I enjoyed the Flash movie.

There are spoilers in this review of The Flash, which I saw this last weekend. Proceed forward at your own peril :).

June has been a fun return to movies. I haven't seen this many films in the theater since before 2020, and it does feel good. I've seen four movies in the last two weeks, and you've already read about what I thought of Elemental (from Pixar) and Across the Spiderverse. Now, I'm going to air my feelings about Warner Brothers first "Flash" movie, and on Wednesday I'll talk about Asteroid City by Wes Anderson.

So, right off the bat, I really liked The Flash. I think that Ezra Miller plays a great Flash even if they are kind of a shitty human being. After watching this film, I was a little disappointed that I couldn't crap on Miller as an actor, because I very much wanted to after seeing the sketchy headlines that paint them to be a kind of weasel in real life. So here's where I have to separate the art from the actor.

We oftentimes have to do this kind of thing. In literature, Marion Zimmer Bradley was a fantastic author that I liked reading, but she had zero problems with her husband being a podophile. Shrug. What can you do about that? And honestly, I've enjoyed Ezra in more than just his outing as the Flash. He was great in Fantastic Beasts too, although the third installment (which was still good), kind of sidelined his character or definitely reduced the impact that character would have on the story. All of that was probably done as he entered the news for various troubling behavior patterns, and then of course, J.K. Rowling was doing the same thing.

I think that a lot of humans always want bad people to always be bad artists. That way we don't have to deal with the conflict of where to draw lines. No one really likes to feel conflicted, am I right? Anyway, The Flash as a movie had a lot going for it. I loved seeing the different universes. I saw bunches of cameos including Helen Slater as Supergirl, which last happened in the 80's (done via C.G.I.), and Christopher Reeve returning briefly as Superman. There was even a Nicolas Cage version of Superman, which I'd only briefly paid attention to over the years, and was a concept for a movie that was directed by Tim Burton. And we saw George Clooney briefly as the Batman. Of course, if you've seen the trailers, then you know Michael Keaton is back as the Batman for one more outing (which includes a send-off). The big bad of the movie is General Zod from Man of Steel. This time, no matter how many Barry Allen's there are, Zod is unstoppable (he was almost unstoppable in Man of Steel). Kryptonian forces and their technology is just too much to handle, and honestly it should have been in Man of Steel. And to my surprise, we got to see Gal Gadot one more time as Wonder Woman. I really wish they weren't scrapping that character, but the next outing of Wonder Woman will more than likely be a different casting. Gal Gadot was just so good as the character.

A lot of people online did not like the C.G.I. that had some uncanny valley moments to it. I didn't mind it so much, however, I knew going into it that the C.G.I. was going to look wonky every time that Barry used the Speed Force. They explained this as, "Things look different from Barry's perspective when he's moving so fast." Others who read those same words from the director say that this is just a way to cover their ass over bad C.G.I. I don't know what the truth is, but I accepted what the director said, I believe they made it intentionally look bad in order to distinguish what it was like being in the Speed Force. I would have liked it much better if they had just copied the Quicksilver sequences from the X-Men movies (with the young cast).

Anyone else see The Flash? If so, what did you think?