Andy Muschietti’s The Flash, about the stand-alone adventures of enhanced human Barry Allen, boldly goes where other movies have been before: the multi-verse, in which characters bend the space-time continuum and inhabit several realities at the same time.
A member of the DC Comics’ vigilante squad Justice League, Barry (Ezra Miller) gets his own playground in which to test his ability to travel at lighting speed. His playmates include an alternate version of himself, Batman (Michael Keaton) and Supergirl (Sasha Kalle), but not the Justice League’s most eminent member, Superman.
Why? The answer has less to with creativity than studio dynamics. Henry Cavill, who played Superman in three movies, has been axed from the franchise. A casting decision that shouldn’t matter to viewers looms large over The Flash, which ties itself up in knots to explain Superman’s absence as well as justify its existence.
The 144-minute movie opens with a play on its title – one of its most clever moments. Barry wonders, as have superheroes and fictional mortals before him, whether he can alter the present/future by manipulating the past. Might Barry be able to change the fate of his beloved mother Nora (Maribel Verdu)? As Barry and his other self get to work, the usual dilemmas about meddling with fate ensue.
Mom is forgotten as the double-Barry engine gets rolling. Having committed to the concept of doubling – which has inspired artists as wide-ranging as Fyodor Dostoevsky and David Cronenberg – director Muschietti and principal writer Christina Hodson unleash retro-trippy visual effects, snarky humour, and two Ezra Millers.
Any deeper exploration of the double-Barry concept is external to the movie – Miller identifies as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns. Miller’s nervy manner and clownish behaviour seem as forced as the movie itself. Miller always fares better in the quieter scenes, especially when Barry has a moving encounter with his mother.
At 144 minutes, the movie isn’t quite as fleet as its superhero. The Justice League was never as coherent or cohesive as rival studio Marvel’s Avengers. The final word on the multiverse business was thought to have been the Daniels’ Oscar-decorated Everything Everywhere All At Once, but never say never.
A handful of cheeky scenes that send up the movie’s themes survive the predictable plotting. Forever threatening to consume itself literally as well as philosophically, The Flash is redeemed by its edgy humour, Ezra Miller’s investment, and Muschietti’s adept staging of the numerous action scenes. Miller’s hyper-aware performance is in lockstep with The Flash’s ambitions, but Michael Keaton’s Batman avatar is all wrong for this kind of movie, Supergirl doesn’t register, and the token villain Zod (Michael Shannon) is such an awkward fit that it shows even through his visor.