Question: What does it take to take down the fever of multiverse-related stories?

Short answer: The Flash. Long answer: Also, The Flash.

The Ezra Miller starrer, goofy, fake and ultimately inconsequential take on the infamous Flashpoint story-arc from comics — where Barry Allen, aka The Flash wrecks reality by going back in time to save his mother from death — was hailed as the imminent big bang that ends the controversial DC film continuity started by Zack Snyder.

For the first series of sequences — with Flash saving falling babies from a crumbling hospital in Gotham, and appearances of Ben Affleck’s Batman and Jeremy Iron’s Alfred (and an eye-catching cameo) – makes one pine for Snyderverse’s continuation.

That feeling lasts 15 minutes tops, when Barry, unknowingly breaches space and time through his connection with the speedforce — the cosmic force that fuels The Flash’s powers and literally pushes space and time forward in every dimension.

Barry indulges in the idea of saving his mother, despite knowing fully well about the butterfly effect — the theory about squashing a butterfly in the past and changing the entire future — while the director, Andy Muschietti and the studio, indulge in any and every inanity in the book in a bid to make this film ‘fun’. The indulgence works, until the pressure of delivering a hit overpowers the fun.

The film, written by Christina Hodson (DC’s Birds of Prey and the Transformers spin-off Bumblebee) — with story credits to John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein and Joby Harold — even in its sincerity and seriousness, is a mockery of time-loops and elements of fanservice.

The Flash is a mockery of time-loops and elements of fanservice

Every aspect of the story is seeped in silliness, be it the returning version of 1989’s Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton, mostly used as a nostalgic prop — for me, Keaton ended his run with Batman Returns), the invasion of Zod, or the plethora of cameos in the multiverse.

The silliness is amplified by the bargain-basement quality of the visual effects — which is unthinkable, considering the hundreds of millions spent on them — and then, again amplified tenfold with Miller’s stuttering, inept performance as Barry.

Where once he was good in Snyder’s films, here, he is simply insufferable — actually, make that doubly-so, since there are two versions of Flashes in the film (as one may have seen in the trailers).

Miller, Muschietti, the writers and the studio executives might have known about the unbearable nature of the character because, during one long stretch of the film, Barry cannot stand his own self.

Unlike their corporate rivals Marvel — who seem to be having a bad go at the movies as well recently — and their Spiderverse animated films, which respects, rejoices and rejuvenates the concept of parallel universe stories, The Flash only uses them as gimmicks.

By the climax, no character (including Sasha Calle’s sincere turn as Supergirl), or event matters — not because Snyder’s stories and characters are getting a do-over, but because this ‘lighter take’ may just be how DC’s films will look like in the foreseeable future.

I hope I’m very wrong because, in our reality, one can’t go back to the past to erase the history of movies — both from reality and from the mind — after watching them.

Released by Warner Bros and HKC (in Pakistan), The Flash is rated U in Pakistan

Published in Dawn, ICON, June 25th, 2023