At this point, it’s time to fold up the Cosmic Treadmill. The fate of The Flash has been writ. If you so choose, time has collapsed enough that you can own the film in July, an accelerated window that proves the point. The DCEU goes out the same way the second major DC live-action run did — with George Clooney. Seriously, fans are going to give that man a complex.
Pundits pro and amateur have weighed in. Ezra Miller was the problem. Ezra Miller has a problem. Warner Bros. has an Ezra Miller problem. The story felt desperate. The story was wonderful fan service. A small contingent of vocal fans claim they boycotted because it marked the end of the Snyderverse, which as we all know, was the greatest cinematic achievement since The Great Train Robbery. Except even Warner Bros., a studio that has a side business in denial, knew the writing was on the (Source) wall long before this.
Since 2015 in this troubled project, it was clear Warner Bros. had no idea where they wanted to go. If Zack Snyder’s vision had held steady — that’s not an endorsement — maybe it wouldn’t have been a loose adaptation of Geoff Johns’ and Adam Kubert’s 2011 mini-series Flashpoint, the story that launched DC’s “New 52” initiative. It was turned into an animated movie and adapted for The Flash TV series. It’s spawned a variety of action figures, even one from Mego. DC revisited it last year with Flashpoint Beyond, because the vision of Bruce Wayne’s father Thomas becoming Batman instead has made for a fan favorite character. (Rumor has it that Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who briefly appeared as Thomas Wayne in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, had been the original Batman slated to appear in The Flash.)
The point being that almost from the beginning of its development, The Flash was intended to soft reset the films. Exactly has it has done. We heard rumblings that it would adapt Flashpoint starting in 2016 even before Justice League failed to impress. Miller themself teamed with Grant Morrison to write it. John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein took a crack at it before leaving the project and moving on to Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. When Birds of Prey scribe Christina Hodson took over, she used their script as a guidepost. Andy Muschietti may have brought his vision, but where The Flash went wasn’t his idea.
By 2022, no matter which regime oversaw The Flash, it had an ending that was meant to show reality had changed and, just as in the comics, would still be changing a bit. When original greenlighter Walter Hamada was still around, the movie would have firmly established Michael Keaton back in place as an older, wiser Batman — maybe even launching Batman Beyond. The plan was to have him function in a role similar to Nick Fury in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Then Hamada left, and David Zaslav bought Gotham City lock stock and barrel, deciding that the follow-up project Batgirl was not up to snuff. So Keaton would not be the ongoing Batman. (Let’s ignore the Pattinson in the room.) Ben Affleck might have reasserted his role, as briefly Dwayne Johnson tried to bend the Snyderverse to his will.
With James Gunn and Peter Safran in charge, we ended up with a joke having Clooney return. It was a surprise, perhaps, but not meant to be permanent. In the wake of yesterday’s Superman: Legacy casting, Gunn let it be known they’re a while away from deciding who will be Batman in the new vision. However, let’s speculate that the post-credit scene with Jason Momoa is meant to establish that Aquaman looks the same in every reality. The door remains open for Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom to be the second new DC Studios film after Blue Beetle. Call them a prologue to “Chapter One: Gods and Monsters.” Unless they tank, then they go the way of the Dark Universe.
Also, let’s acknowledge for a moment that Miller is a troubled person who has allegedly done bad things. (Allegedly, because no legal charges have been brought and I will always have empathy for people suffering mental illness, though not condone their actions.) That may be one reason why The Flash did not do well. Plenty of people don’t even really know who Miller is, but those who do may have stayed home. Some may have been mad that Grant Gustin (from the CW series) was not involved with the film, though a TV show’s audience is still smaller than a cinematic audience.
It’s also bad timing for a messy movie about the multiverse. Two weeks earlier, we saw a multiversal story told just about as well as could be in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Though Bruce Wayne’s spaghetti analogy may have been a clearer explanation than Miguel O’Hara’s model, some of us might have just felt that it was been there, webbed that.
In truth? The Flash was also heavy fan service, borrowing from the Elseworlds story Red Son as well as Flashpoint. Young audiences may have been confused by the alternate world cameos at the climax, especially Nicolas Cage — start to finish an inside joke. I found it fun, but sat there thinking a summer movie shouldn’t require footnotes.
This isn’t a simple case of the movie is bad. It isn’t. And being a bad movie has never stopped one from being a hit. (See: Jurassic World: Dominion) If you stayed away for moral reasons, that’s understandable. If it was general disinterest, that’s understandable, too. Should DC focus on self-contained movies? Focus is too strong a word. As Gunn and Safran laid out, there’s room for them — as in comics, they call them Elseworlds. Hence the Matt Reeves’ Batverse, and Todd Phillips’ Joker. Marvel should consider it, too. Eternals should have stood on its own, just as creator Jack Kirby had wanted the characters to be.
From here, let’s move forward. Blue Beetle looks fun, and looks like it will have a sense of legacy, which a post-Flash world allows. Hope that Sasha Calle gets to return as Supergirl somewhere down the line. And until we have true hard evidence otherwise, believe that James Gunn really does want to espouse the values of Truth, Justice, and the American Way.
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