The phenomenon of Dueling Movies – two films, with similar premises, released in quick succession – is hardly new. The practice goes back to Hollywood’s Golden Age, with the 1934 films The Rise of Catherine the Great and The Scarlett Empress, both about the same Russian monarch. You may remember the notable showdowns from the late-1990s: Dante’s Peak versus Volcano, or Antz versus A Bug’s Life or (most famously) Deep Impact versus Armageddon. Given the extended development process of a major motion picture, these matchups were probably coincidental. Still, when viewed side by side, one film underscored and clarified the successes or failures of the other.
Here we are, déjà vu all over again. This time, the duel is between DC and Marvel. The Flash, which zips into theaters with maximum anticipation, comes hot on the heels of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (officially, a Sony Pictures release) a couple weeks ago. It’s a confrontation that goes beyond the usual combat between major comics brands and their respective status in the moviegoing culture. Both films concern the multiverse, a once-fresh narrative trope turned cliché (one that Marvel will milk until Avengers: Secret Wars is released in 2027). In the last few years, byzantine rules concerning divergent timelines and parallel realms became the lingua franca of too many blockbusters. Most of the time, these stories felt slightly less exciting than an undressed bowl of spaghetti (to borrow a metaphor from The Flash). To be sure, there are outliers. The excellent Everything Everywhere All at Once bucked the trend and garnered top awards, including Best Picture, at the Oscars. And, once the dust of recency bias settles, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse may emerge a stone-cold masterpiece.
The Flash, on the other hand, is a middling superhero extravaganza in the mold of recent, dreary Doctor Strange and Ant-Man installments. Directed by Andy Muschietti and written by Christina Hodson, the film chases a particular pop-art greatness, one that lies far out of reach. It follows Barry Allen (Ezra Miller, more on them later), a forensic scientist who gains superhuman speed after being struck by lightning during an experiment gone wrong. He’s recently discovered the ability to run fast enough to travel through time. This means he could potentially thwart childhood trauma, namely saving his mother (the wonderful Maribel Verdú) from murder, by rocketing back as her savior. After bouncing this brilliant plan off Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck), Barry is told in no uncertain terms – don’t do it, dummy. Absolutely not. Altering the past causes reverberating repercussions. Remember The Butterfly Effect? No way. Nope. All around, a terrible idea!
So: Barry promptly sprints to the past to save his mother, thus altering space-time. In a shocking turn of events, chaos ensues. Who could’ve possibly known?
The Flash achieves moments of genuine fun during its aerodynamic first third. It’s hard to screw up Back to the Future-style temporal mayhem (i.e., change one thing, fix the change, fix that fix, rinse and repeat). But The Flash stalls once familiar figures – like an aged Batman, whom we know and love, and other super-beings – are dutifully trotted out with zero sense of wonder. My press screening was packed with fans ready to gush. A few hoots and claps followed some of The Flash’s bombshell reveals (there are many, and they are joyless). But even their reactions brought to mind Meg Ryan’s sandwich orgasm in When Harry Met Sally: performative yet hollow.
The Flash versus Across the Spider-Verse, as a Dueling Movies battle, isn’t quite a David and Goliath situation (after all, both are behemoths). Instead, The Flash is the Salieri to Across the Spider-Verse’s Mozart. The former haplessly zaps about, to and fro, in the cold shadow of true artistic genius. By the time we get those ugly CGI planets colliding in some muddy green-screen netherworld, the mind has fully numbed and entered a protective Zen state. And then there’s the problem of Ezra Miller, whose foul personal, and potentially criminal, antics further darken this C-grade project. The Flash concludes as a mirthless parade, one of exhumations and sad nostalgia trips. For a movie about a racer hero, it’s weirdly inert, like a corner streetlight. In other words, a stationary object someone might swing away from with elegance and glee.
Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
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