Film Review : "the Flash"

 

To credit this movie as being one of the best DC movies is not that big of a compliment, so I think I should say this is one of the best  live action comic book movies we have seen since , the last Spider-man film which is very fair as it offers the kind of fan service that No Way Home did. I have seen online a few reviews trying to say this movie is the problem with comic book movies, and those are the kind of journalists, who do not know anything about comic books to begin with. Frist off I have no horse in this race, as I am not a DC, my favorite DC character is Swamp Thing. Not sure the Flash would make my top 10 DC characters list. I do have an appreciation for his lore, and watched the CW show., which I think overall gets a better feel for the character, but this movie comes much closer than other versions of the character we have seen on the big screen . 

The film explores a wider range of the Flash's powers. Ezra Miller, the  actor who defied cancellation, plays Barry Allen with the kind of charisma that served as comic relief for Justice League. For this movie you can not really say this is their best movie that is not a Bat-man movie, as it is pretty much a Bat-Man movie, and Super-Girl had more screen time than expected. Keaton reprised his role well, and the new Super-Girl worked for me, though would it have killed them to dye her hair blond? Tonally you will see people hating on this for the same things they loved about Deadpool. It does humor much better than any other recent D/C Movie ...the Suicide Squad included. I have also heard quips about the CGI, which was way better than anything in the Black Panther movies or Wonder-Woman, but did not hear the complaints from those people in regards to those movies, so I am suspect of them, 

When compared to the popular CW take on the Flash, the bigger budget allows for a better representation of his powers and what makes the Flash tick, where the CW show is more about what makes Barry Allen tick, I think there is space for both. It seems comic book movies are leaning into Multiverses pretty heavy lately, well DC did it first as they beat Marvel to the punch before Marvel cranked up their Ultimate Universe where Miles Morales came from. The story takes from parts of popular DC sagas and blend them well and offering fan service to an extent that might go above and beyond what Marvel has done, and if the story got convoluted well DC stories have always felt like action figures were just thrown on the bed into two page fight scenes, and this movie makes more sense of it and uses a bit of restraint to tell a better DC story than we saw in Black Adam or any of the Shazam movies, this movie serves as a great bridge from the Synderverse into Gunn's vision of the future and hopefully fans will say fuck the press and give this film the shot it deserves, all this is coming from a Marvel guy with no horse in the race, but a deep appreciation for where they went here. 

Film Review : "Justice League"

This Review may contain Spoilers- 

The tone of "Justice League"  matched the tone of D/C's comic output, though this is also the reason that I read Marvel not D/C. That is not to say there are not many D/C characters I like...my favorites being Super-man, Aqua-man, Swamp Thing,Hawk-man and Martian Man Hunter. The problem the comic books have is there is tons of senseless fight with page after page of people piling in with nothing to connect you to the humanity of the character. This is why Bat-man tends to work best on screen as he is just a human not so godlike you can not relate. This movie was not as abysmal as I though it might be going into it, the end befell the same problem Wonder -Woman face where it devolved into a mindless splash of CGI being vomited onto the screen.

The number one problem with the movie seemed to take place in post-production as the timing was off due to terrible editing the part that should have been condensed drug on and the films coolest moments were too short live. The chemistry of the characters forming this team was lacking because the only character who felt comfortable in the role was Henry's Super-man. He has now had three films to grow into it. Hands down the movies best moment was when he kicked the shit out Wonder-woman. The fights with Steppenwolfe who was an awful choice for a villain, all felt the same. You really didn't care about the outcome, they never felt like they were in peril aside from Super-man's outburst. Cy-borg as a character was as flat as it got. The actor who might have been hindered more than helped by the excessive CGI , did very little to compensate for this. Aqua-man might have been the most disappointing, as he was like a dumb bro rather than regal. The Flash was ok but felt like he was trying to hard, with both Bat-man and Wonder-Woman's characters feeling like the took a step backwards in their development. The big crawling Bat-mobile thing had to be one of the film's worst moments.

I am unsure where they added more Wonder-woman and could not really tell where they did the re-shoots, so maybe in doing so they lost the story they were trying to tell. The film might have been better served with the impostor Super-men showing up to take the throne, like Eradicator, though they would have been even more outclassed. I did like the little glimpse of a Green Lantern at the beginning, and wondered why was he omitted. Another female on the team like Hawk-Woman might have made sense . It's not like they were trying to really develop anyone aside from the big three and solo movies from Aqua-man and Cy-borg are bound to be huge flops. Mera's three seconds on screen was cool but pointless. It's clear unless it's Bat-man, Super-man or Wonder-woman, D/C can never touch Marvel on screen. 

Bat-Man vs Superman

Marvel continues to kick D/C's ass when it comes to the big screen. D/C often works better on Television because on a show like Gotham or Smallville, they break things down into smaller bit sized portions to focus on the character's rather than the big picture. When the scope gets too big it's hard for the often more mythic heroes of D/C to be anything more than card board cut outs. Bat-man has worked on screen time and time again because they are able to make a emotional connection with Bruce Wayne while the alien messiah is harder to make down to earth. When this is touched upon in Batman Vs Super-man the film is working best.  So lets look at what makes the movie and then see what breaks it.

Makes the Movie

Affleck is better at being Bat-man than we expected.

Breaks the movie

He is worse at being Bruce Wayne, this gives us more of an emotional connection with Super-man, who comes across as being the mis-understood under dog in all of this.

Makes the Movie

Wonder-man, despite being a little on the scrawny side compared to the iconic Linda Carter, Gadot's Woman is one of the best things this movie has going. Perhaps it's because if we don't count the Lego Movie,  we have been through six Super-Man movies, Smallville and Lois& Clark, along with seven Bat-man movies  and Gotham . So we are hungrier to see Diana on screen. Lets not get into the others as Cyborg might have gotten more screen time than Aqua-Man and the Flash got more than both. As Wonder-woman she does just as the trailer suggests, but we do get to see her bracelets and lasso in action.

Breaks the Movie

The best part was too condensed, they could have given us more and less Lois.

Makes the Movie

The action scenes with Super-man were much better than Man of Steel.  When he lets Bat-man dent his armored fist on him it was great.

Breaks the Movie

The big showdown. Super-man is not dumb. If this is his first encounter with kryptonite, then it's effect might be  a surprise, but after he see what happens when he breathes it in then would he not hold his breath when his super-hearing picks up Bat-man cocking the trigger of the gun? His reflexes make him not only faster than a speeding bullet but fast enough to have the gun up Bat-man's ass before he pulls the trigger. So that did not work for me.

Makes the movie-

I liked the messiah approach to Super-man and Lex Luthor's line about "if God is All-Powerful then he can't be all good, and if he is good than he can't be all-powerful" as well as the line where he says Clark Kent and mentions all the other names of gods .

Breaks the Movie

The worst depiction of Lex Luthor ever, he comes across more like the Joker than it seems Jared Leto's version will. Luthor is a megalomaniac not a maniac. He should come across more like Kevin Spacey's character in "House of Cards" at his most human and be more cold and calculating, but wait in this movie that would blur the lines between Luthor and Bruce Wayne.

I think I fell asleep for a couple minutes building up to the big show down but caught the rest of the movie, was a little confused why Super-man didn't use his hearing to find this mother if he didn't want to fight Bat-man. Bruce Wayne was a jerk so he did need the beating he got. Could have stood for less Bruce Wayne, the scene with Bat-man taking out the Russians was good enough for my Bat-man fix. Once the big throw down with the troll from Lord of the Rings that they decided to make Doomsday took place I thought was funny that Bat-man just got out of the way since there was little he could do. The end was no surprise because you know what is going to happen to Super-man when Doomsday shows up, you can paint him as a messiah figure with out him becoming a martyr.

I didn't like Nolan's too realistic take on the D/C Universe in the movies that followed Bat-man Begins, but this tried to hard to rub a coat of grit on everything and missed what makes the Avengers/ Marvel movies fun as it took itself too seriously. Even though Civil War and Dr. Strange are more than likely going to be the last of the great Marvel movies and bring the curve of the comic genre back down in it's wake, much like the fate of the Universal Monster trend met it's end with the Abott  and Costello films until Hammer breathed new life into the undead, D/C is pretty much still born at this point.