The DCEU Goes Across the Bat-Verse with ‘The Flash’

 

Nostalgia is a powerful tool in the era of the “Legacy Sequel.” From Star Wars to Spider-Man to Jurassic World to Ghostbusters, franchises are banking on millennials’ intense desire to see their childhood heroes brought back into the spotlight alongside contemporary protagonists for “one more adventure.” And I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t say I was sold on Andy Muschietti’s The Flash the moment I saw Michael Keaton don his iconic Batman cape and cowl in the trailer. If The Flash delivered on the Keaton Bat-Goods, I would be more than satisfied with the rest of it.

Yes, Keaton delivers, and if you’re planning on seeing The Flash solely to see your childhood Batman mix it up on the big screen once again – those wonderful toys in tow – you won’t be disappointed. Of course, with that must come a strong understanding that this is not his movie.

To provide a sense of what Batman means to me, let’s take a step or perhaps a slow-motion sprint (ha) back in time to the 1980s with Kenner’s Super Powers Collection, an assortment of DC figures complete with character-specific action features that would give me my first two superhero action figures: Batman and Superman. I honestly can’t recall whatever became of my Batman. It was either lost to a supermarket floor somewhere or fell victim to a couch cushion boobytrap (Adam West has been through worse). The Superman, however, was the Sheriff Woody to my Andy, and I took that mini-Man of Steel everywhere until he, too, was lost to the Phantom Zone. Toy Biz ultimately rekindled my interest in superhero action figures in 1989 with the release of their line of movie- and comic-inspired figures tying into Tim Burton’s smash-hit Batman film, which included a Keaton-adjacent black-suited Batman, a semi-Jack Nicholson Joker, the henchman of all henchmen named only Bob the Goon, and an assortment of other DC characters not in that film, including Robin, Mr. Freeze, The Penguin and, of course, Superman.

I didn’t see Burton’s Batman until it arrived on home video, and even though Nicholson’s Joker TERRIFIED me, I was hooked. And when I learned that there would be a sequel featuring Penguin and Catwoman, I was overcome with Batmania. The only cure was, apparently, to beg my parents for as many Batman Returns consumer products as possible, including Kenner’s fantastic action figure line that gave us about 984 different versions of Batman, a Penguin that looked nothing like Danny DeVito, a Catwoman no one could find in any stores, a Robin that wasn’t even hinted at in the final film, and a set of Penguin Commandos. These were penguins that had rockets strapped to their backs. Penguin. Commandos. Have I mentioned that I LOVE Batman Returns?

Of course, my dad took me to see the film – my first PG-13 movie in theaters – and although it sparked a mild panic among parents’ groups and corporate partners for its sexual content, violent nose-biting, and the omnipresent ooze spewing forth from Penguin’s mouth, there really wasn’t anything else I could think about in the summer of 1992. Rest assured, I rolled into King Street Elementary School the following year with a full array of Batman Returns school supplies and quoting Christopher Walken’s Max Shreck before quoting Christopher Walken was cool. “Expensive baubles” indeed. 

And even as a kid raised on Star Wars, Keaton’s Batman quickly became one of my favorite fictional heroes. From the voice to the attitude to the way he effortlessly took down the bad guys (sometimes to a permanent end, as purists have always pointed out), Keaton’s Caped Crusader was cooler than vichyssoise, a soup that, as Alfred Pennyworth himself taught us, is “supposed to be cold.”

But we’re here to talk about The Flash, aren’t we? This is a film that puts a red-and-yellow bow on Zack Snyder’s DCEU before the James Gunn-led reboot of the film universe. It’s also a film that’s surprisingly fun, full of genuine laughs and boisterous action set pieces that are sure to entertain. And yes, Keaton’s not the only returning hero in this one, and some of the cameos are maddeningly fun, but I won’t spoil them here. I’ll leave that to the TikTokers who spoiled them for me.

But there’s also a super-powered elephant in the room when it comes to The Flash thanks to the much publicized and troubling recent actions of its star, Ezra Miller. It’s difficult to separate the actor from the work in many instances, and it can be a heavy lift to do so here, but I will say that Miller carries much of the film through their comedic timing and the emotional weight they bring to a character who, frankly, wasn’t given all that much to do in either cut of Justice League that came before. Barry Allen is kind of a goober – he admits that repeatedly throughout the film – and with a story that demands two Barrys on-screen through much of it, this could have been a real chore of a movie. But it isn’t. It’s kind of a blast, and it’s a lot more fun than I thought it would be. 

But what’s it about, anyway? The Flash revolves around Barry learning he can use his speedster abilities to travel through time. Barry, obsessed with clearing his father’s name for the murder of his mother years earlier, comes to a powerful realization: What if that murder never even happened? After manipulating one small moment in the past – and encountering a mysterious and violent creature between timelines that sends him off-course – Barry finds himself in an alternate universe one decade earlier. In this world, Barry has yet to gain his powers, Superman doesn’t exist, and Batman has retired. So, when General Zod shows up with a Kryptonian army (as he did in 2011’s Man of Steel), it’s up to Barry to team up with his younger self, an elder Dark Knight and a Kryptonian who is not Kal-El to stop Zod and, ultimately, keep reality from imploding on itself.

There’s a lot of action in this film that’s thrilling to watch despite some surprisingly janky CGI, including a sequence involving multiple computer-animated babies that was almost uncomfortable to watch. There were also some slow-motion running sequences that elicited laughter from the audience I was with (I might have joined them), which is probably not the intended reaction for a film about a character who, well, runs.  

Despite its flaws, the fun I had with The Flash was undeniable, as was the Joker-esque smile plastered across my face whenever Keaton was on-screen. To paraphrase Bruce Wayne himself, I wanted The Flash to get nuts. And it got nuts.