The Flash
It honestly really saddens me to give this movie this score. The Flash, and Barry Allen, are some of my favourite characters in fiction. With the show becoming awful, I had hope for this film. Yet numerous production issues and the idea of doing Flashpoint as the first film had me nervous, and then James Gunn, and numerous other people claimed that this was the best DC film ever. What film did they watch?
The film actually starts off somewhat strong. It does begin with a glaringly bad action scene, however after this when the premise of the story reveals itself, I feel like the film is pretty good. It feels grounded in this Flashpoint story, and an emotional connection to the story is established early on. Honestly, I enjoy the premise of this film, the barebones story is interesting, it's just a shame that they do the least interesting things with it.
Up until the second act, the film flows pretty well, and Ezra Miller does a phenomenal job. It feels very weird to give them praise considering the circumstances, but they genuinely are the best part of the film. It is hard enough to act opposite yourself, but I was very impressed by how distinct they were able to make both Barrys.
It's when the story decides to really lean into the nostalgia, and cameos that it loses me. Most of the second act is boring to me. I like Keaton's Batman, but he just feels like a shell of a character only able to say fun lines which will get people excited, he doesn't feel real. However, the main issue with this second act is that it is spent searching for Superman, a fact we know through marketing is not happening. Having a large part of the film be this, only to reveal it's Supergirl feels entirely pointless when that fact is known by looking at a poster.
Supergirl was a standout of the film. Sasha Calle was phenomenal for the limited screen time she gets and I'm sad that she won't be in future films I'm guessing.
Despite it being boring, the second act was serviceable. The third act is where this becomes awful. It is a clusterfuck of cameos and distracting CGI. Sure, the twist is interesting, but it all looks so visually bad it pulls you out of it. I just completely lost interest in the film by this point.
Yet after all the clusterfuck of CGI and cameos, the film goes back to its emotional scenes which are focused on Barry and his relationships and guess what, when the film slows down and actually lets you sit in these moments it works. I cried, it was such a beautiful scene and it felt like it was going back to how the start of the film.
The ending of this film annoyed me. Why did we sit through a film to end up where we began? Oh sorry we also got another cameo. I know what they were trying to do with the emotional story, and that scene worked, but when you spend the majority of your time with characters who are inevitably going to be gone, why should we be invested
The ending of this film annoyed me. I know what they were trying to do with the emotional story, and that scene worked, but when you spend the majority of your time with characters who are inevitably going to be gone, why should we be invested