WARNING: SPOILERS

Pity the poor DCEU. It came out of the gate meh (“Man of Steel”), then turned into a series of roiling disasters (“Batman v. Superman,” Snyder v. Whedon), and even when it did something right it couldn’t sustain it. Wonder Woman had an OK first movie and an idiotic second. The first Suicide Squad was a hot mess but was rebooted well by James Gunn, leading execs at Warner Bros. to figure, OK, Gunn, reboot the whole thing.

“The Flash,” directed by Andy Muschietti (“It”), was released after the reboot announcement, making it seem pointless. More, its star, Ezra Miller, an indie darling in 2012, was suddenly hugely problematic:

• April 2020: choked a woman at a bar in Iceland
• March 2022: arrested for disorderly conduct in Hawaii
• April 2022: arrested for second-degree assault (chair throwing) in Hawaii
• June 2022: accused of grooming a young Indian girl
• August 2022: arrested for felony burglary (alcohol) in Vermont

Most of the above is indicative of mental health and substance-abuse issues, but grooming (or accusations thereof) is true villainy in the 2020s. Basically if your star is accused of such, you don’t have a movie. Not at the box office anyway.

It doesn’t help that “The Flash” was sloppy seconds. Two years earlier, Marvel released “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” in which, in the aftermath of a worldwide conflagration, the Avengers’ youngest hero, Spider-Man (Tom Holland), tries to correct a wrong and instead brings multiverses together—including past cinematic iterations of his own character (Toby Maguire, Andrew Garfield). Fans went crazy for it. It opened at $260 million (second-biggest ever), grossed $814 million domestically (third-biggest) and $1.9 billion worldwide (sixth-biggest). 

Here, in the aftermath of a worldwide conflagration, the Justice League’s youngest hero, the Flash, tries to correct a wrong and instead brings multiverses together—including past cinematic iterations of Batman’s character (Michael Keaton). Fans couldn’t be bothered. It opened at $55 million, grossed $108 domestically and $270 worldwide.

The irony? “The Flash” is probably the best movie in the DCEU.

Uncooked spaghetti
Yes, not saying much.

Question: Did the Flash have a tragic upbringing in the comics? I don’t remember that, but I was never a Flash guy. I just remember the chemicals and lightning bolt—an idiotic origin recreated here.

But here, yes, tragedy. Mom (Maribel Verdu) was murdered, and Dad (Billy Crudup in “Justice League,” Ron Livingston now) was convicted of the crime. Barry knows he’s innocent, and so, determined to set him free, he studies law and becomes a criminal defense attorney.

Kidding. No, despite warnings from Batman (Ben Affleck), he decides to use the “speed force” to create a “chronobowl” and go back in time to make sure mom buys a can of tomatoes. You see, Mom was murdered when Dad was off buying those tomatoes, so Flash, within the chronobowl, puts them in her shopping cart, so…

Wait, wouldn’t that mean Dad would be home, too? So whoever killed mom might kill Dad? Or is the assumption that with the MAN at home, no one would dare enter. Seems a little sexist.  

Anyway, as we all know, and as Batman warned, you mess with time at your own (and our) peril. The can of tomatoes is the butterfly wings, and when Flash returns … Well, his first mistake is landing several years early to find his self unmarred by tragedy and annoyingly happy and unserious. He also realizes that this Barry never got a job at the police lab, so he’s not going to be there when lightning strikes and the chemicals pour over him. And if this Barry isn’t super-powered, how can he be? So he manufactures the event. Except even as Barry 2 get powers, Barry 1 loses his. Now, Barry 1, to quote a phrase, has no way home.

Oh, this is also the moment Gen. Zod (Michael Shannon) from “Man of Steel” is attacking Earth, so Flash is kind of needed. At least for that one kid he saved. Did we ever get closure on that? I thought it would lead to something—saving both the kid and his dad, or Dad still dies cuz life—but it’s never reintroduced, is it?

Barry still doesn’t realize he’s in a completely different timeline, so it’s up to this universe’s Batman (Michael Keaton) to explain it to him and us with strands of uncooked spaghetti: You’re creating not just a new future but a completely different past. I like how our first sense of this is when Barry mentions “Back to the Future” and Barry 2 exclaims “Eric Stoltz is chur boy in that movie!” Which, by the way, is a very Hollywood way of letting us know the space-time continuum is messed up. It’s not, “Well, Pres. Al Gore thinks…” It’s: Hey, they went through with the Eric Stoltz casting! And Michael J. Fox starred in “Footloose” and Kevin Bacon in “Top Gun”! And Tom Cruise Mapother IV became a priest! (Kidding, they don’t delve into what happened to Tom Cruise.)

So in this strand of spaghetti, there is no Kal-El—he doesn’t make it to Earth—but his cousin, Kara/Supergirl (Sasha Calle), does. Apparently she crashlands in Russia, and apparently the Russians are so stupid they don’t try to utilize this weapon—they imprison her away from the sun, in a deep, deep dungeon. But Batman and the two Flashes arrive to set her free. Forgot to mention: In the Batcave, they’ve recreated the chemical/lightning bolt thing, and original Barry has his powers back.

That was cool—seeing the Keaton-era Batcave recreated with its waterfall front. There’s a lot of such nostalgic stuff here. The first time we see Keaton as Batman and we get the Danny Elfman theme, I got shivers. Keaton repeats a couple of famous lines (“I’m Batman”; “Let’s get nuts”), but his tone is properly leavened with age and weariness. I liked that, too. And they still haven’t—or he hasn’t—figured out what to do post-Batman. Here, he’s basically become Howard Hughes: long hair, beard, half-crazed and alone in a dilapidated Wayne Manor.

All of this sets up the big battle with Zod, which our heroes lose. Yes, lose. Zod winds up terraforming Earth into Krypton 2 and we all die. Got that? Because of the can of tomatoes. So Flash 2 does the speed force/chronobowl thing to right things. But it happens again. And again. We just can’t beat this guy! And Flash 1 winds up in the Chronobowl with a monstrosity, which turns out to be him, or “Dark Flash,” the one who’s gone crazy from recreating the world forever. And the lesson is… ? Well, several. There are certain people that are focal points in time, and Barry figures he’s one, he’s the problem, and so is that can of tomatoes, and so he goes back again to remove it from the shopping cart.

Other lessons:

• “Not every problem has a solution.”
• “Don’t let your tragedy define you.”

The first quote is Barry 1 talking to Barry 2. Not a bad lesson. The second is—believe it or not—the Affleck Batman talking to Barry 1 at the beginning of the movie. Don’t let your tragedy define you? Sure thing, Bats.

Also, after all that, does Barry really learn his lesson? All this shit happens and he still mucks with the timeline. He moves the cans of tomatoes from the bottom shelf to the top so the surveillance camera in the store will capture his father’s face, leading to his acquittal. A little easy. I still think it would’ve made more sense for Barry to get a J.D.

I guess the other lesson DC/Warners wants to impart is that Superman can defeat Zod but Supergirl can’t. Seems a little sexist.

Whither the stars of 2010s indies
But I still enjoyed it. We get some poignant lines:

Kara: Why did you help me?
Barry: Because you needed help. 

Barry: We can’t bring you back, can we?
Batman: You already did.

Maybe the most poignant line is Barry’s realization that his mom will “always be alive somewhere in time.” That made me flash on Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five,” and the way the alien Tralfamadorian race perceived time: not moment to moment, the way we do, losing everything all the while, but all at once like a mountain range. So to their perception, people don’t leave us. They don’t die. They’re still right there. In that moment in time.

Speaking of: I liked seeing all the iterations of Superman—from George Reeves to Christopher Reeve to … is that Nicolas Cage? Right, the stupid 1990s Kevin Smith movie that was never made. It’s Eric Stoltz all over again. But why didn’t we get a CGI Kirk Alyn? Or Brandon Routh? Or Adam West or Val Kilmer? And there’s still a time-continuum glitch at the end of the movie, an unnecessary wuh-wuh moment, when Barry finally sees his Bruce Wayne again … and it’s not Ben Affleck but George Clooney! Ha?

There’s also a romantic interest subplot with Iris West (Kiersey Clemons), girl reporter, that goes nowhere.

In a way the movie was doubly nostalgic: Not just to the Michael Keaton-era Batman but to the young stars of early 2010s indies. It’s Ezra of “Perks”/“We Need to Talk About Kevin,” and Kiersey of “Dope,” and both these kids seemed on the rise back then. Then they got sucked into the DCEU. And here it is 10 years later and what happened? What the hell happened? It all seems wrong now. If only someone could go back in time and fix it.