Post apocalyptic costume

This review is based on a free preview screening held in the U.S. on June 1st, 2023, two weeks before the movie's official opening date. Note that this screening did NOT include any credits or post-credits scenes, which I don't know if the final movie will have or not. The director's name came up after the final shot, and then the screen shut off. This review is spoiler-free, but does discuss plot points that are visible in the film's trailers. I may say things like a certain character had a lot of scenes or barely any scenes, so if that's too much information for you, don't read it. I DO NOT spoil the appearance of any character not seen in the trailers.
My review:
7 out of 10 or 3.5 stars out of 5 or B+
The Flash arrives in cinemas not with the urgency of a speeding bullet, but as one of the most long-awaited superhero origin movies in history. The character's comic book debut dates back to 1939, making him one of the founding fathers of the superhero genre. He's carried more than one TV series, from 1990 to the present day. He made his film debut played by Ezra Miller in a brief civilian-garbed cameo in 2016's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, then in costume in 2017's Justice League. Now, after decades of stop-and-go development with too many director changes to count, Ezra's version of The Flash finally gets his name top-billed (if just barely) on the marquee in his own movie. The Flash's director is Andy Muschietti, joining his second big studio franchise after his 2017 and 2019 two-part adaptation of Stephen King's It.
The advance buzz for The Flash has broken the tradition of every new DC Comics movie being sold as "the best superhero movie since Dark Knight," by instead telling us that The Flash is "one of the best superhero movies ever made." That's a high bar to ask any superhero movie to live up to, and The Flash, as you might have predicted, doesn't live up to that billing. It can more realistically be described as the best DC Comics movie since 2018's Aquaman that takes place in the primary DC cinematic universe. The basic bare minimum that any superhero origin story has to do is to explain what the character's powers are, tell us how the character got them, and convince us that the character and his powers are interesting. The Flash succeeds at meeting that more realistic bar. This movie is a perfectly adequate introduction to this culturally significant comic book character for the world at large. Where the movie loses its focus and interest is with its effort to send Flash through a travelogue that traverses the multiverse in search of other super-powered characters for him to pal around with.
This movie was faced with a difficult challenge in telling Flash's origin, in that the character had already been introduced in the DC film series, with nary a word spoken about how he got his powers. The Flash's screenplay is ingenious in the way it tells his origin story without relying on the old cliche of the flashback sequence. It's no secret from the trailers that Flash employs his time travel powers in the movie, and ends up meeting a younger version of himself. Like most modern movies that deal with time travel, this one indulges in making Back to the Future references, some of which will be very funny the more you know about Back to the Future. The plot deals with the same absurd and fascinating situation explored in Back to the Future II, where two versions of the same character exist in the same place at the same time. This gives Flash another character with less knowledge than himself, who he has a good reason to explain things to, much like Doc Brown explains things to Marty in Back to the Future. This device allows the audience to learn everything we need to know about the Flash's origins and powers in an organic way that feels active, natural and spontaneous. Audiences who have little prior knowledge of The Flash will likely be surprised at a lot of the things he can do, but they'll also understand why he can do them with ease thanks to the movie's clever storytelling.
Chemistry in movies is an elusive concept to define. Sometimes two actors who weren't even on set at the same time can have their dialogue edited together later and still appear to have "chemistry." This can be seen in Ralph Macchio's and Pat Morita's screen tests for the Karate Kid, which were shot separately but edited together by the director and posted on YouTube. That dynamic is certainly on display with Ezra Miller's performance(s) in The Flash. The chemistry between the two Flashes is as vibrant and electric as the special effects seen when Flash runs at full speed. Ezra deftly plays the two versions of the Flash in subtly different ways, which helps draw human comedy out of the old, reliable "odd couple" concept. The movie is nothing if not full of in-jokes, and at one point there even seems to be one made at Ezra's expense, based on the actor's recent court trial. I'm not sure what the timing was of when that scene was filmed, and whether it's art imitating life or the other way around. The scenes with the two Flashes seem to be very accessible to the general audience, but this in-joke is one sign of how the movie is often geared towards rewarding the most ardent fans and followers with "Easter egg" moments.
While Flash is ostensibly being graced with his first solo starring movie role here, that didn't stop the studio from deciding that not one, but two Batmen will appear with him in it, Michael Keaton's and Ben Affleck's. And a female version of Superman. And a Superman villain who's crossing over from another movie. And maybe some other surprise guest appearances. It's hard to explain why Warner Brothers felt the need to take this approach with Flash, when the recent film debuts for Wonder Woman and Aquaman were so successful without using any major crossover gimmicks. Perhaps the greatest casualty of this heavy focus on other superheroes is Flash's love interest, Iris West, played by the charmingly baby-faced Kiersey Clemons. She has great chemistry with Ezra herself, but she barely appears in the movie. This is a character who is likely to be a lot more important to Flash's future than these other superheroes, but she barely gets an introduction here. As we've seen all too often in this genre, crossovers with other superheroes always spell doom for the lead character's civilian supporting cast. The other problem with this approach is that these guest stars and cameos never come off as more than the aforementioned gimmicks. The guest stars deliver their famous catchphrases, show off their well-known costumes, powers and gear, and offer a little bit of obligatory dialogue to explain what they've been doing since we last saw them. But they don't get any real character development or satisfying beginnings, middles and ends to their stories.
Several newer Batman movies have shown us that they can go a lot deeper psychologically than the original Michael Keaton Batman movies did. But no added depth has been given to Keaton's version of Batman here. The filmmakers seem content to rely on a few nostalgic references. Keaton has become a more interesting actor in recent years too, but he isn't given any new angle on the character to explore in this performance. Even his aging is barely acknowledged. Keaton has certainly aged well, still fits the suit perfectly, and can pull off his action scenes convincingly. But this movie doesn't give him much to do beyond the action, short of a few cliched speeches about his parents' deaths with the requisite violins playing on the soundtrack. All this movie really does for Keaton's Batman is whet our appetite to see his character explored in more depth in a potential future Batman sequel. I'm sure Keaton has the potential to do much more with the character than the material allowed him to here.
Other, more modern DC characters and actors also show up, to varying degrees of effectiveness. One of those is Ben Affleck's Batman, who, in a briefer appearance than Keaton's, manages to deliver more meaningful and memorable dialogue in this movie than his 1989 predecessor does. The big action scene with Affleck's Batman and the Flash isn't disappointing either. It more than adequately fulfills the promise of a DC cinematic universe centered around the Justice League that director Zack Snyder, the former top architect of DC's film universe, made to us in his movies several years ago. This fast, elaborate, exciting and very expensive-looking sequence set in a bustling cityscape exists as an almost separate entity from the rest of the movie, much like the classic James Bond prologues, and it almost steals the show from the rest of the movie, much like the classic Indiana Jones prologues. It must be said, however, that almost all of the Batman action in this movie loses some of the character's mystique by taking place more or less in broad daylight, rather than during the Dark Knight's signature territory of the night.
If crossing over with the Batman bible wasn't enough, The Flash is just as eager to dip its toes into Superman's world. But, this time, it's without any real appearance by the big blue boy himself. Instead, the first movie version in almost 30 years of Superman's famous cousin, Supergirl, takes center stage. This version of Supergirl abandons the traditional blonde hair and red skirt that she's worn since her first comic book appearance in 1959 for short, dark hair and the same full-length tights that Henry Cavill's Man of Steel sported. She's played by Sasha Calle, an actress of Colombian descent. Supergirl continues the increasingly tiresome tradition of new DC characters being introduced in movies with a "to be determined" note attached to their origin story. She seems to be in the middle of her story when she enters in the middle of this movie to help the other heroes battle Michael Shannon's General Zod, reprising his role from 2013's Man of Steel. Yes, Zod died in that movie, but time travel, multiverse, Back to the Future, etc., etc. Sasha's performance is lacking a certain warmth or charm. Supergirl acts less like a middle American-bred human being, and more like one of the cold Kryptonians that accompany General Zod and speak with vague foreign accents. Whatever character development she has is handled in an extremely abbreviated and perfunctory way, much like what Keaton's Batman suffers in this movie. As for General Zod, I'm frankly surprised to learn they called back Michael Shannon to film new scenes. Everything here looks like it could've been pieced together from old Man of Steel footage and some CGI. Absolutely nothing new is explored with his character. He's nothing more than a prop in someone else's story, which leaves this movie feeling deprived in the villain department. The Flash eventually finds its own way to make a compelling point about good and evil, but it doesn't give us the kind of strong, new villain character that most of the major DC origin movies have.
Andy Muschietti's direction, particularly in terms of his visual style, isn't always as polished as you would expect from a big-budget special effects movie. If you didn't already know he was coming fresh from independent and lower-budget films that often make use of a surrealist style, you might be able to deduce it from watching The Flash. Half the time, the special effects here are not trying to create a convincing, lifelike world, the way movies like Avatar do. They often seem more expressionistic and, yes, surreal. The movie has tried to find its own way of portraying time travel and the multiverse that hasn't been done before. But I wasn't really sold on this being a good way to do it. And the battle scenes that this movie imports from Man of Steel made me feel more like I was playing a video game than like I was watching Man of Steel again. To be fair, the studio has been saying that the advance version I saw was not the final cut, although it's a mere two weeks prior to the official release date. There may be a fine line between surrealism and unfinished special effects. All I can say is that what the special effects lack in polish, they seem to be trying to make up for with style, but not in as consistently effective a way as I would have liked to have seen.
What holds the movie back the most from being as good as Dark Knight, or from being one of the best superhero movies ever, is the too often facile nature of Hollywood wunderkind Christina Hodson's screenplay. Major characters like Keaton's Batman, Calle's Supergirl and Shannon's Zod are dealt with in a very simplified and superficial manner. The Flash himself is given great texture through Ezra's skillful and inspired acting, but even some of his character's big moments seem to come out of nowhere, without the story having laid the necessary groundwork and connective tissue to support them. The overwhelming feeling generated by The Flash is that the movie is extremely eager to jump from "money shot" to "classic one-liner" to "heartfelt dialogue" without providing the necessary investment in proper storytelling to earn all of those moments. I can't help but get the feeling from the reported last-minute editing the movie is going through that the filmmakers are struggling to figure out why the movie isn't paying off quite as strongly with audiences as they had hoped. All of the big moments that audiences are supposed to love are there, after all, aren't they? But a movie can't just aim for non-stop entertainment. It can't be all payoff and no setup. A proper story needs to pace itself, to take the time to develop, breathe and grow. A fulfilling meal can't be just a series of sugar highs. It also has to have some fundamental nutritional value. The Flash races from one dazzling excitement to another at the speed of light, but it ends up leaving the viewer almost as starved for calories as they were when the movie started.
https://preview.redd.it/y6042dfbea4b1.png?width=500&format=png&auto=webp&s=8cf9d20ec278d22fb7c8aac118b00fb9efb490ff

This review is based on a free preview screening held in the U.S. on June 1st, 2023, two weeks before the movie's official opening date. Note that this screening did NOT include any credits or post-credits scenes, which I don't know if the final movie will have or not. The director's name came up after the final shot, and then the screen shut off. This review is spoiler-free, but does discuss plot points that are visible in the film's trailers. I may say things like a certain character had a lot of scenes or barely any scenes, so if that's too much information for you, don't read it. I DO NOT spoil the appearance of any character not seen in the trailers.
My review:
7 out of 10 or 3.5 stars out of 5 or B+
The Flash arrives in cinemas not with the urgency of a speeding bullet, but as one of the most long-awaited superhero origin movies in history. The character's comic book debut dates back to 1939, making him one of the founding fathers of the superhero genre. He's carried more than one TV series, from 1990 to the present day. He made his film debut played by Ezra Miller in a brief civilian-garbed cameo in 2016's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, then in costume in 2017's Justice League. Now, after decades of stop-and-go development with too many director changes to count, Ezra's version of The Flash finally gets his name top-billed (if just barely) on the marquee in his own movie. The Flash's director is Andy Muschietti, joining his second big studio franchise after his 2017 and 2019 two-part adaptation of Stephen King's It.
The advance buzz for The Flash has broken the tradition of every new DC Comics movie being sold as "the best superhero movie since Dark Knight," by instead telling us that The Flash is "one of the best superhero movies ever made." That's a high bar to ask any superhero movie to live up to, and The Flash, as you might have predicted, doesn't live up to that billing. It can more realistically be described as the best DC Comics movie since 2018's Aquaman that takes place in the primary DC cinematic universe. The basic bare minimum that any superhero origin story has to do is to explain what the character's powers are, tell us how the character got them, and convince us that the character and his powers are interesting. The Flash succeeds at meeting that more realistic bar. This movie is a perfectly adequate introduction to this culturally significant comic book character for the world at large. Where the movie loses its focus and interest is with its effort to send Flash through a travelogue that traverses the multiverse in search of other super-powered characters for him to pal around with.
This movie was faced with a difficult challenge in telling Flash's origin, in that the character had already been introduced in the DC film series, with nary a word spoken about how he got his powers. The Flash's screenplay is ingenious in the way it tells his origin story without relying on the old cliche of the flashback sequence. It's no secret from the trailers that Flash employs his time travel powers in the movie, and ends up meeting a younger version of himself. Like most modern movies that deal with time travel, this one indulges in making Back to the Future references, some of which will be very funny the more you know about Back to the Future. The plot deals with the same absurd and fascinating situation explored in Back to the Future II, where two versions of the same character exist in the same place at the same time. This gives Flash another character with less knowledge than himself, who he has a good reason to explain things to, much like Doc Brown explains things to Marty in Back to the Future. This device allows the audience to learn everything we need to know about the Flash's origins and powers in an organic way that feels active, natural and spontaneous. Audiences who have little prior knowledge of The Flash will likely be surprised at a lot of the things he can do, but they'll also understand why he can do them with ease thanks to the movie's clever storytelling.
Chemistry in movies is an elusive concept to define. Sometimes two actors who weren't even on set at the same time can have their dialogue edited together later and still appear to have "chemistry." This can be seen in Ralph Macchio's and Pat Morita's screen tests for the Karate Kid, which were shot separately but edited together by the director and posted on YouTube. That dynamic is certainly on display with Ezra Miller's performance(s) in The Flash. The chemistry between the two Flashes is as vibrant and electric as the special effects seen when Flash runs at full speed. Ezra deftly plays the two versions of the Flash in subtly different ways, which helps draw human comedy out of the old, reliable "odd couple" concept. The movie is nothing if not full of in-jokes, and at one point there even seems to be one made at Ezra's expense, based on the actor's recent court trial. I'm not sure what the timing was of when that scene was filmed, and whether it's art imitating life or the other way around. The scenes with the two Flashes seem to be very accessible to the general audience, but this in-joke is one sign of how the movie is often geared towards rewarding the most ardent fans and followers with "Easter egg" moments.
While Flash is ostensibly being graced with his first solo starring movie role here, that didn't stop the studio from deciding that not one, but two Batmen will appear with him in it, Michael Keaton's and Ben Affleck's. And a female version of Superman. And a Superman villain who's crossing over from another movie. And maybe some other surprise guest appearances. It's hard to explain why Warner Brothers felt the need to take this approach with Flash, when the recent film debuts for Wonder Woman and Aquaman were so successful without using any major crossover gimmicks. Perhaps the greatest casualty of this heavy focus on other superheroes is Flash's love interest, Iris West, played by the charmingly baby-faced Kiersey Clemons. She has great chemistry with Ezra herself, but she barely appears in the movie. This is a character who is likely to be a lot more important to Flash's future than these other superheroes, but she barely gets an introduction here. As we've seen all too often in this genre, crossovers with other superheroes always spell doom for the lead character's civilian supporting cast. The other problem with this approach is that these guest stars and cameos never come off as more than the aforementioned gimmicks. The guest stars deliver their famous catchphrases, show off their well-known costumes, powers and gear, and offer a little bit of obligatory dialogue to explain what they've been doing since we last saw them. But they don't get any real character development or satisfying beginnings, middles and ends to their stories.
Several newer Batman movies have shown us that they can go a lot deeper psychologically than the original Michael Keaton Batman movies did. But no added depth has been given to Keaton's version of Batman here. The filmmakers seem content to rely on a few nostalgic references. Keaton has become a more interesting actor in recent years too, but he isn't given any new angle on the character to explore in this performance. Even his aging is barely acknowledged. Keaton has certainly aged well, still fits the suit perfectly, and can pull off his action scenes convincingly. But this movie doesn't give him much to do beyond the action, short of a few cliched speeches about his parents' deaths with the requisite violins playing on the soundtrack. All this movie really does for Keaton's Batman is whet our appetite to see his character explored in more depth in a potential future Batman sequel. I'm sure Keaton has the potential to do much more with the character than the material allowed him to here.
Other, more modern DC characters and actors also show up, to varying degrees of effectiveness. One of those is Ben Affleck's Batman, who, in a briefer appearance than Keaton's, manages to deliver more meaningful and memorable dialogue in this movie than his 1989 predecessor does. The big action scene with Affleck's Batman and the Flash isn't disappointing either. It more than adequately fulfills the promise of a DC cinematic universe centered around the Justice League that director Zack Snyder, the former top architect of DC's film universe, made to us in his movies several years ago. This fast, elaborate, exciting and very expensive-looking sequence set in a bustling cityscape exists as an almost separate entity from the rest of the movie, much like the classic James Bond prologues, and it almost steals the show from the rest of the movie, much like the classic Indiana Jones prologues. It must be said, however, that almost all of the Batman action in this movie loses some of the character's mystique by taking place more or less in broad daylight, rather than during the Dark Knight's signature territory of the night.
If crossing over with the Batman bible wasn't enough, The Flash is just as eager to dip its toes into Superman's world. But, this time, it's without any real appearance by the big blue boy himself. Instead, the first movie version in almost 30 years of Superman's famous cousin, Supergirl, takes center stage. This version of Supergirl abandons the traditional blonde hair and red skirt that she's worn since her first comic book appearance in 1959 for short, dark hair and the same full-length tights that Henry Cavill's Man of Steel sported. She's played by Sasha Calle, an actress of Colombian descent. Supergirl continues the increasingly tiresome tradition of new DC characters being introduced in movies with a "to be determined" note attached to their origin story. She seems to be in the middle of her story when she enters in the middle of this movie to help the other heroes battle Michael Shannon's General Zod, reprising his role from 2013's Man of Steel. Yes, Zod died in that movie, but time travel, multiverse, Back to the Future, etc., etc. Sasha's performance is lacking a certain warmth or charm. Supergirl acts less like a middle American-bred human being, and more like one of the cold Kryptonians that accompany General Zod and speak with vague foreign accents. Whatever character development she has is handled in an extremely abbreviated and perfunctory way, much like what Keaton's Batman suffers in this movie. As for General Zod, I'm frankly surprised to learn they called back Michael Shannon to film new scenes. Everything here looks like it could've been pieced together from old Man of Steel footage and some CGI. Absolutely nothing new is explored with his character. He's nothing more than a prop in someone else's story, which leaves this movie feeling deprived in the villain department. The Flash eventually finds its own way to make a compelling point about good and evil, but it doesn't give us the kind of strong, new villain character that most of the major DC origin movies have.
Andy Muschietti's direction, particularly in terms of his visual style, isn't always as polished as you would expect from a big-budget special effects movie. If you didn't already know he was coming fresh from independent and lower-budget films that often make use of a surrealist style, you might be able to deduce it from watching The Flash. Half the time, the special effects here are not trying to create a convincing, lifelike world, the way movies like Avatar do. They often seem more expressionistic and, yes, surreal. The movie has tried to find its own way of portraying time travel and the multiverse that hasn't been done before. But I wasn't really sold on this being a good way to do it. And the battle scenes that this movie imports from Man of Steel made me feel more like I was playing a video game than like I was watching Man of Steel again. To be fair, the studio has been saying that the advance version I saw was not the final cut, although it's a mere two weeks prior to the official release date. There may be a fine line between surrealism and unfinished special effects. All I can say is that what the special effects lack in polish, they seem to be trying to make up for with style, but not in as consistently effective a way as I would have liked to have seen.
What holds the movie back the most from being as good as Dark Knight, or from being one of the best superhero movies ever, is the too often facile nature of Hollywood wunderkind Christina Hodson's screenplay. Major characters like Keaton's Batman, Calle's Supergirl and Shannon's Zod are dealt with in a very simplified and superficial manner. The Flash himself is given great texture through Ezra's skillful and inspired acting, but even some of his character's big moments seem to come out of nowhere, without the story having laid the necessary groundwork and connective tissue to support them. The overwhelming feeling generated by The Flash is that the movie is extremely eager to jump from "money shot" to "classic one-liner" to "heartfelt dialogue" without providing the necessary investment in proper storytelling to earn all of those moments. I can't help but get the feeling from the reported last-minute editing the movie is going through that the filmmakers are struggling to figure out why the movie isn't paying off quite as strongly with audiences as they had hoped. All of the big moments that audiences are supposed to love are there, after all, aren't they? But a movie can't just aim for non-stop entertainment. It can't be all payoff and no setup. A proper story needs to pace itself, to take the time to develop, breathe and grow. A fulfilling meal can't be just a series of sugar highs. It also has to have some fundamental nutritional value. The Flash races from one dazzling excitement to another at the speed of light, but it ends up leaving the viewer almost as starved for calories as they were when the movie started.
https://preview.redd.it/i7s8ki9fda4b1.png?width=500&format=png&auto=webp&s=9adf9ef308c32459a75c907dcbff49460765f82b

My first repaint & custom soft goods! Used a TVC Death Watch to make a Mandalore survivor like the dudes shown in season 3.

My first repaint & custom soft goods! Used a TVC Death Watch to make a Mandalore survivor like the dudes shown in season 3.