TCTTS said:

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While I didn't outright hate it, and it's definitely not the worst superhero movie ever made

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Damning with faint praise if I've ever seen it.

Your experience is the same I had, except Quantumania did it for me.

Agreed. Stakes feel non-existent now for the most part. For me, the ones I just stopped caring what happened while watching were Quantumania and Across the Spiderverse.

To a lesser extent, Multiverse of Madness as well.

But at least with Flash, I was entertained throughout.

That's actually not true in Endgame - they could borrow the stone/orb/scepter from another timeline but in their timeline, the bad guy would have already used it to defeat them in the present. Endgame isn't time travel, per se, it's like… multiversal hopping to try and reverse something that already happened. Even if you go grab another Tony Stark, he probably doesn't want to leave his world and join yours. (But you're right - you could still grab a Tony from a barren wasteland of a world before he gets killed by a bad guy and he'd jump at the opportunity)

I hope that sometime soon (Secret Wars, if not sooner) they put a cap on any and all time-travel, multiverse-hopping, etc. If you're not here when the cap goes back on the bottle, you're stuck forever - no bull****.

Because in general I agree - it cheapens stakes and it's low-hanging fruit for fan service. I saw people upset that Ioan Gruffudd wasn't in Multiverse of Madness… nobody even liked those F4 films!

Brian Earl Spilner said:

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Your experience is the same I had, except Quantumania did it for me.

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I think this is fair to be honest. It's hard to objectively say that movie does anything better than the flash.

Maybe I'm a simpleton and a sucker for nostalgia, but No Way Home, Spiderverse, and Flash have been my favorite superhero movies since Endgame.

third said:

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After Barry talked to his mom and took the can of beans out of her cart, when he went to put it back he moved the beans to the top shelf. He makes a comment at the end something about the beans being on the top shelf now.

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Okay, that's admittedly pretty clever. Still goes against the theme of the movie, but I guess they needed to give Barry a "consolation prize" of sorts.

CanyonLakeAgbu said:

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What is happening right now? A movie guy missed a major point in the ending and the tomatoes became beans?

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In my defense, I was completely checked out by the ending. I was already concentrating on getting our parking validated, beating everyone else to the pay machine, and getting the hell out of there.

AggieEP said:

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The problem is that multiverse story telling removes a lot of the tension of a movie. Consequences for death are minimized because you can grab a new "insert person" from another timeline to solve whatever problem you have. Also, just theoretically if there are infinite timelines/universes, than who cares if one is destroyed. Humanity lives on.

Most on here liked Endgame, but as soon as they introduced time travel, I knew they put a shelf life on their movies. Everyone involved with that fight against Thanos now knows they can go back in time to fix issues. Every Marvel movie should look like this logically.

- Opening credits
- Oh no, there is a bad guy who wants to do bad guy things?
- Hey Avengers, looks like this guy has a magic (stone, orb, weapon etc) let's just go back in time and take it from him instead of risking Earth in a battle against him at full strength.
- Execute time travel plan
- Roll credits movie over

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Granted, I appreciated that a big part of the theme/lesson of this one was actually ensuring some kind of consequences/not undoing a character's death. It's just that the mechanics of it all have become so exhausting, as I feel like I've basically seen the same movie/plot like five times in the past couple of years (a character using the multiverse to go back and fix something, to disastrous results). That, and after last night, I'm so over the cheap, multiversal, fan service cameos, and I fear that third Deadpool and the next two Avengers movies are basically going to be nothing but.

You gotta give Endgame credit though for not actually undoing anything that happened in Infinity War. That was one of my biggest worries walking out of that movie, that everything we'd just seen would end up being walked back immediately.

JCRiley09 said:

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Maybe I'm a simpleton and a sucker for nostalgia, but No Way Home, Spiderverse, and Flash have been my favorite superhero movies since Endgame.

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I absolutely loved Endgame and No Way Home, and enjoyed Across the Spider-Verse for the most part. But for me, at least, that's part of why this multiverse exhaustion is setting in, because those movies did it so right, I got my fill, and now it just feels like we're getting an endless parade of bad facsimiles scattered amongst them, and for the next four years.

Was the last scene where Clooney shows up filmed later/recently? Barry looked really weird when the camera switched back to him. It was kind of jarring.

Thanks for the info!

My problem with the stakes in Endgame was that they told us they had one shot because of limited pym particles, but then the moment they face adversity when Loki bugs out with the stone, they just time travel to where more pym particles are located.

Endgame is entertaining, I liked it, but it set the precedent that the good guys can fix disastrous outcomes with multiverse magic or time travel. Bringing in past Gamora to be our Gamora just reinforces this no consequences world.

With Flash, it's just a twist on the same theme. There seem to be consequences for his time travel with the calamities he causes..... but he's able to fix things at the end, so were there really consequences?

This is a question the MCU and DCU will have to answer at some point. The best comic movies are the ones with human consequences that give a realism to the characters in the movies. We can see ourselves having to make similar choices and that creates an emotional connection. But making those movies means killing characters off and having lasting consequences for bad decisions. Like Batman going to save Harvey Dent instead of Rachel in the Dark Knight... real consequences for a man faced with a tough moral question. So the question is, do you make movies that put a shelf life on your characters by killing them off and limiting your ability to make money off them, or do you keep everyone alive so you can keep the printing presses rolling? Do the dilemmas the characters face have consequences or not?

TCTTS said:

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While I didn't outright hate it, and it's definitely not the worst superhero movie ever made (admittedly, it was "fun" at times, and I thought some of Batman's fight choreography was cool), tonight I *did* hit rock bottom in terms of my interest in/excitement for the superhero era. Not even an hour in, I found myself so incredibly exhausted by the genre as a whole, while simultaneously hitting my limit on multiversal storytelling, to the point where I'm questioning whether I even want to go down that road anymore with Marvel (hopefully Gunn's DCU keeps it all to a single universe). I'm just so sick of what the multiverse has done to blockbuster storytelling, and I cannot imagine watching four more years of this nonsense.

"I'm not gonna lie, it wasn't quite satisfying for me, as an actor. These multiverse movies are like somebody playing with action figures. It's like, 'Here's this person. Here's that person. And they're fighting!'"

- Michael Shannon, earlier this week, doing press for The Flash

I realize what Shannon is hilariously complaining about - on the "promotional" tour, no less - could be said for just about any superhero movie, but I'm right there with him, having never felt that feeling more than I did tonight. It was all just fan service overdrive, without the story/character work to back any of it up, to the point where I was cringing every time the audience clapped for anything having to do with Keaton/Batman. I usually *love* cheering in movie theaters, but this felt like trained seals barking for treats, out of sheer habit, not because any of it was actually good or considered or handled with care and respect.

Keaton felt cheated.

Sasha Calle felt cheated.

Zod was a nothing villain.

The time travel/multiverse mechanics made absolutely no sense.

And every last frame looked like soulless, horribly lit sh*t.

I don't know, this thing just broke me, to the point where I need a looooong break from superhero movies in general. There's zero chance I'll be watching Blue Beetle (August 18) or Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (December 20), so in terms of DC, this is it for me until Superman: Legacy on July 11, 2025, and I could not be more relieved. I guess I'll probably watch Joker: Folie a Deux, out of morbid interest, but at least that's a year and a half away (October 4, 2024). I'd welcome this break/reset even more if not for James Gunn and a handful of fanboy critics singing this movie's praises, somehow calling it one of the greatest superhero movies ever made, which makes me feel like I'm taking crazy pills. The fact that Gunn, in particular, is shilling for this thing suddenly makes me nervous for the DCU, but I'm also so numb to this crap right now that I don't really give a sh*t anymore. If the DCU sucks, so be it. At least we'll still have Reeves' Batman, which is maybe the only superhero movie/franchise left that I'm genuinely looking forward to.

For the immediate future, I take solace in the fact that Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, Oppenheimer, Dune: Part Two, and David Fincher's The Killer are all just around the corner, making for maybe my most-ever anticipated stretch of "tangible" blockbusters/thrillers, made by four of my favorite filmmakers, and I can think of nothing better to cleanse my palette/reenergize me.

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I actually don't disagree.

I loved the multiverse idea at first but between the Spiderverse movies, marvel movies (no way home, Dr strange 2, quantumania, Loki) and the flash (not even counting DC TV shows), it has been done to death by 3 studios simultaneously.

I still love what they are doing with the Spiderverse movies since they have consequences in those films.

But it feels like we have complete saturation from superhero content nowadays and the majority is bleh. There have been nearly 30 superhero films since Endgame and like 5 of them are truly great.

I'm more on the MI Dead Reckoning and Nolan train as well for now.

I watched all 9 seasons of the Flash tv show. My dad and I watched the Flash on Friday night, and we both enjoyed that movie.

Just saw it last night, and TBH, had they taken the End Game approach, and not showed any clips in the trailer, it probably would been a Top 5 superhero movie for me. Loved it and would have been floored in the theater if I hadn't seen several of the big scenes already in the trailer.

Although, since I'm not really a fan of the Flash, I suppose I wouldn't have been in the theater in the first place. Haha

Clooney could have made a great Batman with a better movie. Kind of sucks for him. I'm convinced he's the best Bruce Wayne of the bunch ever.

Watched it last night…

- Entertaining enough for what it was and a few bits that made me laugh

- Went in pretty blind and enjoyed the cameos, especially the end and the Superman(s)

- Keaton's action sequences in the Russian base were really fun, a bit CGish but nailed the Batman style. Also liked watching Kara heal in the sunlight there then go off.

- The nods back to 90s Batman, especially the musical cues, were great

- The way they stylized his running at high speed bothered the crap out of me, just looked so off

- As with most time travel movies the stakes seem light, but I did enjoy the last scene with Barry and his mom and the final courtroom scene

- Post credits scene was fun

As a whole it was…fine. One of the better DCU films but that isn't an especially high bar.

I was entertained but I can't get past the entire lesson of the movie being that you can't change the past. All kinds of emotion and the entire theme of the movie is based on it. Literal eons of permutations trying to change the past all leading to multiverse failure.

And then in the last five minutes he changes the past with little consequence. WTF?!

Other random observations:
- Flash running style as a kid is just as inept as Flash running as an adult. People need to study Tom Cruise.

- I thought the movie took a turn for worse when the Supergirl thread started. No offense to that character because I really don't care especially since it's multiverse. But it was immediate Captain Marvel vibes all over again. Same exact character. No thanks. Maybe I'm just ready for Positive Kryptonian Superperson.

- Ezra Miller much more likable in this. He was human unlike his real life self.

- It hit me watching this that George Clooneys signature move is to look away and then back again immediately. He has no reason to look away. He just does.

- I'm not one to notice CGI quality. I'm usually confused by comments on here because I don't notice differences in quality. This was ***** I don't understand the decision, purposeful or not.

- I'm done with multiverse. Let it die. Please.

So this is now streaming on MAX so I watched it this weekend. I went in expecting to hate it and I didn't, I think since Marvel has really dropped the ball recently my expectations for all super hero movies has been lowered. I just allowed myself to enjoy it vs looking for reasons to be critical and it was fine. The only thing I didn't like was rehashing the Zod fight but I understand why it was there. I actually appreciated that this movie took a stance contrary to End Game that you can't just put the genie back in the bottle when you mess with time. Don't get me wrong it was pretty sloppy and derivative of so much I've seen before but I still didn't hate it.

I actually really liked Ezra Miller in this, especially when he's having to work with his younger self. I thought he made for a really sympathetic Barry. I know so much of this was rehashed from stuff we saw in the MCU, even the scene with him and his mom in the grocery store harkening back to Thor and his Mom in End Game. I also liked when older Barry got the costume back so younger Barry had to make a out one out of a Batman costume.

Was so great to see Keaton in this back as Batman. I didn't know we were going to get as much of him in this as we got, I thought it was going to be a smaller role than we got. He's the Batman of my youth so there's always a special spot in there for him, and he played him the same way.

I liked Supergirl but they could have done more with her I thought.

With all we saw we couldn't get a CGI Val Kilmer Batman at some point? We got CGI Nicholas Cage Superman so why not?

Clooney at the end was a fun surprise, but easy to see coming.

This was a fun watch, from start to finish (through end credit scene).

The Nic Cage Superman was cool to see - the Kevin Smith Superman no one ever saw and the spider that ended up being the idea used in Wild Wild West (very poorly).

But, why did Flash not see who killed his mom? Go to the past (like he did), see who goes in/out of his house (the murderer), and tell the cops "it was that person". At least give the police someone to look at besides his dad.

There were several moments in the movie where I had to consciously remember whether or not I was watching an animated movie, like The Incredibles. I had to think all the way back to the beginning of the movie and remember that Ezra Miller was a human actor, and not a voice-over actor. CGI is one thing, but a lot of it looked as animated as Shrek.

Was I just really tired or was it animated in parts?

Keaton was good. Rest was hot smelly garbage.