A Hungry Man Runs Back

[setsuled]

I felt like seeing one of the new multiverse movies last night so I opted for 2023's The Flash. Why? The infamy, maybe. The cloud of doom hovering over the production. Maybe, in the end, it's just because I was excited to see Michael Keaton as Batman again. It's not a bad movie. Sometimes it's really effective. And I was a little fascinated by its tone of delirious, slightly vicious, despair.

A lot of that tone comes from Ezra Miller, the actor playing Barry Allen, aka the Flash. Undoubtedly one of the reasons the film's performed so poorly at the box office is Miller's private life. Incidents of assault and simply obnoxious behaviour paint a vivid picture of an intensely volatile person, running away from self-reflection at the speed of Barry Allen by making grand, narcissistic claims, including claiming to be Jesus. I do believe this comes through in Miller's performance.



I still haven't seen Justice League, neither the Whedon nor Snyder cut, and I have no desire to. So, aside from a cameo on Peacemaker and a brief shot in Batman v Superman, this is the first time I've seen Miller in the role. Their (Miller uses they/them pronouns) interpretation of Barry as a hyperactive, neurotic genius is coloured by skittery, nervous energy. They play two versions of Barry and the younger version comes off as particularly abrasive. Arguably, Robert Downey, Jr. aimed for something similarly immature and narcissistic, but it goes to show what a unique balance of charm and callowness Downey Jr. has that it works so well. Miller doesn't give a bad performance but he has no charm at all, which helps give the film a nightmarish quality. We're strapped in with someone we don't really want to be strapped in with, and they don't really want to be strapped in with themselves either--the pronoun choice is starting to seem really appropriate here. The chemistry between the two Barrys, as the elder finds the younger to be a bit annoying, is not like Smeagol and Gollum except in that it is two wretched people tied together and tortured by their mutual wretchedness.



Michael Keaton is in great shape and seems to be in top form. I loved hearing Danny Elfman's Batman theme again, which I still think of as the theme for the character, and seeing shots of Wayne Manor with Cocteau-esque decor reminiscent of the Burton films. I was ten when that first movie came out and it probably had the biggest impact of any superhero film on me, even though now it's not even my favourite Batman film. Burton's decision to craft atmosphere around Batman, to make his gear and costume seem truly threatening, was a revelation for a superhero movie at that time. I went home with fantasies of donning a cowl myself and fighting crime. It's a movie with a thoroughly fantastic aesthetic that also impressed me with the reality of the character and world. The Flash achieves nothing remotely like that but Keaton is fantastic. I absolutely believed him as the character last seen in Batman Returns, now augmented by a more flexible costume and better fight choreography. There's a warmth and vitality in his performance that stands in contrast to the nervous gloom otherwise dominating the film. In fact, the contrast kind of augments the sense of doom. The sense of contemplation and responsibility in Keaton's performance throws Miller's intense neediness into sharp relief--that neediness, by the way, is nicely punctuated by the character's constant need to consume calories for the massive amounts of energy he requires to run like he does.

Ben Affleck's Batman also actually provides a good contrast of stability to Barry. Affleck has said he feels this is his best work as the character and, from what little I've seen, I agree. I still know Affleck primarily from Kevin Smith movies so it still feels a little like seeing the proprietor of Fashionably Male. But there's a weariness and kindness about him here that works nicely.



There's a trio of protagonists including Keaton's Batman, Miller's Flash, and Sasha Calle's Supergirl. I really liked Calle's performance as well as her hair, makeup, and costume. I don't think it would be wise to build a movie around her alone but as a supporting character she's great. When General Zod (Michael Shannon) casually reveals the child she came to Earth to protect had died in infancy, I sympathised with her scream of rage and very much wanted her to beat the shit out of Zod, which she proceeded to do. As a side-note, it's kind of interesting how consistently the DCEU, before James Gunn, was concerned with women as mother figures.



The whole plot of the film is put into motion when Barry decides to go back in time and prevent his mother's murder, which occurred when he was a child. The heart of the film, then, is basically "City on the Edge of Forever" as Barry ultimately discovers the death of his mother is necessary to prevent a worse timeline from occurring. Of course, "City on the Edge of Forever", the classic Star Trek episode written by Harlan Ellison, remains by far a superior work, not the least because Ellison kept the logic of time travel simple and consistent, which The Flash does not.



The Flash had notoriously been in production for many years before its release and, as recently as January of this year, new scenes were being added. An entirely new ending was shot in January at the behest of James Gunn. Most people have been talking about it in terms of the amusing cameo it entails but, if you think about it a bit deeper, the scene implies something much darker than the previously shot endings. It actually makes the sacrifices, which have too often seemed meaningless in multiverse movies, actually have meaning in The Flash.

In a way, it's appropriate that the film has done so poorly at the box office. The film's lingering shots of dead actors, summoned for cgi cameos, are witnessed by sparsely populated theatres, ghosts paraded before only mildly interested spectators. With the upcoming Indiana Jones film promising to be another flop, 2023 could be remembered as a year when the fond dreams of 30 or 40 years ago stumbled beneath the weight of debilitating age to be abandoned by the hungry, insatiable herd. As studios stumble over themselves to serve gluttonous buffets of nostalgia, perhaps it's inevitable their efforts would ultimately just remind us that dying is a cold and very lonely process.

Twitter Sonnet #1711

The world belongs beneath a cleaning check.
For after dry, the wetter chance descends.
A lollipop excused the waxy deck.
A cluttered line beneath the clock depends.
Disliking rain distinguished cats at night.
The chubby haunches, haunters hunt the lane.
Bethink your arm before you think to fight.
A life's the price for dancers passing vain.
The lightning's running start was soft and slow.
Debated voices charged the errant throat.
Excessive time was crunched in motion glow.
Exhuming capes became of lesser note.
With wobbly glitter pens, the night was jammed.
With indecisive bulls, the dream was spammed.