movie review: THE FLASH

After hearing that The Flash is on track to be another DCEU dud, I thought I'd skip doing a proper review and just jump right into some thoughts and comments. Incoming DC Movies head James Gunn hyped this as the greatest superhero movie ever made. Well, the box office certainly disagrees, and Gunn may be tarnished because of it. SPOILERS BELOW.

So did I think this was the greatest superhero movie ever made?  Nope, not even close.  But I will say it may be the greatest movie under the DCEU banner that began with Man of Steel, which arguably is a low threshold to cross.  

 

It was great to see Michael Keaton back as The Batman, but I don't think this was the same character he played in the 1989 original and Batman Returns.  To me, he played it quite differently.  Of course he's older, maybe wiser, but it just seemed different.  Maybe because so much of Batman (both Ben Affleck and Keaton) were daytime scenes, or that Keaton seemed so much more talkative than in the original movies. Or that his cape does not have the bat-points along the bottom. Why do the recent movies keep giving Batman a standard cape?  I say he played a nearly identical alternate multiverse take on the original character.  A lot of the hype building up to this movie implies this a de facto Batman III for Keaton.  If you go into the movie expecting that, you will be disappointed. Keaton is a supporting character.

 

I also have to say I really liked Sasha Calle, who played Supergirl. She did a lot better than I thought she would, and it helps that she wasn't over used in the movie.  She had just the right amount of screen time.  Her and Keaton were the highlights of the movie.

 

Most of the action scenes were amazing. What I thought was weak were some of the special effects. The Flash in particular, most of the time looked like Ezra Miller's face photoshopped onto a CGI figure.  And the way the speedzone was portrayed--what can only be described as a giant Sgt. Pepper album cover.  Cheesy and kind of lame.

 

All the cameos, from Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman thru Nicholas Cage's Superman, and CGI recreations of Christopher Reeve, George Reeves and Adam West, were cool, and George Clooney is now the official DCEU Batman going forward.  Maybe.

 

The Flash was definitely done in the MCU style, far more so than the Joss Whedon version of Justice League, which got slammed for it.

 

So, this was a enjoyable film.  Why did it tank at the box office? Most likely a combination of three things: the fact that the DCEU banner has a bad track record and is tainted, that a nine year Flash TV series just ended causing over-saturation of the character, and most prominently, a boycott of Ezra Miller due to his troubling and dangerous behavior.  Perhaps WB should have re-shot all his scenes with a new actor when they had the chance. 

Review: Shazam #2

Issue number 2 take a step back from all the positive changes made in issue 1. It's not just the reversal of Freddy's hair color change.  It's almost like writer Mark Waid put the extra effort of "Fawcettizing" the first issue to hook us in, only to do a bait and switch and go back to the New52 for the 2nd issue. We get the Flashpoint kids and more of the alien dinosaurs at the beginning of the book, but once we get past that, the story gets slightly better. Instead of using one of Captain Marvel's rogues gallery, he uses the generic DC villain Psycho Pirate as the villain, but it serves a purpose to the story he is telling of the Captain becoming increasingly hostile.  Overall, the issue is not bad, but it's also not as good as the first issue. This issue earns a C. Perhaps corporate DC forced Waid to go more new52 with the 2nd issue. Let's give it a few more issues to see if things get better or worse.

 

PS- So, I watched Shazam Fury of the Gods on HBO.  Wow.  If you always wondered what a superhero movie that is worse than Joel Schumacher's Batman & Robin, worse than Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, worse than Wonder Woman 1984, worse than Thor Love & Thunder would be like, wonder no more, because this movie is it. Director David Sandberg would be very lucky if this movie doesn't Trank up the rest of his career. Maybe he should have just made it a musical. Asher Angel, who plays Billy Batson, and I thought was one of the few good things about the first movie, has little more than a glorified cameo in this one. With so little Asher, that means there is way too much Zachary Levi.  I thought he was horribly miscast as Captain Marvel in the first movie, and he does nothing to change my mind in the sequel. Perhaps the only bright spot in this movie is Jack Dylan Grazer, who plays Freddy Freeman (who I thought was one of the other only good things about the first flick).  In many ways this is really Freddy's movie, and Grazer, along with Rachel Zegler, the only other good thing in the sequel, steal the show, what little there is to steal in this stinker.  Hopefully we can get a real and proper Captain Marvel film reboot, but this movie is so bad, and did so poorly at the box office, it may be decades before the World's Mightiest Mortal gets another shot at cinematic stardom, if ever.