going for it mainly Keaton and Affleck as Batman though the latter is only in the beginning of the film while the former has a sizeable role and is great to see back in the suit after 1992’s Batman Returns left a polarising taste in many mouths and saw him and Tim Burton shown the door on the series and his action moments are a lot of fun as well especially given the tech advances made since his early films.

Also watching him in this movie did actually make me want a live action version of the Dark Knight Returns comic with him as Batman.

As for Affleck as Batman watching him in this movie I instantly thought of my beloved Timothy Dalton as James Bond, someone who did a great job with that character but never really got the chance to prove it to audiences either due to timing or outside circumstances beyond their control, in the case of Dalton as Bond it was Christopher Skase and the Qintex collapse in 1990 leaving MGM/UA in the hands of people who tried to undercut the Broccoli’s and didn’t want Dalton back as Bond.

Meanwhile with Affleck’s Batman it’s the response to Batman V Superman in 2016 and the mad scramble on Warner Brothers’s part to course correct which led to him leaving the role and as good as it is to see him here he looks checked out and ready to move on to making movies like Air again.

As for Miller as the Flash he is okay but I’ve never really been all that on board with him as the character because he felt like to me more of a rip off of Evan Peter’s Quicksilver from the X-Men movies and this isn’t helped as I really liked Michael Rosenbaum’s voice work as the character in the Justice League animated series where he was fun to watch but there was also a warmth to him as well, something that is sorely missing from Miller’s take on the role.

Now comes to the bad part of the film and firstly the humour in this movie is really obnoxious, so many times the movie goes for all these big joke moments and they all fell near completely flat to me, I am so fucking sick of the way humour is used in modern movies they just go so overboard with it that I feel pulled out the film.

Also the use of the Multiverse and Time Travel especially in the end of the film feels like such gobbledygook that you just sit there going “What on Earth is Going On” and it isn’t helped that this movie is coming out so soon after Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and the Best Picture Oscar win of Everything, Everywhere, All at Once both movies that do a much better job with their multiverse storytelling.

And so that was the Flash and this Flash won’t save everyone of us and feels like a slog at times but it has 2 good Batmen in it so it isn’t a total writeoff, 2 and a half out of 5.