Pain makes us.
Beautiful days come and go, but we remember the storms. Summers on the bike or at the beach blend together, but we remember the broken promises, the fractured friendships. A thousand peaceful nights at home are dwarfed by one night at the hospital.
Our scars stand out on life’s canvas, painted deep and bold. They can define who we are, who we were and what we become. And while we’d love to erase those scars, we can’t.
But Barry Allen? Maybe he can.
Barry bears his share of scars. When he was just a kid, his mother was murdered in the family kitchen, and his father (who was picking up a can of tomatoes at the supermarket) was blamed for it. For decades, Henry Allen has been behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit. As Iris (Barry’s old college pal) reminds him, he lost his mother and father on the same day.
But here’s the thing. Barry’s also The Flash. He can go fast—I mean, really fast. And as any armchair Einstein enthusiast knows, if you go really, really, really fast, time itself starts getting a little shaky. Why, in theory, Barry might be able to go back a couple of decades and erase the biggest, most important scar in his life.
Bruce Wayne—aka Batman, Barry’s Justice League compatriot—warns against meddling with time. Yeah, Bruce lost his parents too, but that loss made him the superhero he is. And that superhero’s done quite a lot of good in the world.
Plus, when you set off ripples in the past, you never know what sort of tsunami you might trigger. “You could destroy everything,” Bruce says.
But Barry’s wounds still hurt. The scars still feel deep. And the ripple he aims to create is such a teensy one. He’ll just drop one extra can of tomatoes into his mother’s grocery cart. That can of tomatoes will keep Barry’s dad from running to the store—and, hopefully, keep the killer at bay. One tiny can could save the life of Barry’s mother.
She’ll never even know he was there.
The plan works perfectly—or at least it does until an unfamiliar villain invades Barry’s little time bubble, punches him in the face and sends the plan all akimbo. Before you can say E = mc2, Barry meets his mom (alive), dad (not in prison) and most critically, his college-freshman-year self (kind of annoying). And as luck (fate?) would have it, he lands in a timeline on the very day that Barry’s supposed to receive his superpowers.
But this Barry isn’t in position to get those superpowers. Nor is he exactly superhero material. Nope, if Barry (the “real” Barry) hopes to A) remain the Flash, and B) escape this unfamiliar timeline, he’ll have to get Barry (the younger, giggly one) into a lab and concoct the requisite chemical bath/lightning strike that turned Barry (um, the real one?) into The Flash to begin with.
The Flash might’ve successfully erased one set of scars. But it seems that he’s creating new ones by the second.
To paraphrase a popular saying, the road to problems is paved with good intentions. Barry’s intentions are really good. He wants to save his mom. He wants to save his dad. And regardless of the problems those intentions create, we gotta pat him on the back for being willing to move heaven, Earth and much of the universe in an effort to help his folks.
But Barry’s concerns go beyond his parents. He’s a superhero, after all, and we see him save plenty of people during The Flash. He rescues several infants (and a dog) from messy deaths. He pulls an aging superhero from drunken ignominy. In a flashback, we see him save a child when he was just learning how to use his superpowers.
When he and a younger Barry (we’ll just call the kid “Younger Barry” from here on out) try to rescue another superhero from a Russian prison, they find an apparently helpless young woman there instead. Barry rescues her, too—much to her surprise. And that act of selflessness helps convince this young woman (who just so happens to be Kara Zor-El, aka Supergirl) that humanity’s worth saving.
Younger Barry goes through his own transformation—metamorphing from chump to superhero in just a couple of days. That transformation is far from perfect, of course. But he shows a willingness to sacrifice himself for others and put himself through an incredible amount of suffering to safeguard the ones he loves.
And let’s give props to Barry’s parents, too. Both in the unaltered timeline and in the altered one, they show their love for Barry in many different ways. Henry, even in jail, takes his wrongful imprisonment with a dose of philosophical reserve and even optimism. Perhaps it’s easier (he tells Barry) to be in prison, because that way Henry can imagine his wife’s still alive and doing well.
We don’t see any explicit religious imagery in The Flash, but the film clearly toys with some very big, and potentially spiritual, ideas. The biggest and most obvious of the bunch is the push-pull between free will and fate.
Barry tries mightily to change his past, which he knows will change his future. And change, it seems, is possible. But the movie suggests that there are certain events that can’t be changed—no matter how hard we try. That itself may imply that there’s an unseen hand at work—an irresistible force that manipulates certain events according to its will.
So what happens when you try to resist that irresistible force? We’re meddling with the realm of God. The movie doesn’t so blatantly say it like this. But throughout Barry’s quest, there’s this sense that he’s playing with forces that shouldn’t be played with. That’s heightened in a scene that feels cribbed right from 1931’s Frankenstein (another story about playing God), where characters try to harness lightning to try to “resurrect” something gone dormant.
Younger Barry spends a surprising amount of screen time running around in the buff. We see his exposed rear for several combined seconds. He’s also seen from the side and the front (though his privates are covered in these scenes by, respectively, a tambourine and a frying pan).
Barry also says, “I know sex exists; I just have never experienced it.” We see several coed college roommates, including a woman (clad only in her underwear) and her boyfriend (who shares a bed with her). Another roommate displays a tattoo on his calf while pantless, and we see his white underwear.
When Kara Zor-El is rescued, she’s wearing a hospital-style gown that ties in the back and seems to loosen a bit during a combat sequence (though nothing critical is seen).
Superhero outfits can feel particularly formfitting in The Flash. When Younger Barry puts the uniform on, he complains about it being tight, particularly in the crotch (using much more crass language). When he makes his own suit, he brags about how comfy it is around the groin. Supergirl’s suit also hugs and extenuates its wearer’s curves. Other outfits reveal some skin. A prison is compared to a scrotum.
Barry has had a longtime crush on Iris. Barry’s mom and dad embrace each other affectionately.
Barry’s whole character arc is dependent on an act of violence—his mother’s murder. We see part of that in flashback: She’s cradled in Henry’s arms with a knife sticking out of her abdomen, obviously bleeding badly. Henry holds the knife handle in his hand and tells Barry to call 911.
Things get significantly more violent from there.
The movie’s primary villain is the Kryptonian named Zod, who was also the big-bad from 2013’s Man of Steel. He’s out to terraform Earth into another Krypton (which, in case you didn’t know, blew up some time before), which will in turn kill all the things currently living there. We see that terraforming process cause significant havoc, with people in cities being sucked to their doom by Kryptonian devices. Barry tells us that in his native timeline, Superman stopped Zod, but only after the death of thousands. In Younger Barry’s timeline, Zod’s on the rampage “again,” with his aim to literally kill billions.
We see several versions of a battle between Zod and the movie’s heroes. People die via blades, skewers, laser blasts and explosions. A character suffers some pretty bad injuries from Kryptonian weapons, then uses those weapons (embedded in his body) against his attackers. Kryptonians are much, much harder to kill, but that doesn’t stop our heroes from trying. Fists and gadgets and energy blasts all make an appearance.
Elsewhere, Batman and the Barrys battle a bevy of Russian soldiers and guards. A Barry gets shot in the leg (we see some blood, and it’s clearly a super-painful injury). Countless other bullets are fired and might’ve found their mark without Batman’s bullet-proof cape and some nifty speed work. Batarangs and other gadgets render several combatants unconscious. Some Russians are hurled into other area codes.
In one of the film’s more realistic and wince-inducing scenes, we see Bruce Wayne stitching up a nasty, bloody gash in his bicep.
Characters are struck by lightning—an act they want to happen, but it’s still incredibly painful and life-threatening. Two characters are nearly knocked unconscious during one such strike, and one loses a tooth. (He uses super glue to glue it back into place.) Another series of strikes leaves a character’s skin charred and smoking.
An elderly man attacks the Barrys, using some impressive skills. Mops and pans and pieces of furniture are utilized during the melee.
Several people (and a dog) plunge from the window of a collapsing building, requiring quick action by a superhero. (All are saved.) A vehicle chase involves several weapons being fired, a few crashing cars and some seriously unsafe driving. A biohazard poses a massive threat to Gotham City. We hear that someone killed a baby.
One extremely unnecessary f-word (along with one euphemism) and more than 15 s-words. We also hear sporadic uses of “a–,” “d-ck,” “h—” and “crap.” God’s name is misused about a dozen times, and Jesus’ name is abused once.
Superheroes (plural) seem to have issues with alcohol. The most prominent is a grizzled Bruce Wayne/Batman. When the Barrys enter Wayne Manor, they discover a great many empty liquor bottles within. And when they meet the man himself, he seems a bit tipsy (though that doesn’t seem to impair his fighting skills). Another supe, clearly drunk, falls down and almost passes out in the street. That hero is willing to pawn valuable jewelry for another beer.
We see people drink wine and beer (and some of Barry’s roommates seem pretty hung over). We may hear a character make a passing reference to a drug trip.
After The Flash pulls a character abruptly from a hail of bullets, the character vomits heavily and grotesquely. Both Barrys steal surprisingly frequently—including clothes, food, pans and beer.
The Flash may be fast, but his namesake movie took its own sweet time hitting the theaters.
The film was originally set to be released way back in 2018, believe it or not, with Ezra Miller starring as the title character. But personnel changes (including four different directors), script disagreements and Miller’s incredibly disturbing legal troubles—not to mention a little thing called COVID—delayed the film’s creation and release. Many wondered whether it’d ever see the inside of a movie theater at all.
Here’s the good news: The Flash, as a movie, is pretty good.
It’s not great. Wonder Woman still sets the bar for this incarnation of the DC Universe for me. Here, the messages are mixed, the villain in The Flash seems almost an afterthought and some elements feel a little gimmicky. But it’s pretty fun, quite clever and features the return of Michael Keaton as Batman—which, for this Bat-fan, is quite the treat in itself. Miller remains a charismatic presence on screen, and the movie does a dexterous job of moving from lighthearted hilarity to dealing with loss and grief and the pain of letting go.
But it’s also one of DC’s most problematic films, too.
The Flash doesn’t plunge into R-rated territory with abandon, as 2021’s Zack Snyder’s Justice League did. But it flirts with near R-rated content, from its extended nude scene to its use of the f-word. It’s plenty violent as well. And despite the movie’s frequent levity, certain scenes can feel dark, oppressive and even a little hopeless. This film can seem grim—perhaps a shock for some, given that the Flash was such welcome comic relief in the original 2017 Justice League.
As the movie goes on, The Flash’s superficial levity can rub against its increasingly bleak undercurrent. It can feel, at times, like an outgrowth of another DC character—the Joker, with its painted-on smile and darkness underneath.
The Flash is better than you’d think, and better than perhaps it has a right to be. But that doesn’t mean you should take the family out to see it in a flash.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
