The Flash: 10 Reasons It's Awful

As you'd expect from a Hollywood trip through the multiverse, there's an absolute ton of fan-service in here, and as other recent movies like Spider-Man: No Way Home and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse have shown, it's entirely possible to deliver these satisfying callbacks and easter eggs without it becoming obnoxious.

Unfortunately, The Flash is nowhere close to the quality of those two movies.

To the film's credit, aside from the inclusion of Keaton's Batman and a Wonder Woman cameo early on, it is reasonably restrained in its fan-service, yet ultimately, this was merely the calm before the storm.

During the third act, we get this dreadful CGI sequence which shows various different realities almost colliding thanks to Barry's incursion, and the film basically stops for a few minutes in order to show various different versions of DC's iconic heroes.

We see Christopher Reeves' Superman, Helen Slater's Supergirl, George Reeves' Superman, Adam West's Batman, and even a Superman played by Nicolas Cage - this is a reference to the ultimately cancelled Superman Lives, which was set to star Cage as Superman.

As an example of a film basically pausing just to bait viewer nostalgia, this is member berry cinema at its worst and the whole thing feels so goddamn forced. Furthermore, even ignoring the entirely valid ethical questions regarding resurrecting dead actors using CGI, the special effects here are truly appalling and look about as good as 2019's Cats.