THE FLASH RATE & REVIEW THREAD

[jignat]

I finally saw Flash last night.

Pros:

Sasha Calle as Supergirl and Keaton as Batman. Great in their roles.

The final tomato can scene

Cons:

"Young Barry" is only fun for a for scenes and then becomes grating for me.

While I am not someone to criticize CGI, the CGI is bad. The babies in the hospital look like mannequins.

Most of the emotional moments didnt land for me. I havent seen this incarnation of Flash since 2017 and that was his only main role before this.For emotional beats, I would recommend the 2013 animated Flashpont paradox film (which is much better take on the material) and even the 2014 CW Flash Season 1 ending episode. X-men DOFP and Avengers Endgame are much better time travel comic stories too.

The cameos didnt wow me much especially Gal,Cavill.

The pacing felt slow and there could have been one more action scene.

Iris seems wasted.

Overall: It just feels blah and the type of story being told has been done better in other movies/shows. I'm surprised at the praise form random people like Tom Cruise or Stephen King.
6/10

 

[elgaz]

Finally saw this last night and have mixed feelings about it.

On the one had, it was a bit better than I expected overall. I enjoyed it more than I enjoyed the original cinematic release of Justice League. I felt the story went to some interesting places, the dialogue was generally good, Keaton was great, Supergirl was a strong character also (shame she didn't have more screentime). The score was decent, and there were some well executed action scenes.

On the downside, it didn't bring anything really new to the table. The whole argument against changing the past has been done to death in many, many time travel stories and in smarter ways than the Flash did. Shannon and Traue were wasted to a certain extent; whilst his Zod character was a very fleshed out villain in MOS with real motivations for his actions, he was just essentially a soulless bad guy in this one. If you hadn't seen MOS then he would seem utterly unmemorable.
Ezra Miller had some uplifting moments, but for the most part, his version(s) of the Flash remain utterly irritating and personal issues aside, I still struggle to see why he was ever cast in the role. He's never felt like Barry Allen to me.

The single biggest issue to me was the VFX. I can normally look past these but they were so bad that they were totally distracting at times. I'm not just talking about the multiverse cameos which they've already tried to explain as looking distorted because of the Chronobowl; I'm talking about simple scenes where both versions of Barry were onscreen together and one looked like he was made of rubber. I've seen better twins vfx on Youtube and can't fathom why a multi-million dollar movie looked so bad.

So overall, quite 'meh' and very much a 6/10 film for me.

 

[#root]

Baby. Shower. Butt ugly babies but at least that sequence was… unique? Inventive? I thought he was going to run up and save them but when they started falling out of the windows, my mouth was agape .

This was pretty meh. I did find myself enjoying parts of it but overall the story didn’t work. Spoilering because… it’s a long rant .

Spoiler

Repeating what everyone has been saying since day one but Keaton was great (even though this version was more Bruce Wayne #345 and not really the Burton interpretation) and Sasha Calle left a mark even with just a minute of screentime. Really loved her look and whole vibe. Just sad that she was given next to nothing to do because you can see that she has it in her to do a good job with Kara especially this extra jaded version. Her ending and Keaton’s ending sucked big time. Both of them deserved much better. I get the reason for ditching the original ending but it still sucks for those characters and those actors. Oh and Maribel Verdú was great as Nora and that final scene with her was genuinely touching. Some of the action sequences were also fun. And that’s pretty much it for the good. On to the bad.

I didn’t like that for the most part, this movie was just Ezra with Ezra which was not very interesting to watch. Young Barry in particular was very grating mostly. Kiersey Clemons has been absolutely wasted in these movies and Ezra had zero chemistry with her. They did better with Calle, Keaton, and Verdú but they didn’t have that many scenes together. I also preferred Billy Crudup as the dad more.

The story also lacked tension. I always thought doing Flashpoint for the first ever Flash movie was stupid but it’s even stupider doing it the way they did. As soon as he goes back in time, you know at the end he’s going to go back and reverse all the changes. So like… who cares who dies. Who cares how many universes collapse. It’s all going to be reversed. When main Barry is acting all sad at the end and trying to convince the young Barry to stop, you just want them to get it over with already. And despite all that, Barry still doesn’t learn his lesson and alters the timeline at the end. How is putting one can into his mom’s cart worse than moving an entire row of cans?

Problems also solve themselves. Batman doesn’t want to help? Now he does. Supergirl doesn’t want to help? Now she does. Young Barry won’t stop going back in time to try and save Kara? Oh now he’ll just sacrifice himself to stop the future version of him from killing main Barry.

And Dark Flash was just so dumb and so pointless. Shows up for a second to push Barry into alt-2013 but then disappears until the end only to die immediately after he shows up. Literally just an excuse for Barry to end up in 2013. And while it was an interesting idea to use the events of MOS, Michael Shannon was wasted. [Was that really Antje Traue or did they just use her likeness?]

And of course the effects. Worst I’ve seen in years. The CG cameos were somehow more dead-eyed than 2004’s Polar Express. They were also completely pointless though I did get a kick out of seeing Nic Cage fighting the infamous giant spider as well as Reeves and Slater together. That elated feeling was gone though once they zoomed onto their faces… And with all these recent conversations about owning actors’ likenesses and using them without their permission, there was an added layer of discomfort there. Interesting to learn that Cage was actually on set and the dead eyed CG face was added in post… And I don’t know if that’s what he actually meant, but Muscheitti’s explanation that it’s the distortion from the speed force is bad because it doesn’t look like an added effect, it looks like an incomplete render. Deliberately choosing to make your movie look like **** is really poor decision making.

So overall a very predictable story, uncharismatic lead with very little chemistry with anyone, nonexistent villain, bad visuals, just lots and lots of bad. The supporting cast did the best they could but sadly they could really only do so much. Andy Muschietti… I didn’t like Mama, I didn’t like the It movies even though they had good stuff, and I didn’t like Flash. I’m very impatiently waiting for that scheduling conflict to show up for The Brave and The Bold. You know it has to.

 

[Steyin]

I actually enjoyed this. Damnit.

 

[I'm Venom]

I thought it was cool. What I've noticed is there are definitely two camps: you enjoyed it or you loathed it. Is it my favorite? Of course not. I'll be honest I had no real expectations other than I wanted to see Keaton as Batman again. That was the only appeal I had for the Batgirl movie, if it was bad didn't matter. Whatever. They could've spent more time developing the villain, and maybe a Chris O'Donnell cameo as Nightwing, but other than that this movie did the nostalgia thing better than the TV show. Overall: 7/10.

 

[Milk Tray Guy]

Of course not. I'll be honest I had no real expectations other than I wanted to see Keaton as Batman again. That was the only appeal I had for the Batgirl movie

Ditto. As far as I was concerned anything else would be a pleasant surprise - and I enjoyed it a lot. There's no way it belongs in the same bracket as Batman & Robin, Catwoman, FANT4STIC, Justice League (TC), or Superman IV.

 

[Karelia]

Ditto. As far as I was concerned anything else would be a pleasant surprise - and I enjoyed it a lot. There's no way it belongs in the same bracket as Batman & Robin, Catwoman, FANT4STIC, Justice League (TC), or Superman IV.

It's definitely better than the bottom tier comic book movies, at least for me. I'd say it's on the bottom of mid tier CBM's. It's got some great moments within the film, but has a lot that just didn't land with me as well.

 

[B]

It's definitely better than the bottom tier comic book movies, at least for me. I'd say it's on the bottom of mid tier CBM's. It's got some great moments within the film, but has a lot that just didn't land with me as well.

This pretty much echoes my feelings also, it's got enough about it that it comfortably avoids being grouped with B&R, Catwoman, Fant4astic, Elektra etc.

 

[Shinobi Shaw]

A solid 4.

Just poor all around.

 

[Dr.]

Now that this is on Max, I finally watched it. And… I was rather underwhelmed. I haven’t fully digested all the reasons why. But my first impression is that the dramatically interesting time travel elements (the pathos of Barry trying to undo destiny and save his Mom) didn’t quite gel with the comedic, madcap tone.

However, I am curious about all the positive buzz The Flash was getting prior to its release — especially from James Gunn. To be sure, this might have been just PR spin from the new boss of DC Studios. You need a big opening weekend for your expensive movie, so — of course — you go for the hyperbolic praise. But Gunn seemed sincere, like he genuinely thought this could be a fun and popular success.

I’ve seen two (out of the three) Guardians movies. And I’ve also seen The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker. All entertaining. But also all comedies, with a kind of self-deprecating (if not self-mocking) attitude towards the genre. Are these the qualities that Gunn saw and liked in The Flash? And does this hint at his approach for the new DC Cinematic Universe?

 

[C. Lee]

Just finished it. My wife and I thought it was pretty good.....but would have been great if they had had pretty much anyone else in the world play the Flash.

 

[Madam-Shogun]

Thought it was surprisingly good. Not great, but good and solid. Definitely doesn't do anything to send off the DCEU proper, but I never expected it to.