Movie Review: The Flash

All science fiction/action movies that involve time travel take the risk of creating a timeline and/or a storyline that has a high chance of becoming ridiculous very quickly. The case of the new Marvel movie “The Flash” is about a Marvel character who can move at the speed of light and can also run faster than the speed of light (not possible within any natural law of Physics). The Flash got his incredible speed from a combination of being struck by lightning while being drenched in toxic chemicals. An off the wall crazy idea that I thought should have come from a better explanation.

When the Flash, played by actor Ezra Miller, runs faster than the speed of light, he has the ability to go back in time. This is the part of this story that does not work because the time travel is way overdone and mostly makes no sense. The time travel within this story brings back superheroes from other times in history, including Christopher Reeve, and George Reeves as Superman, using archive footage, and even Ben Affleck, Michael Keaton (the original Batman from 1989), and Adam West, the original Television Batman from the 1960s. The main message within this movie about time travel and superheroes are that if you make even one tiny change in what has happened in the past, the entire universe can come to an end, with possibly no way of fixing this corruption of time. In this story, due to a tiny event involving a can of tomato sauce, Barry “The Flash’s” mother is killed and his father is falsely arrested for her murder. Undoing this injustice is most of the plot of this movie.

This movie includes the addition of a new movie Super Girl, played by newcomer Sasha Calle, who makes her first appearance about 75% into this story. As with all Marvel action movies like this one, the special effects are once again spectacular with the same idea of CGI first, story refinement is always less important.

Overall the acting is good and there are some genuine moments of humor, but not quite enough to save this film for a recommendation. I agree with the low 66% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and do not recommend The Flash.