‘The Flash’ Is Here! Is It the "Greatest Superhero Movie Ever"?

The Flashwith Van Lathan of Higher Learning and The Midnight Boys — spoilers throughout

The Flash 2023

Van liked it, breaking from the other two; he says the movie's total narrative freedom (no idea who survives the coming Gunn-era reboot) gave it real stakes, but even he admits Ezra Miller's performance is grating enough to sink the two scenes that needed to land emotionally. Sean and Amanda call the first and third acts a mess and single out the CGI multiverse sequence as a disaster; Sean says it's 'like a bear ate a can of paint and then threw up.' All three land on Michael Keaton's older Batman and Sasha Calle's Supergirl as the highlights, and on the digitally revived Christopher Reeve cameo as shameless but effective.

Multiverse fatigue and the DCU's stitched-together problem

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse 2023

Seen back-to-back with The Flash on a double bill that did The Flash no favors. Amanda liked it less than the first film once the multiversal stakes got, in her word, 'muddied' in the last fifteen minutes, though both found it visually stunning.

Spider-Man: No Way Home 2021

Sean's comparison point for The Flash's parade of legacy cameos, the same trick Sony already ran minus the emotional stakes.

Everything Everywhere All at Once 2022

Named as part of the same multiversal glut The Flash is arriving into.

X-Men: Days of Future Past 2014

Van's gold standard for a speedster set piece; Evan Peters' Quicksilver rescue is the two-minute sequence he says basically made a Flash movie unnecessary.

X-Men: Apocalypse 2016

Quicksilver's second, higher-stakes rescue, which Van says The Flash's baby-filled opening is trying to top.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 2023

Van's comparison for The Flash's cheap emotional manipulation: the otter with the little clamped hands got him the same way the Christopher Reeve cameo does.

Man of Steel 2013

Where Michael Shannon's General Zod, restored here as the villain, first showed up.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice 2016

Introduces Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Thomas Wayne; everyone in the room says they saw his Flashpoint-universe Batman turn coming the moment the nightmare-sequence time jump happened.

The Batman 2022

Prompts a detour into how Robert Pattinson's explicitly separate-universe Batman changed the way Van watches recastings: purposeful multiverse management instead of an accident of behind-the-scenes rebooting.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods 2023

Van couldn't finish it 'even for employment'; both needle the DCEU's habit of shoehorning in a pointless Wonder Woman cameo, which this one also does.

Prey 2022

Van's example of legacy-franchise storytelling actually working: a Predator movie he connected to because it foregrounded character over the alien.

Avengers: Endgame 2019

Van's thesis for why the multiverse trick doesn't work here: Endgame's ensemble battle earns its weight because ten years of movies built those relationships brick by brick in one continuous universe, not stitched together after the fact like The Flash.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier 2014

Sean's example of the grounded, single-universe scale The Flash abandons by inflating the stakes to a multiverse.

Spider-Man 3 2007

Van's shorthand for why Sony rebooted the franchise in the first place: 'they fucked up Spider-Man 3.'

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 2014

The other reason Sony started over: 'the Amazing Spider-Man 2 wasn't any good, and we signed a deal with Marvel.'

A rough May before The Flash

The Little Mermaid 2023

Amanda's 'struggles' with it, and Sean's on-air meltdown reviewing it, get blamed for a genuinely dark stretch of programming leading into this episode.

Aladdin 2019

Amanda didn't like it, part of a pattern with Disney's live-action remakes she calls the most pointless endeavor in movies outside of making money.

The Lion King 2019

Called a 'goddamn abomination,' not a knock on the cast, just the format.

Also mentioned raised along the way

In passing Back to the FutureSynecdoche, New YorkThe SavagesWild Wild WestEnemyPredatorPredator 2PredatorsAlien vs. PredatorBatmanWatchmenInterstellarThe Dark Knight RisesThe Matrix ReloadedThe Bourne Identity

Coming soon Blue BeetleAquaman and the Lost Kingdom

Next week Asteroid City

Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads

TV DevsFringeLoki

Comics Kingdom Come

Books Spare (Prince Harry's memoir)

Unproduced Superman Lives

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