Seeing The Flash in theatres, finally

June 15, 2023

Seeing The Flash in theatres, finally

Thursday night previews of The Flash in Virginia: audience at about 80% capacity in a "total immersion theatre" (meaning pumped in odors added to the visual and audio spectacle). Crowd liked the film, the first 40% of the screening held rapt attention with a lot of laughter at the jokes, film lagged during the second-to-third act transition with audience talking to themselves and some kids wandering around, but by the wind-up of the confrontation with Zod and the denouement the crowd was back to a rapt attention (except for some overtaxed infants who were crying, and to add to the effectiveness of the movie with a section of the audience, there was some sobbing going on at the pathos of the tale). At the conclusion there was some clapping for the movie, and probably 80% of the existing audience stayed through the long credit scroll to see the Aquaman-Flash tidbit at the end.

First opinion on The Flash movie: It is a lot better than it deserves to be for a film that's been shot, reshot and cut this way and that by arriving-and-departing directors (and cast members). Nine years is a lifetime (or multiple lifetimes) in movie-production years, and that The Flash isn't the hopeless, glossy muddle that so many other superhero films have been of late is a surprise.

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