Thinking about The Flash movie

Pairing The Flash with the cancelled Batgirl movie (which supposedly cost $60 to $90 million dollars, depending upon who is talking about it, becoming for Warners a tax-write-off and an unrealized and unreleasable film) there's a sense that there was chaos in the Warners offices. With the disappointment of the crashing box office for their stable of characters beginning with Batman V Superman failing to reach a billion dollars, it just didn't get much better though there were surprises like Aquaman hitting over 1 billion and the first Suicide Squad making a clear profit despite getting completely slagged by critics.

But the main "tentpole" movies were supposed to make it to the magical upper $100 millions and $1 billion numbers, after all Nolan's last two Dark Knight movies both crossed into the billion-dollar club, and in fact Dark Knight Rises would have probably racked up significantly higher numbers if the beginning of the run had not included a guy dudded up like the Joker and even claiming to the police he was The Joker, shooting 82 people, killing 12, in a theater in Aurora, Colorado that was premiering the Nolan film.

Films flop for many reasons and they succeed for various reasons and only some of the reasons are about quality. The Flash is a much better film that it deserves to be since it is the patched-together remains of multiple directors, a stop and go production (it was actually reported to have been cancelled in May 2018) and filming went on long enough for actors to come and go, to age, with the film unintentionally becoming a container for Warners/DC to put all their hope (and anxiety, I suspect) into one final movie to come out of the "Snyderverse" era and to finally clean up at the theatres. It probably seemed simple at the time: The Flash has got three Batmen (visually more) in it, and Batman has been DC's cash-cow for quite awhile.

But, no matter how hard the hypnotist swings the shiny object back in forth in front of the audience, in the end they didn't make a Batman movie, they made an Ezra Miller Flash movie, and though it morphed into a Flash/Batman movie in the preview trailers, if we're going to look at the film and make up alternative titles, it could just as well be called Ezra Miller Times Two plus Flash and Some Batmen. And a little bit of Wonder Woman and Kara the Supergirl.

The problem is that as a brand name, Ezra Miller is now attached to a series of bizarre scandals and an ongoing legal process that probably killed a lot of the interest that would have otherwise equalled some box office. Besides that, there's the decline in superhero movie box office success across the board (recent releases Quantumania and Shazam II both failed to hit their needed numbers to break even, so The Flash certainly isn't the only film missing the mark with audiences).

The hype on The Flash was strong, with ads all over the internet, and it just didn't make a difference. It is as if decisions to not see the film had been finalized in many heads over the past years, and when the moment came to "pull the trigger" masses of people did so and stayed away "in droves".

Related: Seeing The Flash in theatres, finally June 15, 2023

Related: The tanking of The Flash and what does it mean?

Related:Superhero movies on the ropes

Related:"Superhero fatigue" is back

The Flash reaction - June 15, 2023

The Flash movie reviews are starting to appear, and they run the gamut from "very good" to "soulless, heartless, corporate garbage" (Twitter account Max Priestly).

‘The Flash’ is the most exciting DC superhero movie in years – Boston.com MSN

‘The Flash’ Director Got a “Confidence Boost” When Tom Cruise Called to Praise His Film – Hollywood Reporter MSN

"I have seen the Flash, was it the absolute triumph some critics make it out to be? No. Is it better than Black Adam, Shazam II or .. .Quantumania. Yeah. ....The Batmen are the best thing in it. It's just another multiverse movie and I'm over it. ... might be the most expensive movie ever made..." – You Tube Nerdrotic

DC Needs a Win – but 'The Flash' Faces a Fight at the Box Office – The Wrap MSN

Redeeming Ezra Miller – Arkansas Online

Review: Mission Impossible 7: Dead Reckoning

Review: Asteroid City

Review: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny