moviebob1

New Big Picture: "FLASHBACKWARD - PART I"

Added 2023-07-17 20:28:15 +0000 UTC

Fairly or not, "THE FLASH" is at last the movie that gets to bomb for the sins of the decade-long disaster that was the rest of the DC Extended Universe - a run of bad decisions and worse movies that you'd think even I would have run out of ways to look at. But while it's not even close to the worst crime Warner Bros has managed to commit against their own intellectual property, "THE FLASH actually managed to be bad in a wholly unexpected way: Taking the most tired trend of the moment (flexing "the multiverse" trope as winking allegory for the storytelling process and relation between creator and audience) and dishing out an angry, regressive, reactionary fable that seems to be raging AGAINST young people, ambition, change, progress or even the concept of hope itself. Bizarre enough for a superhero movie seemingly targeted to a young(ish) audience, but almost cosmically absurd given that the timing of its release effectively positions it as a standing-argument against "ACROSS THE SPIDERVERSE;" a much better-received film in the same genre telling a very similar story but making the exact opposite case. Here, we examine the strange confluence of two huge pop-tentpoles that somehow ended up in philosophical conflict by happenstance... and (begin) trying to unravel why ONE of them is so eager to tell it's audience to slow down, shut up and stop asking for anything better.