The Flash (2023)

Our Review

A movie about rewriting timelines that was itself rewritten a hundred ways behind the scenes, and every rewrite shows on screen. Ezra Miller plays two versions of Barry Allen, and whatever you make of the actor’s well documented legal troubles, the dual performance commits: the younger Barry is written as an insufferable twitch the film never quite gets under control, and some of that noise is the point.

The multiverse pitch: Barry saves his mother, breaks the timeline, and lands in a continuity where Michael Keaton’s Batman is long retired and General Zod is about to raze the planet again. Keaton’s return justifies the whole project almost by himself, from the first shot of the suit vault to a battle sequence built entirely around his 1989 theme, and Sasha Calle’s Supergirl burns bright in maybe six lines of dialogue.

Everything around them is a disaster of uncanny valley effects, including a cameo parade that resurrected dead actors via CGI and drew rightful disgust. The third act is noise, the ending resets everything to set up a universe nobody would build, and the film tanked so hard it buried the whole slate. Our score: 5/10. For Keaton loyalists only, and even you should manage expectations.