The Media Tourist

DC’s fleet-footed superhero finally gets his own flick, but another actor nearly steals the show

The Flash
Starring Ezra Miller, Michael Keaton, Ben Affleck & Sasha Calle
Directed by Andy Muschietti
PG-13

In theaters Friday, July 16

For a movie about the speediest superhero ever, The Flash took its slow, sweet time getting here.

Discussion about a standalone movie for the popular DC Comics character began in the 1980s but stalled and dead-ended many times over the decades, with various directors, writers and actors becoming attached and then detached. Finally, Ezra Miller (from The Perks of Being a Wallflower) was cast, making ramp-up appearances in a handful of interconnected, big-screen “DC Extended Universe” romps, including The Justice League, Suicide Squad and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

Now the fleet-footed, red-suited dasher finally gets his own full-blown flick. How fast is the Flash, the alter ego of the guy named Barry Allen? Well, he runs so freaking fast, some crazy, far-out things can happen. And even when he’s not running, he’s moving fast—he can make the molecules in his body vibrate at such unimaginable velocity, they maneuver around other molecules and then rearrange, letting him pass through solid objects. He’s so fast, he’s faster than time; and he finds out that when you outrun the speed of light, time-traveling can be a real head trip.

When the Flash goes back in time, it unhinges nearly everything, affecting the present and the future—you know, the old Butterfly Effect. He encounters an alternative version of himself and multiple incarnations of Batman (hello, Michael Keaton, Ben Affleck and another well-known actor whose cameo I won’t spoil). There’s the return of a nasty supervillain bent on humanity’s annihilation; Superman’s cousin (Sasha Calle), Supergirl, gets in on the action; Wonder Woman (Gal Godot) also shows up. And yet another DC superhero splashes around in the after-credits coda. There’s a swirling time-loop metaverse carousel, in which just about everyone in the DC pantheon show ups; who’s your favorite Superman? And Barry is surprised to learn his Butterfly Effect even means that someone other than Michael J. Fox has become Marty McFly in Back to the Future.   

The Flash is a jubilantly overcrowded, hyper-bloated superhero sci-fi carnival ride that gives a flip, fun, wildly inventive spin to the ol’ comicdom nostalgia wheel. It’s got a boatload of superstar cameos, overlapping timelines and a gleefully bombastic smorgasbord blowout of boom-boom-y, bang-bangy CGI spectacle. At the screening I attended, in a jam-packed theater where every seat was occupied, three giddy fanboys directly in front of me were so amped by things they were seeing, I thought they might pee their pants. Heck, they probably did.

There are some genuinely bravo sequences, like the dazzling 15-minute opener in which the Flash zip-zaps around saving babies tumbling out the window in a high-rise hospital catastrophe. (A “baby shower,” get it?) Director Andy Muschetti (whose other films include the psychological horror tale Mama, with Jessica Chastain, and two It scare fests) inventively depicts the mind-warping speed at which Flash can zoom, superheating the air around him with what looks like a kajillion volts of sizzling electricity. There are plenty of knowing nods, in-jokes and callbacks for diehard DC fans. One of the side effects of timeline tweaking and metaverse hopping is how a character (like Michael Shannon’s megalomaniacal General Zod) can be dispatched or destroyed in a previous movie, but fully alive and creating more comic-book havoc in another. (Don’t try to overthink it; it’s a thing.) And I particularly liked a comedic moment when Batman gets tangled in Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth.

The plot swirls around twenty-something Barry trying to prevent the death of his mother (a wonderful Maribel Verdú), which happened when he was a child, causing the wrongful incarceration of his father (Ron Livingston, a few miles on down the road from Office Space). It also involves a trip to icy Siberia, where Clark Kent/Superman is supposedly being held prisoner by terrorists. And pasta plays a key role, in a pivotal (recurring) event as well as a scene in which it’s used to explain how time itself is flexible, not linear, and can bend, overlap and interloop, like wiggly spaghetti noodles in bowl.

Ironically in a movie called The Flash, about the Flash, and with Ezra Miller pulling double duty (as two versions of the character), it’s someone else that damn near steals the show. Fans whooped as Michael Keaton dons the Dark Knight’s cloak for the first time since 1992 and swoops in to become an essential part of the story. I must say, it’s supercool to see the Batmobile, the Batplane and the Batcycle roaring into action out of the ol’ Batcave again. And Sasha Collie (who got her start on TV’s The Young and the Restless) gives a fine, fierce—and memorably strong—performance as a broody, totally kick-ass Supergirl.   

There’s also a bit of heart and a pithy mantra about how some problems can’t be solved, even by time-traveling superheroes. “The scars we have make us who we are,” Batman tells the Flash. “Don’t relive your past; live your life.”

Speaking of problems and scars, Ezra Miller has a few, including relatively recent arrests for disorderly conduct and assault. The actor—who identifies as nonbinary and uses gender-neutral pronouns—has also admitted to mental health issues, been charged with harassment and accused of grooming. As good as Miller has been in supporting roles as the Flash, and now with his own movie, there’s been some buzz that DC might not want him—oops, I mean them—for future projects.

So, the Flash might be super speedy, but it might not be fast enough, or go far enough, to outdistance Miller’s troubled past—which might become the one thing that can catch up with a superhero who can outrun just about anything.

FUN FACT: In Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can, Leonardo DiCaprio’s crafty teenage forger and impersonator cheekily uses the pseudonym of Barry Miller—because if anyone can keep ahead of the FBI agent (Tom Hanks) always hot on his trail, it would be the Flash. 

—Neil Pond