I think what he learned is sometimes no matter what you do you can’t always win every fight. He can’t save his Mom and the world that was created was doomed no matter what he did. The other Barry didn’t learn this and became a monster. Saving his Dad from continued prison was snatching a minor victory out of a huge defeat.
From a business and logistical standpoint I’m not surprised they didn’t reshoot with someone else or just insert, say, Adam Brody’s face over Miller. Miller was in 99.99% of the movie and it had gone through so many iterations and creative visions that it’s a miracle the film happened at all. In fact, I’ll make the bold declaration that we’re the only place in the multiverse that this movie came to fruition.
Wasn’t the point that he didn’t give up trying to save them, he kept trying again and again and again for decades and became the old Barry the two younger Barrys fought in the time sphere thing? And because of that he realized that some things you simply cannot change and nothing he could do would save them in that world.
I meant the main Barry, they tried like twice and he went “yeah this isn’t working, sorry”.
But once he saw Clooney he should have realized he didn’t save his dad, just created a different time line. His dad is still in prison, and now has no one.
I knew that Miller was a “bad dude” going into this but I didn’t read the full extent of his problems until after I saw the movie, where I went and read his Wikipedia page. I also didn’t realize that it took so long to make the film. I too am floored both that they didn’t replace him AND they managed to get this whole movie done (where he is in 99% of the scenes) despite whatever he had going on at the time. Yeesh.
This was the perfect movie to do it, too.
Final scene… Flash is seen from behind, meets a “new” Batman in this timeline where the tomatoes were on a high shelf, and when he turns around, it’s Grant Gustin.
Yes! I am happy for DC that they came up with this solution (or it was a happy accident, whatever the case may be).
If they had done that, it would almost have redeemed the rest!
I really liked this movie, but those cameos of Batmen and Supermen were lame and pointless. It was like they were in a cinema watching a brief reel of stock footage.
Other than that really lame cameo moment, everything else was really excellent. One of my favorite movies from the DC universe the past decade or so.
Highly recommended.
So apparently in the original ending for the movie it would have been Keaton Batman and Supergirl who showed up at the end showing that he never left their timeline, and it would have led to the Batgirl/Batman movie that had Keaton in it. When that got tossed the ending got changed to have Cavill and Gal Gadot, because their Superman 2 and Wonder Woman 3 sequels were planned. Then all that got tossed when Gunn took over so they were cut and we got the cameo we got. Except it doesn’t make sense, both the first two endings have Barry in a universe with no other Barry’s in it, but the one we got SHOULD have already had its own Barry.
I wasn’t going to see this after all the lackluster reaction of my fellow comic nerds, but this thread got me to try it.
Absolutely loved it.
Just got home, in fact (saw it by myself, so I wouldn’t have to worry about what anyone else thought of it).
I don’t care about the implications of the last scene, but Clooney’s appearance was handled nicely. Especially after years of him apologizing for his version of Batman, and making that an ongoing part of his schtick.
It was sort of a treat for the audience: “Look, thanks for hanging in there through a lot of junk. Here’s one last chuckle.”
This is now out on HBO Max, so I got to see it.
Overall: decent, which places it ahead of a lot of the DC superhero movies, which are at best tolerable.
Plusses:
-The dialog and banter and comedy is generally fun and snappy, and Ezra is good at it, definitely well-cast for that part of the story
->Loved seeing Keaton again (as he has always been my foundational Batman) although since when can he fly around like that? Neither physics nor the aging process should make that possible at all
-Overall decent plot
-Fun cameos
Minuses:
-A lot of the effects were AWFUL. The Flash-running animation was just bizarre and unconvincing
-Over-reliance on plot details from Man of Steel, which I saw once, didn’t like, and barely remember
-I didn’t think Ezra did a good job of switching back and forth between jokey-Barry and serious-heroic-Flash. Pretty good for comedy, not so great for drama
I’m not bothered by the cameo at the end… it’s fun enough to not be worth worrying about. That said, I think you could make a good argument that it’s reasonably consistent… some things are invariant events that can’t be altered. Barry’s mom dying is one. Zod winning in the other universe is another. But that doesn’t mean that NOTHING can be altered. How could Barry’s dad looking up instead of down alter the timestream precisely in a way such that Barry’s life is identical, Iris is identical, but Bruce now looks like George Clooney? Eh… whatevs.
Those films have about as much continuity as Bond films; not only do they have different lead actors but completely different stylistic choices and set design. Treating them as completely different, unrelated films is pretty much what Schumacher and Warner Bros did anyway.
I had the opposite take; I found the scenes with Miller playing against himself interminable and mostly pointless, and found that the film picked up considerably once Michael Keaton put on the Bat-Suit. Frankly, I think he got more screen time here than he did in Batman Returns, and despite the fact that it was mostly action sequences he got more to do with it. Sasha Calle was…fine, I guess, if you wanted a Zack Snyder grimdark take on the character of Supergirl, but she seemed basically inserted to have some kind of female and minority presence in what was otherwise an almost entirely a “white guy movie”. The character could have been removed with almost zero change other than eliminating the need to go to Russia to find the Winter Soldier Supergirl. The action scenes during the climactic fight were actually more inventive than most DC movies and was really the only part where the two Flashes seemed particularly valuable, but the CGI in general was mediocre to terrible.
The premise that there are completely different people as Batman, Superman, et cetera was nonsensical but then so is essentially every time travel/multiverse film that isn’t made by Terry Gilliam; it was basically a way to acknowledge and include all of the previous actors in DC movies (except for Kilmer and Routh, who I guess didn’t make enough of an impression/profit for inclusion, and including would-be Nic Cage as Weirdo Superman). The gag about Eric Stoltz playing Marty McFly in this alternate universe was way overdone for an inside joke that only a small minority of the audience is going to get anyway; they might as well have made it Matthew Broderick or Emilio Estevez and just said it once.
I got more of a laugh out of George Clooney showing up at the end than any other joke or reference in the film, all the more for how much he has disowned the role previously.
This movie was still better than Blue Beetle, which managed to be simultaneously offensive, stupid, derivative, and terminally boring. It was like someone took a bunch of successful MCU films, threw them in a narrative blender with a telenova, and pushed “Turbo”, then sprayed the result with CGI sparkle paint. James Gunn or no, I smell another abortive ‘universe’ in the making.
Stranger