The DCEU spent a decade stumbling along. Despite a strong start with Man of Steel (even with the issues of its last act), the effort by Warners and DC to AstroTurf a franchise in the style of Marvel never paid off. For a brief time leading to the summer of 2023, it appeared that it might have a chance to right itself with a film that would allow something of a reboot with a plot inspired by one of the company's strongest recent comic stories: the universe altering Flashpoint. With a host of returning actors and callbacks, the long gestating Flash solo film would have the fate of the franchise on its shoulders.
Except that it stumbled, crashed, and burned on arrival.
Watching all 144 minutes of The Flash, it isn't hard to see how much it deserves all of the roasting that it has received. Something that was clear from the opening "baby shower" sequence that helps to open the film with puns that perhaps even the 1966 Adam West Batman TV series would have hesitated using. From Ezra Miller being alternatively the blandest or most annoying lead of a superhero film this side of Miles Teller in 2015's failed Fantastic Four reboot to some of the most atrocious CGI and green screen work seen in a tentpole studio film with a budget over 200 million dollars, there's plenty to mock The Flash about.
That's without getting into the script. Ultimately, the biggest problem with The Flash is that it's not so much a single film as four competing films taking up nearly two and a half hours. Among those are a Flash origin film and an adaptation of the Flashpoint comic plot line, either of which would have worked potentially in their own right but mashed together don't. Even less so when the film also tries to be an Avengers: Endgame style movie for the DECU with all of its callbacks and returning characters. Like so much of the DCEU, The Flash tries to AstroTurf a gamechanger film into the middle of the franchise, all while lacking any of the emotional investment or stakes that the MCU had built up to for Endgame.
Only one of those four movies actually kind of works and it's the thing that The Flash, ironically, lives and dies by. That's Michael Keaton's return to the Dark Knight, a role he left behind 29 years earlier. Now, perhaps because of when my own childhood took place, I've never quite shared the nostalgia for Keaton's Batman that it seems many others about my age share. He was good, great even, but Burton's two films with him seemed far more keen about the villains than Keaton as the Dark Knight. That said, Keaton is the heart and soul of this film, the thing that makes it finally pick up at the halfway point and drives things right up to the moment he exits the film. That Keaton was meant to become the front and center of a revived DCEU is clear from the film and which makes it a shame that production issues, shifting release schedules, and finally Warner's own poor decision making robbed him of the chance to deliver upon how bloody good he was here. For a film that's wallowing in nostalgia and trying to use it to glue a film together, Keaton's Batman is the one thing that actually works, even if The Flash suffers from the same problem as Burton's two films: squandering a fantastic Batman to focus on other characters.
If you're going to make yourself sit through the nearly two and a half hours that is 2023's The Flash, it's worth seeing for Keaton. Because there isn't much else worth recommending it for, frankly. Which is a shame, but also a fitting epitaph for the DCEU as a whole.
Except that it stumbled, crashed, and burned on arrival.
Watching all 144 minutes of The Flash, it isn't hard to see how much it deserves all of the roasting that it has received. Something that was clear from the opening "baby shower" sequence that helps to open the film with puns that perhaps even the 1966 Adam West Batman TV series would have hesitated using. From Ezra Miller being alternatively the blandest or most annoying lead of a superhero film this side of Miles Teller in 2015's failed Fantastic Four reboot to some of the most atrocious CGI and green screen work seen in a tentpole studio film with a budget over 200 million dollars, there's plenty to mock The Flash about.
That's without getting into the script. Ultimately, the biggest problem with The Flash is that it's not so much a single film as four competing films taking up nearly two and a half hours. Among those are a Flash origin film and an adaptation of the Flashpoint comic plot line, either of which would have worked potentially in their own right but mashed together don't. Even less so when the film also tries to be an Avengers: Endgame style movie for the DECU with all of its callbacks and returning characters. Like so much of the DCEU, The Flash tries to AstroTurf a gamechanger film into the middle of the franchise, all while lacking any of the emotional investment or stakes that the MCU had built up to for Endgame.
Only one of those four movies actually kind of works and it's the thing that The Flash, ironically, lives and dies by. That's Michael Keaton's return to the Dark Knight, a role he left behind 29 years earlier. Now, perhaps because of when my own childhood took place, I've never quite shared the nostalgia for Keaton's Batman that it seems many others about my age share. He was good, great even, but Burton's two films with him seemed far more keen about the villains than Keaton as the Dark Knight. That said, Keaton is the heart and soul of this film, the thing that makes it finally pick up at the halfway point and drives things right up to the moment he exits the film. That Keaton was meant to become the front and center of a revived DCEU is clear from the film and which makes it a shame that production issues, shifting release schedules, and finally Warner's own poor decision making robbed him of the chance to deliver upon how bloody good he was here. For a film that's wallowing in nostalgia and trying to use it to glue a film together, Keaton's Batman is the one thing that actually works, even if The Flash suffers from the same problem as Burton's two films: squandering a fantastic Batman to focus on other characters.
If you're going to make yourself sit through the nearly two and a half hours that is 2023's The Flash, it's worth seeing for Keaton. Because there isn't much else worth recommending it for, frankly. Which is a shame, but also a fitting epitaph for the DCEU as a whole.