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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 8 months

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Is It Really That Bad?

I don’t think I’ve ever felt like the universe actively conspired against something until I witnessed the production of The Flash.

Since 1991 there have been quite a few proposals for Flash movies, but they never really got off the ground for whatever reason. Following Barry’s debut in Justice League, a movie finally was announced before multiple delays due to rewrites, in particular to cut Ray Fisher’s Cyborg from the story after he went public about the awful shit he had to deal with under Joss Whedon. Things seemed hopeless until It director Andy Muschietti came onboard, at which point production on the film finally started to go smoothly. Sure, there were rumblings about Ezra Miller having episodes on set, but that’s just typical actor nonsense, right? Surely it couldn’t get any worse!

Look, I’m here to review a movie so I’ll keep this brief: Miller committed crimes. Lots of crimes. So many, in fact, you’d think they were method acting for the role of Reverse-Flash. The thing is, despite all of this, Miller was basically given a slap on the wrist by the studio, being forbidden from doing promos and press tours (oh no! The horror!). And as if the situation wasn’t already a fucking mess, while Miller’s crime spree was ongoing WB canned the nearly-complete Batgirl movie that featured Michael Keaton and Academy Award-winning actor Brendan Fraser while simultaneously inflating The Flash’s budget to nearly $300 million with reshoots. It seems baffling to cancel a movie that was nearly done and that people were marginally interested in for the sake of a movie that people were losing interest in quickly due to its star’s erratic behavior, but remember: Leslie Grace isn’t white, while Ezra Miller is. WB is never beating those racism allegations at this rate.

With a normal movie, this is where the nonsense ends. BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

This film was meant to smooth out the clusterfuck continuity of the “Snyderverse” with a soft reboot, with Henry Cavill filming a end-of-movie cameo alongside Miller, Gal Gadot, Keaton, and Supergirl’s actress Sasha Calle to establish the new direction of DC going forward. Unfortunately, the hierarchy of power at DC changed, and Gunn shot that down. While this meant the ending would probably not get people confused with regards to upcoming projects, it also meant the movie wasn’t going to really have any closure for the old universe. Affleck, Cavill, and who knows who else are just gone, and the future is just a big old question mark. At least Aquaman is safe, maybe?

Literally none of this news was very reassuring to fans. Nothing above is any good for a film’s perception to audiences under normal circumstances, but here we have all this news coming to a fanbase that genuinely did not want this fucking movie. The DCEU was already divisive when the film was announced, and Miller’s portrayal of Barry doubly so; the fact it was adapting Flashpoint was seen as lazy and uninspired, not to mention its not really a story that lets Flash stand on his own merits, making it seem more like this movie was just an excuse to reboot; it was a multiverse story in a day and age with an abundance of such stories, and it was releasing around the same time as Across the Spider-Verse to boot; and Gunn’s reboot plans meant this story was likely a narrative dead end. This movie had an uphill battle the likes of which haven’t been seen since Sisyphus.

But much like that mythological figure, the boulder came crashing right back down when the numbers came in. The movie would likely need to gross $500 million at minimum to break even after factoring in the reshoots and advertising, and it only managed half of that with a pitiful opening weekend followed by a massive 73% drop. It now sits alongside films like The Lone Ranger and Mortal Engines as one of the most expensive bombs in history, to the point where WB would have saved more money by cancelling it like they did with Batgirl. And despite glowing praise from the likes of Tom Cruise and Stephen King, it received middling reviews from mainstream critics.

Audiences haven’t been any less mixed, but considering most people weren’t particularly excited or invested in this film’s existence this is basically a miracle. Sure, there’s plenty of people out there saying this is the “worst comic book movie ever” like they do every time a new superhero movie drops, but even more people are saying they enjoyed the film… although even they tend to have some severe criticisms.

Even though I knew most of what was going to happen in the movie going in, I wasn’t really sure what to expect given everything surrounding the movie. But you know me, I’m willing to give almost any movie a chance, and bombs this big don’t happen every day, so even before it was voted on I was trying to make time to check it out. So sit down, microwave yourself a snack—

—and watch as I try and determine if The Flash is really that bad.

THE GOOD

The biggest shock of this film is that Ezra Miller is actually really good here.

Their Barry is still a bit of a goofball, but he’s clearly matured as a character since his precious appearances. They managed to make him much more charming and likable than he ever was, and this gets compounded when he interacts with the younger Barry and gets confronted with how annoying he was before. I think young Barry could have come off as really insufferable, but the fact he annoys everyone around him and also ends up maturing makes him a lot more endearing.

Miller really kills it with the emotional moments, particularly the ending encounter with Barry’s mom and the scene where old Barry snaps at young Barry. The film is really carried by the dramatic, emotional moments far more than any of the superheroics, and Miller manages to sell a lot of it very well. It was to the point where I started thinking, “I really wouldn’t mind if they stick around.” Then a scene where Barry says the Justice League has no real psychiatric help or where his younger self ends up repeatedly exposing himself in public by accident happens, and then I remembered, “Oh yeah, aren’t they a mentally unwell criminal?”

Unsurprisingly, Michael Keaton absolutely kills it in his role as Batman, but much more shockingly is that Ben Affleck's brief return as Bruce is pretty great as well. I always thought Affleck, much like Henry Cavill, was desperately trying to give a great performance while weighed down by bad writing; here, he gets an actual poignant scene where he talks to Barry about how dwelling on tragedies isn't the way to do things, and you should try and move forward instead. It shows he really could have been great if given better material to work with.

Okay, enough being nice to Affleck, I wanna talk about Keaton again. As much as the marketing hyped him up and as much as he is obviously the most blatant fanservice possible, it's still so cool to see him in the suit again. I am not immune to nostalgia pandering, and as corny as it could have been from anyone else, the zoom into his face when he says The Line really is a highlight of the movie. Keaton has a great deal of charisma, and while there are issues with Batman they aren't his fault at all. Most impressively, he doesn't steal the show away from Miller like I thought he would; he enhances the scenes he's in without stealing the spotlight completely from their performance. I feel like this is a problem in a lot of movies like this, where the lead gets overshadowed by a hyped up character, but somehow The Flash of all things managed to avoid this.

And as bad as the cameos could get, this movie gave two of the greatest cameos ever put to film with the return of the GOAT George Clooney Batman and, best of all, Nicolas Cage Superman from the unmade Superman Lives, fighting a giant spider to the death just as God intended. I am not immune to the charms of Nicolas Cage.

Overall, this movie presents us with a solid story, plenty of fun moments, great character dynamics, and more... for the first two acts, anyway.

THE BAD

Once this movie hits the third act, it basically just loses any and all focus and becomes a big dumb video game-esque battle against Zod and his forces in a bland desert landscape. While both Barrys admittedly get some pretty cool moments sprinkled in and Keaton’s Batman’s second death is actually a well done emotional moment, Supergirl ends up being completely wasted, with her sole role being to angrily scream and then die repeatedly.

This actually highlights the problem with Kara in this movie: She’s basically nothing but a plot device and has zero personality, and a good 80% of her dialogue is just angry screaming. As hot as Sasha Calle is and how much she obviously wants to make Kara compelling, she is given so little to work with that her efforts end up being fruitless. She does nothing of consequence after helping Barry get his powers back, and could be replaced or written out of the story and it would still make perfect sense.

Zod’s inclusion is pretty baffling as well, especially since they chose to water down one of the only good things from Man of Steel into a boring, generic doomsday villain. You can really feel that poor Michael Shannon would rather be doing anything else, and his bored performance just highlights how poorly implemented Zod is in the plot. Like, the Fladh has some of the best and most colorful DC villains in his rogues gallery, one’s that are often overlooked because Batman’s villains sell more toys. Why not highlight some of them instead of taking a Superman villain and stripping him of all personality to the point the actor clearly has no passion for the role? Cutting Zod would make cutting Supergirl even easier, and then two of the biggest problems with the movie are gone!

The third act does manage to mostly rerail itself once it goes back to Barry trying to unfuck the timeline, with only a disgustingly egregious bit of fanservice that I’ll discuss in the next section hampering it. But at the end, despite the incredibly based George Clooney cameo, there’s just so many unresolved and unanswered questions, with the biggest one being who killed Barry’s mom? Considering her death is what kickstarted the whole plot, you’d think this might come up, but it never does. A lot of other things come up and get dropped too, like whatever was going on with Batman in the opening, but maybe I’m just crazy for wanting elements introduced in a plot to have significance beyond just being there to be cool.

Even beyond that, there’s the fact that Supergirl and Keaton!Batman’s final fates are never really resolved, something that apparently wasn’t a problem in early versions of the film since they showed up alive in the final scene. As much as I loved seeing Clooney, I think trading him for getting some closure for Keaton and Calle would have been more satisfying.

Everyone harps on how bad the CGI is—and it absolutely is, don’t get me wrong—but for the most part I found it endearingly bad. Like the opening with the CGI babies? That’s too goofy for me to hate. But once the movie revolves into bland grey and black CGI bad guys and creepy deepfake celebrity cameos, I stop being quite so forgiving.

Oh, and on the subject of cameos, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one as pointless and unfunny as Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman showing up out of nowhere (complete with theme music) to make Bruce and Barry look like dumb assholes. Imagine thinking this was a good idea.

THE UGLY

The biggest point of contention surrounding this movie is the CGI necromancy used in the aforementioned cameo clusterfuck from the climax, which gives us George Reeve, Christopher Reeves, and Adam West posthumously reprising their DC roles in non-speaking appearances (there’s archived audio from West, but his cameo isn't really focused on to the point you can barely tell it's him) where they just stand there before the camera swoops around like in that Saul Goodman gif.

I think this is one of the very few times where I actually think the outrage is mostly justified. To be clear, I’m not getting mad on behalf of dead celebrities I never knew, and as long as the filmmakers went through the proper channels and the estates of these stars were properly compensated, I don’t have any legal objections. All of my distaste is coming from a subjective, moral standpoint.

I have never liked this CGI necromancy ever since Rogue One popularized it. I find it really gross and distasteful, and in most cases I think finding a lookalike actor would be preferable than playing Weekend at Bernie’s with a computer generated facsimile of a dead person. In The Flash, I understand having lookalikes would diminish the wow factor of the crossover, but there was an extremely easy workaround to this: Have cameos from all the living DC stars.

Was Brandon Routh not available to put on the Superman tights? Would it have been so bad to let Grant Gustin pop in for a cameo? They acknowledge Helen Slater, so why not Melissa Benoist? Hell, if you want to reference bad, campy movies, have Shaq show up as Steel or Josh Brolin pop in as Jonah Hex! Or even Ryan Reynolds, I’d bet he’d be down to return if you gave him a real suit this time!

Like there’s just no excuse for ghoulishly parading around dead guys when there’s so many alive guys you could use instead. People can complain all they want about the fanservice and cameos in the past few Spider-Man films, but at least they only had returning characters played by living actors. And when this movie already has the niche, out-there Nic Cage Superman cameo, proving they were down to do things as out there and inoffensively creative as reference unmade movies, it’s really just inexcusable. It doesn’t ruin the movie for me, but it makes me lose a bit of respect for the people who okayed this over less offensive cameo ideas.

IS IT REALLY THAT BAD?

To my surprise, this film actually turned out to be pretty good. Not “great,” not “the best superhero movie ever,” but genuinely mostly good and enjoyable.

My opinion is that the movie is good in spite of itself. The third act is truly a hot mess, the stupid desert battle against Zod is awful and boring, Supergirl is depressingly pointless, so many plot points are just dropped or otherwise forgotten, and the CGI necromancy is nothing short of ghoulish. But the rest of the movie is truly a lot of fun. Barry and his younger self have a fun dynamic, Keaton really manages to take what little he’s given and show that he’s still got it as Batman, the Clooney and Cage cameos were delightful, and most importantly the emotional moments are actually effective.

I think with a bit more polish this film could have actually lived up to the hype around it. There is a great movie in here being suffocated by fanservice and CGI but still managing to get a few gasps of air regardless. I think if they’d kept the conflict more grounded or made Reverse-Flash the primary antagonist, things might have turned out better.

I think its score is pretty fair. My friend @huyh172 described this as “the worst good DC movie,” and it’s an assessment I fully agree with. It’s not as good as Aquaman, Wonder Woman, The Suicide Squad, the Snyder Cut, or Shazam!, and it’s definitely not as bad as stuff like Wonder Woman 1984 or Josstice League. It’s also a bit too enjoyable to be mid. It’s just a really solid movie held back from true greatness by some damning flaws… and really, that makes it the perfect capstone to the "Snyderverse," a cinematic universe that had some solid movies but was held back from greatness by incredibly bad ones.

#Is It Really that bad?#IIRTB #review #movie review #The Flash #The Flash 2023 #Ezra Miller #andy muschietti #DC #DCEU #Snyderverse #Michael Keaton #Batman #Sasha Calle #Supergirl #Barry Allen #superhero movie

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 11 days

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Is It Really That Bad?

“The hierarchy of power in the DC universe is about to change.”

So said Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson many, many times in the lead up to the debut of his superhero vehicle Black Adam. And, at the time, it sounded like he may have been telling the truth. Johnson was at a point in his career where he’d gained a bit of respect as an actor after his early career was plagued by boring garbage like Doom and campy cheese like The Scorpion King; he now had showcased some comedic acting prowess in films like Moana and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, and in the former film he also got to show a bit of emotion when needed. Also in the case of the former, he was clearly very passionate about playing Maui, and it seemed like he was passionate about portraying Captain Mar—Er, SHAZAM’S archenemy as well, seeing as he’d been attached to a movie about the guy since about 2007 and was now able to swing his Hollywood clout around to push it out of development hell. And while the DCEU was on a bit of shaky ground thanks to Wonder Woman 1984 being infamously bad even for a film shat out during COVID, James Gunn’s one-two punch of critically acclaimed cult classic The Suicide Squad and the fantastic spin-off series Peacemaker gave people hope that DC was on the rise and we were about to be given some of the best Johnson we’d ever experienced.

Unfortunately, that’s just not how things panned out. Black Adam ended up being yet another in a string of bombs for DC, and this wouldn’t be so noteworthy if not for a certain cameo.

Leaked online ahead of the film’s premier, people got super hyped that Henry Cavill was finally back as Superman after faceless teases of the character in Peacemaker and Shazam! No more jerking the audience around, this was full confirmation Cavill was back, and he’d be fighting Adam (a longstanding dream of Johnson’s)! The audience was absolutely ecstatic, and whatever else could be said about the movie everyone was hopeful about the future of DC!

But let’s be real here: A couple of good films notwithstanding, the DCEU was a disease-ridden old pooch, and it had to be put out of its misery with a Gunn. James Gunn was announced to be taking over the DC movie universe and ushering in a continuity reboot to unfuck the messy and convoluted universe, one of the exceedingly rare good decisions WB has made in the past decade. But such a change in the hierarchy of power was not something that was good for this film (or any of the forthcoming DC films), and not helping matters were some of Johnson’s more egotistical decisions coming to light, such as vetoing an appearance by Zachary Levi and forcing in the aforementioned Supernan cameo.

The result was yet another bomb on DC’s hands, losing an estimated $100 million due to its budget ballooning. But this didn’t have the issues that the other recents bombs had; it didn’t have to compete with a Sonic movie like Birds of Prey, it didn’t have to deal with having an abysmal predecessor that scared audiences away like The Suicide Squad, and it wasn’t an astonishingly awful piece of dogshit with horrendous writing starring and directed by two phenomenally terrible human beings like Wonder Woman 1984. It failed because Johnson got too big for his britches and couldn’t just change course to deliver a Shazam sequel and instead tried to swing his Hollywood superstar dick around when the writing was on the wall for the franchise.

But now that some time has passed and we’re on our way to seeing what Gunn’s new take on DC will be, let’s take a look at the death rattle of the DCEU and see if it’s really that bad.

THE GOOD

Dwayne Johnson’s genuine passion for Adam honestly shines through. Like this isn’t really a character who is breaking new ground or reinventing the wheel or anything, but within the framework of the story the film is telling Johnson does an exceptional job bringing the character to life and manages to inject quality acting into the performance. The emotional backstory moments land, the humor lands, it’s just a Rock-solid superhero movie performance. And while he doesn’t end up feeling very antiheroic overall, he rips the bad guy in half with his bare hands while shooting off a one-liner, a moment so fucking cool it makes me a lot more lenient with some of the film’s flaws.

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Of course, as much as he’d like to be the best thing in the movie, Johnson really can’t hold a candle to Pierce Brosnan as Dr. Fate. You can always count on a former Bond actor to deliver, and he adds a sense of class to the proceedings, especially in his interactions with Aldis Hodge’s Hawkman. Hodge is a bit more of a mixed bag, but when he’s bouncing off of Brosnan he really shines. Seriously, Brosnan is just the MVP of this movie. This might be his best late-career role since Mamma Mia!

All of the action in the movie is great, even by superhero movie standards. That’s not to say everything is amazingly plot relevant, but all of the fight scenes are exceptionally well done and exciting. When two dudes are punching the shit out of each other or Adam is vaporizing thugs, it’s a lot of dumb fun. Going off of the previous point, they actually manage to utilize Fate's powers in a lot of fun and interesting ways that make him a delight to watch in his few battles, and Hawkman is no slouch being a winged dude who can have a midair battle with Adam.

Also, there’s just something really nice and refreshing about seeing a Middle Eastern country being liberated from its oppressors by a powerful guardian who wants them free from tyranny. It feels very topical even though it pretty obviously wasn’t intentional at all. If you wanted to be extremely charitable, you could call this a pro-Palestine response to Wonder Woman 1984 and its blatant Islamophobia. Do I personally believe that? Uh, no. Does it really make the film any better if it is the case? Er...

THE BAD

I think one of the things that absolutely wounds this film is its steadfast refusal to engage with the source material it’s adapting. Shazam laid the groundwork for this movie, setting up Adam’s appearance down the road, and then this movie doesn’t even mention Billy Batson at all. We get a cameo from Superman, sure, but Superman isn’t Adam’s archenemy is he? And this issue is apparently directly traceable to the Big Johnson himself. There’s this idea that he has it that he can never look stupid in movies or lose big battles, and I don’t necessarily believe that’s an actual thing, but it feels really true here. How’re you gonna be a badass anti-hero and get your ass whupped by a teenager? It’s a dumb thing to worry about when you’re playing a character known for it though, and it’s even dumber to veto a cameo of that character just because you wanna be a big tough guy who only fights macho men like Superman—and that’s exactly what Johnson used his clout to do. It honestly makes me wonder why he wanted to play a villain most famous for going up against the original Captain Marvel if he didn’t want to engage with the character at all.

Maybe this would be easier to swallow if we had a villain who wasn’t a forgettable CGI sack of shit, but sadly as badass a concept as SABBAC the demonic anti-Shazam sounds on paper this is all he ends up amounting to. His human form, Ishmael, is even worse and blander, though I do find it funny Marwan Kenzari has twice now performed as an underwhelming villain who turned into a big red CGI demon turd.

Also, as cool as Dr. Fate and Hawkman are, the other members of the Justice Society are so utterly forgettable and superfluous to the plot that it’s easy to forget they’re even there most of the time. I can’t remember a single thing of note they did. It’s a shame too, since they have interesting powers and designs, but they are just so unimportant to what’s going on that it’s hard to care about them. And it’s not even the heroes who are dull and forgettable; the Kandaq people we follow throughout the film are just really forgettable as well. The fact only a handful of characters will make any impression on you in a film with this chunky runtime is really troubling.

But the biggest crime of the film is just that it plays everything way too safe. This is strictly formula, plain and simple, hitting all the beats of your generic origin story for a hero with just a teeny tiny bit more brutality because they’re trying to sell Adam as a badass anti-hero. Except, no, it doesn’t really work because he’s neutered by the PG-13 rating for the most part and he never really comes off as morally gray or unscrupulous. This man ain’t a badass, he’s a badbutt. The point is, you’ve seen this exact story play out a million times before—and usually better—to the point where you could probably guess certain lines of dialogue before they happen and you’ll likely figure out where the plot’s going ages ahead of the characters.

IS IT REALLY THAT BAD?

Black Adam is pretty much the definition of “mid.” It’s not an awful film. It’s not a great film. It’s not a film that really brings about much of a strong emotional response no matter what way you slice it. But it’s not a wholly unpleasant viewing experience either. It’s just… fine. It’s an okay movie.

But “okay” is not what DC needed, and it’s certainly not what Johnson wanted for this character he was so passionate about that he stuck with him for almost twenty years and used his massive star power he’d accumulated to get it made when he could have easily swung that power into making some dramatic passion project. He wanted this to be big, he wanted to be the next big anti-hero, he wanted to fight Superman so goddamn bad… But it’s ultimately this ego that held the film back. This is a dude who is supposed to fight Shazam, but Johnson was dead set on him fighting the other buff flying super dude; if he really wanted to fight Superman so bad, why not push to play a Superman villain? He has proven time and time again he’s funny, so why not make him Bizarro? Or get really crazy and cast him as Lex Luthor, bald and occasionally buff super genius archenemy of Superman? There are so many dudes who actually fight Superman that Johnson could pull off and yet he chose to forcefully repurpose another hero’s villain instead of shifting gears a bit. The whole film just ends up feeling like a massive monument to his ego and hubris as opposed to the passion project it obviously was, and he unfortunately only has himself to blame there.

Ultimately, while I don’t think Black Adam is responsible for the DCEU dying—this film series was on life support since Dawn of Justice—it definitely is emblematic of every single problem that brought down the series. It just genuinely doesn’t understand what fans of the character would want to see, it features a bland and underwhelming villain only there for some cool action scenes, and it sets up so many things that would never be delivered upon. Sure, there’s plenty to like here, but why bother when you can watch something else with these same good qualities and actually have it be more than decent background noise? You wanna see some great Pierce Brosnan acting in an action movie? I have great news! He made three James Bond movies worth watching, and also Die Another Day! You want a good comic book anti-hero movie? Go watch Dredd, The Suicide Squad, or even Punisher: War Zone. Dead set on a movie where a buff hero with your typical flying brick powers fights some evil demons? Just go watch Shazam!

I hope this movie failing so hard and leaving so much egg on Johnson’s face humbles him a bit and gets him to check his ego in the future, because I do genuinely enjoy the guy’s movies. He’s got good comedic chops, he’s pretty charming when he wants to be, and he’s great at elevating batshit material if given the chance as Southland Tales’ unorthodox use of him goes to show. I’d like to see him go back to doing weirder, smaller stuff for a while and maybe build back confidence in his acting career again because right now he’s almost as big a joke as the Scorpion King CGI in The Mummy Returns. He’s just not respected as much as he was a few years ago, and this overhyped bomb is what did it.

I’d say the score here is just about right. This really isn’t a bad movie, but it’s not anything special either; it’s just some mindless entertainment to put on in the background while you do something else. It genuinely is a shame, because this could have been a great movie that ushered in a fantastic new age for the DCEU, with Johnson saving the franchise after the past blunders of Snyder almost tanked it… But he came too little, too late and his movie ended up paying the price. And while it’s not fair to lay all the blame on Black Adam, it’s hard to feel too sorry when it does next to nothing to justify its existence beyond a scant few memes, and even in that regard it is outdone by far worse (and thus more entertaining) films like Morbius and Madame Web. This movie is, sadly, just nothing. It is a nothing film that elicits no strong feelings and you’ll likely forget it soon after watching it. It won’t be an unpleasant experience to view, but I’d be shocked if it leaves anything beyond the most minimal impact on you. It is the dictionary definition of “mid.”

#is it really that bad?#IIRTB #review #movie review #Black Adam #DCEU #Dwayne Johnson #DC #DC comics #comic book movie #superhero movie #Youtube

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