What are your thoughts on The Flash (2023)?
Despite Ezra Miller’s personal and legal issues leading up to the movie’s release I’ve never been much of a fan of theirs. I’ve never read The Flash comics so I don’t know how the character of Barry Allen/The Flash was originally written, but since Justice League (2017) and then Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021) some years later I’ve struggled to warm to his (as in the character’s) socially awkward/quirky persona.
I have a lot of problems with both of those films but that’s not what this post is about.
It’s no secret (thanks to all of the trailers that basically show EVERY decent part of the movie) that The Flash sees the return of everyone’s (yes everyone's) favourite Batman (Michael Keaton), thanks to Barry (The Flash’s) epic time travel fail altering the future and creating an alternate one in which no superheroes exist.
When I heard Keaton was coming back I was pretty excited! As I said I’m not a big fan of this version of The Flash, but the return of my favourite Batman was surely enough to make me watch it….right..?
Unfortunately the film took so long to come to the big screen that much of my excitement about it had waned by the time the first trailer dropped. On top of that Marvel had succeeded in announcing that a new Spider-Man movie was in the works (in which previous iterations of certain characters would be returning), releasing that movie to critical and commercial acclaim, and then moving on to their next project BEFORE The Flash was even finished!
It was all a bit too little too late for me.
Of course Ezra Miller’s personal troubles didn’t help matters. Between multiple accusations of physical abuse, harassment, grooming, and people filing restraining orders against the actor, the movie’s release was not only significantly delayed, but question over whether it would even be released was a very real thing. And yet they released it anyway…
In an era where the likes of James Gunn (director of Guardians of the Galaxy), Gina Carano (The Mandalorian), Kevin Hart (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle), Mel Gibson (Braveheart), Johnny Depp (Pirates of the Caribbean) and (ok, this one’s perhaps a bit different) Kevin Spacey (Se7en) were cancelled for controversial tweets or comments or at worst, inappropriate behaviour, it seems crazy to me that Warner Bros would still release The Flash after everything Ezra Miller had “allegedly” done was so highly publicised. It just seems like double standards to me.
Having said that, I’m against cancel culture. I hate it! In fact as much as I’m not a fan of Piers Morgan he did say something once that didn’t sound like it was coming directly out of his arse. He basically said (and I’m paraphrasing here) that we need to be careful with this notion of holding people up to impossible standards because nobody’s perfect.
Everyone has skeletons in their closet. I do, I’m sure many of you do, and I guarantee a lot of people in Hollywood do. The only difference is, nobody cares about ours because we’re not in the public eye.
In a world where everyone’s trying not to say “the wrong thing” for fear of reprisals, the whole industry is currently a watered down soup of wokeness and fragile eggshells.
Disney for all its noble efforts to be inclusive have almost gone too far to the point where audiences are starting to revolt. It seems that for all their good intentions people are becoming sick of forced narratives and controversial castings. As the saying goes, “Go woke, go broke”.
Some people will read this and say I’m racist, sexist, homophobic, gender-phobic or worse, but that’s simply not true. I just have an opinion and unfortunately in this current climate that’s apparently not allowed.
As much as I’m against cancel culture I do feel that releasing this movie with Ezra’s involvement shows that Warner Brothers were more concerned with not losing the money they’d spent on it than they were doing the ethical thing and not releasing it. And in an act of poetic justice that seems to be coming back to bite them.
It was reported this week that more than 1500 theatres have decided to pull The Flash from their billings due to the movie failing to draw an audience. I might be wrong but I can’t help but think that this is the general public sending a message that they won’t endorse a movie in which the main star is guilty of far more than some other celebrities have previously lost their careers over. I also read that it’s set to become one of the biggest box office bombs of all time, losing Warner Brothers as much as $200 million.
All that said, I haven’t seen it so what do I know? Much like Piers Morgan I might just be taking out of my backside. All I know is that for a multitude of reasons I won’t be in a hurry to watch it.
What do you think? Have you seen The Flash? Did you enjoy it? What do you make of my comments (for good or for bad)?
Let me know below in the comments.