Despite being a long-time comic book geek, I did not see the JL movie on account of my poor dying eyes. Also because man of steel and Batman versus Superman hat left an extremely bad taste in my mouth. But I am idly curious. Were the characters I mentioned above depicted as having power of the same magnitude as Superman, even if he outclass them?
I haven’t seen it either, but I can answer for the last one: There was a credits scene where Superman and the Flash run a race, which ended in very nearly a tie. So the Flash is about as fast as Superman, but doesn’t have any of his other powers.
More or less, yeah. General flaws in the overall movie make it hard to definitively answer, but it does mostly avoid the “Why is there anyone on this team other than Superman?” issue.
The Flash is the one character whose powers are most directly compared to Superman. Two scenes in particular: right after Superman is resurrected, he’s a little crazy and gets in a fight with the rest of the League. Flash runs up behind him at super-speed, and everything else slows waaaaaay down, almost frozen… and then Superman whips his head around and looks Flash right in the eyes. It’s a legit badass moment for Supes. Later, at the climax of the film, they’re fighting Steppenwolfe in some Eastern European village, and start by evacuating the civilians. The Flash gets behinds some people trying to flee in a pickup, and pushes them at super-speed. He turns around, and Superman’s right behind him, carrying an entire house full of people. Not as legit badass, and kinda hokey, but big points for superheroes caring about innocents!
Cyborg is really underused in the movie, but he is central to defeating the big menace in a way that only he could do it. In the movie (and the comics, since the New52 reboot) Cyborg’s body is based on Apokoliptian tech, which allows him to interface with the device that’s bringing Darkseid’s forces to Earth. He also shoots sonic beams and stuff, but other than the end, he could be cut out of the movie entirely without losing much.
Wonder Woman doesn’t get much direct comparison with Superman. The movie did a decent job with the Trinity in general. She gets some great badass scenes, and is set-up as a bit of a mid-point between Superman’s raw power, and Batman’s incredible training.
I appreciate that you seem to have deliberately left out the one new hero in the film from your question. And yeah, while Jason Momoa does a good job with the character, there’s really no good reason for Aquaman to be in this movie, other than he’s there in the comics.
Who won the superman/flash race?
As you undoubtedly know, in the comics, the flash is usually a hair faster. Whereas in Smallville, if I recall correctly, they would seem to be the same speed from the point of view of any observer, but to the two of them, the flash seemed enormously faster.
They don’t show the end of the race, just the very beginning.
It’s worth mentioning that this version of Barry Allen is a total newb - he’s literally never been in a fight before the movie starts, so him being slightly upstaged by Superman on the regular doesn’t look too bad on him. There’s a definite sense that he’s not grown fully into his powers yet.
It may be that out of an atmosphere Superman is as fast as the Flash but that is debatable (they can both move faster than light speed).
However, in an atmosphere Flash can move much faster than Superman as a practical matter.
As this XKCD article describes, a baseball thrown at 90% the speed of light would produce a massive nuclear explosion sufficient to smash a good sized city. Needless to say Superman is bigger than a baseball so the problem is even worse with him. I suppose he could go that fast but he would be a moving massive fireball laying waste to everything in his path.
The Flash, on the other hand, is sort of “cocooned” in the Speed Force which insulates the outside world from the effects of him moving that fast.
In short, Flash can move at light speed on earth without destroying everything withing miles of him in the process making him substantially faster than Superman since Superman would not try to move that fast.
It looks to me like the race starts with them both moving from the starting line towards the camera, and ends with them crossing the starting line from away from the camera, at which point it freeze-frames. In other words, they’ve both run entirely around the world. At the freeze-frame, Barry’s body is a little ahead of Clark’s, but Clark has his arm outstretched, with his fist ahead of any part of Barry’s body.
They’re not racing around the world, though. They’re racing to the Pacific:
Superman: “Which coast?”
Flash: “Ah, you know, I’ve never seen the Pacific!” (points off screen to the right)
Superman: (subtly points in the opposite direction)
Flash: “…which is that way. Because the sun, and it’s…”
(Here’s the scene, for folks playing at home.)
Well, we needn’t compare Cyborg/Flash/Wonder Woman to Superman directly. Superman seemed to be able to smack the villain (whose name I forget) around at will, while none of the others could do more than trivially inconvenience him.
I liked the Flash in that movie. I thought it was a good take on the character and a good starting point for development, rather than just having everyone fully formed.
To be fair this is a young Flash who almost certainly hasn’t explored the limits of his speed and power. For Flash max speed was something he had to keep working towards. It was not available to him from the get-go.
You are applying real-world physics to a comic-book situation. Stop it. People will think you’re from Canada.
Both superman and the Flash have notes from God allowing them to disregard the usual laws of motion. But I do remember their first post-crisis race in which Superman (in a thought bubble) notes that the flash is in training as a runner, which he is not as he flies everywhere. There was the definite sense in that race that superman could have one if he were allowed to fly rather than run, and even with the handicap, he lost only by a hair (Which only he and Wally West could perceive).
As for superman unbalancing the rest of the justice league: I don’t usually think that is the case. It always seems more like the purpose of the other members is to do stuff that are not his strengths. I recall a pre-crisis story which made the point that Green Arrow, in particular, was on the team because he thought in ways that the demigods and super-geniuses did not and found solutions that would never occur to them. That said, Superman, flash, wonder woman, & green lantern, between the four of them, do you unbalance the team when it is in one of its huger incarnations. Why the hell do those foUr keep the likes of Booster Gold (or even Black Canary — around?
I think the scene as described would have happened even with a pre-crisis superman & Barry Allen. With his flight & immunity to the wedge effect, superman is much better equipped to evacuate a city van flash.
(Has anybody other than John Byrne ever pointed out that superman’s immunity to the wedge affect is one of his powers, and possibly the most important one?)
Wonder Woman gets in a tug-of-war with Superman and while he’s winning it he is only just doing so. In the comics WW is a near match for Superman. They’ve fought numerous times and while the smart bet is on Superman to win she has beat his ass on several occasions.
As for Aquaman I think a lot of us are stuck with the image of the mostly worthless 70’s Super Friends cartoon where he did little more than talk to fish. This Aquaman is super strong (not Superman strong but strong enough to throw armored vehicles) and bullet proof. And he talks to fish. I’d guess he is around Spiderman levels of power so he’s worth having on your side in a fight.
Since it has been mentioned in the comics that the Speed Force shields (or whatever you want to call it) the outside world from the effects of Flash running at relativistic (or just very high) speeds I think it is entirely fair game to mention.
That being the case and since Superman cannot access the Speed Force it is reasonable to assume Superman would be a moving nuclear explosion trying to keep up with the Flash in an atmosphere.
Funny, the only time I can recall there being unintentional environmental effects from Superman moving at high speed was in Superman Family #217 (April 1982) where the Earth-2 Superman (Kal-L, married to Lois Lane) has lost a significant amount of his power (more or less returning him to his original 1938 levels) and engages in a rigorous training regimen to restore them. He runs in a circle around Lois, who is timing him with a watch, and she cringes when he creates a sonic boom:
Superman: Sorry! Didn’t know I’d improved that much!
Lois: Better start using that vibration-stunt The Flash taught you to keep from making sonic booms!
She is presumably referring to Jay Garrick, so in the Earth-2 universe, at least, Superman could avoid causing catastrophic damage even without access to the speed force, which was not yet established when this story was published.
She took a beating from a completely out of control Superman and basically just shrugged it off. Anyone able to do that is at least near or at his level. What she doesn’t have is the superspeed he also has on top of the toughness and strength.
If DC/Warner had any smarts, they’d put the Aquaman movie on ice and go straight to Flashpoint. Great character development for Barry Allen and a literally Earth-shattering clash between Aquaman and Wonder Woman.
Barry has a line that goes: “I’m not a warrior. I just run up behind people and push them.”
I both read the FLASHPOINT mini series and watched the animated movie before my eyes went south. While I enjoyed both, I don’t think either is a great choice for a big-budget movie. that story has too much continuity snarl in it. And eliminating the complexity would also eliminate the fun things about it.
But I have loved aqua man for years. The only thing that makes me not want an aqua man movie is that I would know more be able to appreciate it than I was wonder woman.