The Four Color Media Monitor

To nobody's surprise, Variety announced that a comics adaptation starring an actor with a disturbing criminal record is thudding at the box office this week, with results even worse than expected:

“It’s a perhaps unavoidable but terrible case of timing,” says a source at a rival studio. “Audiences don’t feel like they have to invest two hours of their life because it’s not going to matter going forward.”

Indeed, things have not been going well. The production budgets and likely marketing spends for these four films will cost between $1.1 billion and $1.2 billion in total, according to experts outside the studio. But “Shazam! 2” has already bombed, earning a feeble $133 million globally. And “The Flash” just opened to a mere $55 million in the U.S. and Canada, grossing $135.7 million worldwide as of June 19 — well under expectations, and nowhere near what a film of this caliber and cost needs to approach breaking even.

Yep, that's even lower than previously expected, which was $60 million or so. Seriously, can you truly expect anybody sensible to plunk their hard-earned money into this newest train wreck starring somebody with an alarming legal record like Miller's got, produced by a studio that doesn't deserve to own DC, based on their lenience towards offenders? They're correct the timing is terrible. But if the studio spokesperson commenting is suggesting this flop is only the result of belonging to a vision that's being jettisoned - that being what Zack Snyder set up with his films - it's peanuts compared to the on-screen embarrassment wearing the Flash costume, who's known as Ezra Miller. Hopefully, this'll be his last movie, since his legal record should make him toxic for casting going forward. And hopefully, his talent agency will quit representing him too.

I looked over some of the negative reviews that have been pouring in, like this one from Midwest Film Journal, which tells where the whole plot of this movie was adapted from:

This film picks up a little while after Zack Snyder’s Justice League (here explicitly referenced as the canonical version of that story). Barry Allen (Miller) is a weaselly little goon of a man who spends all his time acting awkward and trying to save his convicted murderer father, Henry (Ron Livingston), from a lifetime in jail. See, back when Barry was a kid, his father was accused of, and imprisoned for, the murder of his mother. We never learn what compelling evidence was used to put his father away. All we know is that her death ruined Barry’s life and he dedicated the rest of his days to becoming a crime scene investigator to find the evidence and exonerate his father. He’s no hero.

The addition of a dead mother in Barry’s past came about in the late 2000s under writer Geoff Johns, who played a pivotal role in reviving the publisher’s brand during that decade’s nascent superhero craze. Johns tends to give his heroes dead parents as motivation. It was controversial at the time and mostly just setup for a franchise-spanning alternate timeline series called Flashpoint, which saw Barry go back in time to save his mother only to cause a cataclysmic dystopia to develop. It was always well-known that Johns had film-industry aspirations, and his storylines often played like pitches for big-budget adaptations (not necessarily a knock against him). Naturally, Flashpoint has since been translated into an animated movie, a major arc on the Flash CW show, a novel and now a tentpole movie. Not bad, I guess.

Oh, but it is bad. It's based on the now insufferable cliche that an optimistic angle is unacceptable, and everything must be changed to dark and grisly, even in-story, which was the excuse Johns exploited for jerry-building the premise he used for pointlessly reviving Barry almost 15 years ago. A premise which, say what you will, was truly disgusting, and how can you build a sense of humor organically going forward with that kind of drivel of a setup? I'm sorry, but it's just no use. Not improving on what was established at the time is that, IIRC, about a year after Barry was resurrected, he and Iris West broke up. Whether they reunited later I have no clear knowledge, nor do I care. Stuff like this is what reduced these classic creations to a pale shadow of themselves for the sake of a PC cliche agenda. And if Johns cared more about movie ambitions, I'm sorry, but that's exactly the problem with him. Because it all came at the comics' expense, and it's clear at this point both Barry and Hal Jordan were only revived for commercial reasons, not moral ones.

And also from Pajiba:

In this altered timeline, almost none of the Justice League superheroes exist, except for a washed-up Bruce Wayne played by Michael Keaton. Without Superman, there is no one to stop General Zod. Thus, the two Barrys seek out Bruce Wayne’s help, and together with Supergirl, they confront Zod.

Spoiler Alert:

They fail. Two Flashes, a Supergirl, and a Batman are no match for Zod, no matter how many times Barry attempts to alter the timeline (It’s hard not to read something into the fact that Supergirl failed where Superman succeeded, but I’ll try and let that go (Deadline reported on Friday that The Flash audience was 74 percent male. I wonder why). Eventually, Barry realizes that the only way to save the planet is to undo the change he made to save his mother’s life. He must let his mother go. After going back in time to do so, he returns to the present timeline, where his father — wrongly convicted of killing Barry’s mother — wins his appeal, thanks to another change Barry made in the past, which he didn’t expect to affect the future. However, it does, and in the film’s final scene, when Barry reunites with his old friend Bruce Wayne, Batman is played by George Clooney.

Honestly, the way this "screenplay" was scribbled sounds awfully...sexist. No joke. It comes off making it look like the dad's case matters, but not the mom's. Like she should just be left to rot in the grave. And I find that revolting. Let us be clear. There were character deaths in the past that worked, because merit-based writing was prioritized, and that's why Gwen Stacy's death in Spider-Man is acceptable enough. But the way these newer variations are written are in severely poor taste, and let's not forget how J. Michael Stranczynski corrupted whatever worked in Spider-Man back in 1973 when he penned Sins Past. Though DC's efforts to mimic such tactics are easily worse, because they've gone for shock value in the worst ways possible, and Flash: Rebirth was one of the results of this atrocious path.

In a related topic, Men's Health wrote a list of Flash comics from over the years that they recommend for reading as the movie starring an utter embarrassment of an actor is being released to theaters. There are a few good classics listed at first, but then, they predictably degenerate into recommending the worst post-2000, and at the start, they even sugarcoat the film issues:

Ironic as it may seem, The Flash was slow coming to the silver screen. One of the oldest and most consistently popular superheroes in all of comics, The Flash has enjoyed plenty of popularity outside of comic books. A mainstay on the beloved Super Friends and Justice League cartoons, The Flash had a cult hit live-action show in 1990 and a long-running live-action show on the CW network, which just ended its ninth and final season. When Ezra Miller took up the role for 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and 2017’s Justice League, the speedy superhero was set to finally get his own big-budget solo movie.

Five years later, The Flash is finally coming to theaters, slowed but not stopped by director changes, Miller’s legal troubles, and a full universe redirection. It seems to have all worked out for the best, as the time-travel shenanigans of Miller’s Barry Allen allow the DC Universe to reboot, inaugurating a new cinematic universe under the direction of James Gunn and Peter Safran. But first, Barry has to fix a universe without General Zod, returning to the world of 2013’s Man of Steel, this time with the help of both Ben Affleck and Michael Keaton as Batman, as well as Sasha Calle as Supergirl.

Boy, what unintentional comedy gold they turned out! Even though, based on the seriousness of Miller's offenses like aggravated assault, that's why it's not a laughing matter at all. Now, about those ill-advised picks they make, here's Rogue War as an example:

For the first several decades of his existence, The Flash secretly had one of comics’ best collections of bad guys, as varied and terrifying as the villains who fight Batman or Spider-Man. But it wasn’t until writer Geoff Johns took over the book that The Flash’s baddies got their due. Working with artists such as Howard Porter, Johns emphasized the blue-collar nature of Wally’s world, where he and villains such as Captain Cold, the Weather Wizard, and the Trickster maintained mutual respect, even as they represented opposite sides of the law.

With the Rogue War, Johns and Porter explode that status quo. When an ideological divide tears the city’s Rogues apart, Wally has to keep his Linda safe while preventing his enemies from destroy the city he’s sworn to protect. The end of Geoff Johns' run writing Wally (but not The Flash, as we’ll see in a moment), “Rogue” War captures everything great about the hero, from his commitment to his family to his ability to treat his antagonists as human beings who deserve respect, even the murderous evil speedster Zoom.

Even if the irritating variation Johns wrote up based on the original Reverse-Flash from the Silver Age didn't actually kill anybody at that time, the whole notion the antagonists are human and deserve respect no matter the severity of their offenses is disturbing, and this demonstrates perfectly in a nutshell what's gone wrong with morale in the modern age. I recall a story from around 2004 where it was implied the Mirror Master sexually assaulted a woman before escaping through teleportation technology, and if we're to view the subject in that context, that's why to suggest the antagonists deserve to be viewed as human is insulting in the extreme. What's this magazine's writers thinking? Gives menfolk a bad name. Next is what they say about 2009's Rebirth:

While Marv Wolfman always assumed Barry Allen would come back immediately, Wally West became so popular that the powers that be decided to let the old speedster rest. That is until the high-concept crossover Final Crisis, in which Flashes Wally and Jay Garrick encounter Barry living in the Speed Force, the magical energy that gives all speedsters their powers. After that brief cameo, writer Geoff Johns and artist Ethan Van Sciver fleshed out Barry Allen’s proper return to the DC Universe.

Most of Flash: Rebirth explains how Barry survived his apparent sacrifice in Crisis on Infinite Earths and his relationship with the Speed Force. However, the most enduring aspect of the story is the way it rewrites Barry’s history. Throughout the Silver Age, Barry didn’t have much of a backstory, as writers simply assumed that people didn’t need a tragic event to become superheroes. Johns changes that by revealing that Barry was inspired to do good after his father was unjustly prisoned for murdering his mother, a crime actually committed by his arch-nemesis the Reverse Flash. This revision has become the true origin of Barry Allen, repeated not only in the comics that followed but also in the Flash TV show and movie.

And this too crosses a line from insulting to downright offensive. "True origin"? My foot. All it does is ensure I'll stay far away from these brand new publications, which rely almost entirely on PC beliefs that all superheroes must literally endure tragedy to become heroes, even though not every Marvel hero ever went through this kind of setup, and even those who did like Spider-Man didn't have their storylines colored by darkness at nearly every step. Why, the magazine's practically making the Silver Age writers sound like they were dummies. No surprise when you consider how little respect there actually is these days for nostalgia. They next highlight Flashpoint:

It’s hard to think of a comic book story more infamous than Flashpoint. Originally, Geoff Johns and artist Andy Kubert intended Flashpoint to be a stand-alone Flash story, about the unintended consequences of Barry’s decision to go back in time and rescue his mother. But when DC Editorial decided that it was time for yet another universe-wide reboot, they made The Flash the culprit. As a result, Barry’s trip to the past creates not just problems for himself, but a radically different DC Universe, one in which Thomas Wayne became Batman after the death of his young son Bruce, and in which an emaciated Superman lives hidden in a government lab. Even when Barry finds a way back to the main universe, he finds it completely changed, launching the New 52 continuity.

For many reasons, the New 52 was a flop, and DC’s continuity has been largely reset to its pre-Flashpoint status quo. But the failed expectations placed upon the series by editorial shouldn’t take away from what remains a pretty exciting Flash story. Forced to encounter a world made much worse by his actions, Barry gains a greater awareness of the cost of his actions. In the face of a world better for him, but not for anyone else, Barry sacrifices the life he wants—a sacrifice almost as great as the one he made in Crisis on Infinite Earths. So potent is the Flashpoint story that it has been reused not only in the Flash TV show, but it’s also the major inspiration for The Flash movie.

Interesting they admit New 52 wasn't successful, yet fail to acknowledge former editor/publisher Dan DiDio was part of the problem, nor do they admit even the zygote of the issue's just as awful as what came next; why do they think the misfortunes happened to begin with? They also brought up a Doomsday Clock-related tale called The Button:

While Flashpoint may have been a very popular Flash story, it did nothing to help Barry’s reputation. In the public consciousness, Barry changed from a hero who makes the ultimate sacrifice to a selfish guy who messed up the universe. That has changed some with the truly terrible series Doomsday Clock, which not only tried to serve as a sequel to seminal superhero deconstruction Watchmen, but also revealed that the true catalyst for the New 52 reboot world was not Barry Allen, but rather Doctor Manhattan.

Mercifully, Barry was spared participation in Doomsday Clock, taking a backseat to Superman fighting Doctor Manhattan and Batman teaming with Rorschach. But Barry did play a role in the four-part lead-in story “The Button,” written by Joshua Williamson and Tom King and drawn by Howard Porter and Jason Fabok. On a plot level, “The Button” deals with Batman and Flash teaming up to investigate a mysterious bloody smiley face button, something familiar to any reader of Watchmen. However, the book also carries a strong emotional core, restoring the dignity to Barry’s reality-shaking decision in Flashpoint and putting the blame for the New 52 where it really belongs: DC editorial.

Somehow, I have a hard time believing, despite this, that those who produced the material really wants to blame the editors for the mess they caused, since if they did, wouldn't they have made an effort to get DiDio ousted much sooner? And look who one of the scribes was - King, the same man who put Wally into a horrific situation in the Heroes in Crisis miniseries. As a result, it's hard to swallow the idea anyone involved recognized editorial was guilty. And if Johns was trying to mend the damage he first wrought with Rebirth and Flashpoint, it came much too late.

As a result of this movie's gloomy forecast, there may not be another Flash movie for a long time, but that's decidedly for the best. Because if there's another one soon to come, it's bound to be made by many of the same people who've been minding the store for the past decade or so. And Gunn's just too pretentious a filmmaker to expect any good from.

Update: in an interview with Elle (via Shadow and Act), actress Issa Rae called out Hollywood for defending Miller, but the impact is dampened by a perpetuation of "pronouns":

“It starts with a backbone. While I don’t support people jumping to immediate conclusions and I think it’s entirely fair for investigations to happen, I think it’s extremely important to, like the mantra says, ‘Listen to women.’ I’m gonna be real, the stuff that’s happening with Ezra Miller is, to me, a microcosm of Hollywood. There’s this person who’s a repeat offender, who’s been behaving atrociously, and as opposed to shutting them down and shutting the production down, there’s an effort to save the movie and them. That is a clear example of the lengths that Hollywood will go to to save itself and to protect offenders. So, don’t do that, and women may be able to thrive. They won’t have to live in fear of keeping silent because it’ll ruin their careers. It’s just a constant pattern of abuse that’ll only persist if Hollywood continues to insist on being this way.”

I don't know if she or the magazine or both decided to stick with that "pronoun" distortion garbage, but it's a shame this is keeping on, because it's not all that different from what she accuses Hollywood of doing. And it makes it difficult to do justice effectively, as a result. A terrible shame another press source is doing exactly what a criminal would want.

Labels: animation, Batman, dc comics, dreadful writers, Flash, golden calf of death, golden calf of villainy, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, Supergirl, Superman, violence