DC/WB Confirm ''The Flash: Flashpoint'' Movie

[ranger_scout]

It sounds like Warner Bros. and DC liked what Marvel and Sony did with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. They want to acknowledge that there are many different universes with Batman, but they are doing it in a Flash movie.

[ZariusTwo]

Jim Lee sure wasn't kidding when he said they'd be loads more Batman in DC's future...now it takes more Batman to get this hot/cold project PIPING hot

[Leo656]

Which sounds fine on paper but ultimately isn't the best way to "properly introduce" the Flash character for movie audiences. It's way too "big" for a debut film, and it's going to hurt any future films they do by leaving them nowhere to go with Flash.

If you lead right out of the gate with the whole bit about zipping across alternate timelines and dimensions in the Very First Story, that leaves the impression that's ALL the guy does, and thus every single Flash movie will have to be some riff on "Days of Future Past" just because THIS one is; anything "smaller" will feel like a waste of time.

Flash isn't all-about time travel, that's merely a Very Bad Plot Device used by very lazy writers who don't know what else to do with the character. At some point it was forgotten that he actually did, y'know, OTHER stuff, too. How much time of this movie are we gonna get to spend on Barry as a guy? As a police scientist? His relationship with Iris? Are we gonna get ANY of that? We still don't know much of anything about this Flash after JL, so are we gonna LEARN anything? Or is it all gonna be "Guy In A Red Suit Takes Us On A Giant DC Easter Egg Hunt"? I can't lie, I feel like it's the latter and that sounds dreadful. Like, absolutely awful.

Believe me, I 100% understand the business reasoning behind the creative decisions on this Flash movie project. I just think every one of those decisions is wrong, and is typical of WB not knowing how to do ANYTHING except "What're Those Other Guys Doing? Let's do that.... except worse."

I really, really love Flash and I always wanted a Flash movie. But I can't lie, all of this sounds desperate as hell. I think it'll be a fun Easter Egg hunt but just might be a terrible movie.

We'll see.

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

Originally Posted by Leo656

I'm always happy to get more of my favorite Batman, but this project just feels like it's over-stuffed. Less of a "Flash" movie and more of a "Guidebook to the DC Multiverse" where people watching can play "Spot The Cameo". And that's not what I wanted or hoped would be the first-ever Flash movie.

Originally Posted by Leo656

Flash isn't all-about time travel, that's merely a Very Bad Plot Device used by very lazy writers who don't know what else to do with the character. At some point it was forgotten that he actually did, y'know, OTHER stuff, too. How much time of this movie are we gonna get to spend on Barry as a guy? As a police scientist? His relationship with Iris? Are we gonna get ANY of that? We still don't know much of anything about this Flash after JL, so are we gonna LEARN anything? Or is it all gonna be "Guy In A Red Suit Takes Us On A Giant DC Easter Egg Hunt"? I can't lie, I feel like it's the latter and that sounds dreadful. Like, absolutely awful.

It is indeed desperate as hell. The worse this Flash movie sounds, the more sure I am that it will actually be made.

A decent intro movie featuring Barry Allen, a complete supporting cast, and some good villains like the Rogues? Too logical.

One Flash, TWO Batmans, and as many temporal paradoxes as we can cram into a 2 hour film? Greenlight that sucker!

The only logical excuse I can find for NOT doing a standard Flash debut movie is Warner Brothers thinks nobody needs a debut movie because everyone is familiar with him from the CW show.

[Leo656]

I agree that's the logic, it's just not very... "logical". It's a known and proven fact that more people will go watch a movie than will ever watch the same thing on TV. There's a way of thinking among some people that movies carry a "credibility" that TV shows lack, for whatever reason. I don't fully understand it, and I find it to be a very ignorant way of looking at things, but it's true nonetheless. "If ____ was so good, how come it isn't a movie by now?" just happens to be the way a lot of people think, and a movie of something like "Flash" would likely do more to encourage people who've never seen the character before to work backwards in checking out the TV show and comics, than it would in reverse. People going in "cold" to a movie generally enjoy it more, while people who already know a character from comics and/or TV are generally counting the inconsistencies too much to be able to have as much "pure fun" with it.

So, WB's "method" is flawed, here. Most of the movie audience wouldn't have watched the TV show, and the ones who DID watch the show already hate Ezra's Flash and wish it was the TV guy, so they're already not going to be fair to the movie anyways. The audience who knows what's going on isn't going to be as engaged with the movie, and people coming into Flash as a character for the first time won't know what the hell is going on.

Sigh.

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

Originally Posted by Leo656

I agree that's the logic, it's just not very... "logical". It's a known and proven fact that more people will go watch a movie than will ever watch the same thing on TV. There's a way of thinking among some people that movies carry a "credibility" that TV shows lack, for whatever reason. I don't fully understand it, and I find it to be a very ignorant way of looking at things, but it's true nonetheless. "If ____ was so good, how come it isn't a movie by now?" just happens to be the way a lot of people think, and a movie of something like "Flash" would likely do more to encourage people who've never seen the character before to work backwards in checking out the TV show and comics, than it would in reverse. People going in "cold" to a movie generally enjoy it more, while people who already know a character from comics and/or TV are generally counting the inconsistencies too much to be able to have as much "pure fun" with it.

So, WB's "method" is flawed, here. Most of the movie audience wouldn't have watched the TV show, and the ones who DID watch the show already hate Ezra's Flash and wish it was the TV guy, so they're already not going to be fair to the movie anyways. The audience who knows what's going on isn't going to be as engaged with the movie, and people coming into Flash as a character for the first time won't know what the hell is going on.

Sigh.

You said it.

On the plus side, though, Wonder Woman in the '80s! Where everything is cool and groovy! Fighting THE MAN!

[AquaParade]

Awesome. Don't care much about seeing him in a cameo role but I love that the door seems open to the possibility of him directing his own HBO mini-series or something.

[ranger_scout]

Here's what Andy Muschietti said about Affleck's return. He also said that Keaton's part will indeed be "substantial".

Originally Posted by Andy Muschietti

He's a very substantial part of the emotional impact of the movie. The interaction and relationship between Barry and Affleck?s Wayne will bring an emotional level that we haven?t seen before. It's Barry's movie, it's Barry's story, but their characters are more related than we think. They both lost their mothers to murder, and that's one of the emotional vessels of the movie. That's where the Affleck Batman kicks in.

This movie is a bit of a hinge in the sense that it presents a story that implies a unified universe where all the cinematic iterations that we've seen before are valid, Muschietti said. It's inclusive in the sense that it is saying all that you've seen exists, and everything that you will see exists, in the same unified multiverse.

https://ew.com/movies/ben-affleck-ba...e-flash-movie/

[AquaParade]

Even though Keaton was my first live-action Batman and I love him in the role, I've spent way more time with Bale's Batman. He's my Batman. If they can enlist him in this multiverse someday, I'd love to see it. He is doing an MCU film, so he seems to be in the phase of his career where he is down to have some light fun and get paid. Could happen one day.

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

I think the multiverse concept is one of the worst tropes for comic book movies to adopt. It's just an excuse for lazy storytelling.

"Hey, remember that Batman you loved? You still love him! You'll even watch a Flash movie for him!"

"Hey, remember how much you loved Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart in X-Men? Here they are again, now with more Jennifer Lawrence!"

[Shark_Blade]

Yes the best Batman is returning! Batfleck is coming back!

[sdp]

multiverse is really the only way for DC to salvage their cinematic universe without having to wait a decade and start all over, I'm glad they're doing it.

[Sumac]

So Batman multiverse, eh? Gimme that! Right into my veins!

[AquaParade]

Originally Posted by CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy

I think the multiverse concept is one of the worst tropes for comic book movies to adopt. It's just an excuse for lazy storytelling.

"Hey, remember that Batman you loved? You still love him! You'll even watch a Flash movie for him!"

"Hey, remember how much you loved Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart in X-Men? Here they are again, now with more Jennifer Lawrence!"

I think it will be exciting to see and create a lot of hype and joyous moments, but we'll all be dead sick of it three years from now.

[sdp]

Think they can get Christian Bale back?

[CyberCubed]

Kinda meh, movies don't need to be in a mutiverse, you can just reboot a movie line and nobody cares.

Nobody sat there when Batman Begins came out in 2005 thinking it had to be connected to any of the 90's Batman movies. People knew right away it was a reboot, so why do they have to do the same thing here?

The upcoming Matt Reeves Batman reboot doesn't need to be connected to any of the Synderverse stuff, multiverse or not.

[AquaParade]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

Kinda meh, movies don't need to be in a mutiverse, you can just reboot a movie line and nobody cares.

Nobody sat there when Batman Begins came out in 2005 thinking it had to be connected to any of the 90's Batman movies. People knew right away it was a reboot, so why do they have to do the same thing here?

The upcoming Matt Reeves Batman reboot doesn't need to be connected to any of the Synderverse stuff, multiverse or not.

I don't need the multiverse to interact but I like that it's there to justify multiple interpretations. I'm stoked that I'm getting three versions of Batman coming my way without each having to take their turn over 20 years.

[ZariusTwo]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

Kinda meh, movies don't need to be in a mutiverse, you can just reboot a movie line and nobody cares.

Nobody sat there when Batman Begins came out in 2005 thinking it had to be connected to any of the 90's Batman movies. People knew right away it was a reboot, so why do they have to do the same thing here?

The upcoming Matt Reeves Batman reboot doesn't need to be connected to any of the Synderverse stuff, multiverse or not.

Multiverses are very much a part of DC's fabric, and the last time a movie used the concept (Into the Spider-Verse), it won oscars. This is what's making bank right now.

[sdp]

A bunch of people tried to explain to me how Begins was a prequel to 1989 despite it not being, it took the sequel until people stopped. I'm a nerd for multiverses, now if used as a cheap way to not explain continuity like say Power Rangers is doing lately then that sucks, but in this case we're getting this nerd wishlist of having a live action DC multiverse, all really created by accident when DC ****ed up their cinematic universe but they can't reboot it since some of the movies were successful. We now have this movie to kinda explain away some of the changes and instead of doing it without explanation we get a fanservice explanation.

And since Ezra Miller appeared in the TV live action Crisis crossover, it basically means every DC show is in continuity with everything and I f-cking love it. I always had the multiverse head canon in my head for the live action and animated shows and it's now becoming a reality all because of how incompetent DC was.

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by sdp

all really created by accident when WB ****ed up their cinematic universe

it's now becoming a reality all because of how incompetent WB was.

Fixed. Give credit/blame where it's due and appropriate, DC and WB are not interchangeable. They're completely separate companies under the same corporate banner, but it's unfair to lay blame on a blameless party.

It might be "easier" to just say "DC" or "Marvel" when we really mean "WB" and "Disney", but that isn't honest and paints a false narrative. E.g., people saying "DC sucks" when what they really mean is "WB sucks", and oh boy do they ever.

Sorry to be pedantic, just something that always bothers me.