Flash In The Pan

So The Flash movie has been out for a few weeks now, to the joy utter and delight of critics and fans alike. Naw, I'm just kidding. It's a critical bomb, a costly box office flop and a massive failure in every measurable sense of the word.

Ever since Warner Bros. first announced they were gonna make a Flash movie nearly a decade ago, the biggest question in my head was... WHY? What in the name of sanity would be the point? What could a movie possibly do that the TV series hasn't already done first?

Welp, the answer to that question is... nothing!

From what I've read, the plot of The Flash movie is basically "Flashpoint"— a storyline the TV show adapted a whopping NINE YEARS AGO. And referenced at least once a year since. Yawn! Who the hell wants to see that again? Are there really no other stories from The Flash comics they could have used?

Somehow Flashpoint's become THE defining Flash plot, and apparently has to be included in every live action adaptation from now on. Much the same way every Batman movie is required to depict the deaths of Thomas and Martha Wayne.

What an absolutely pointless endeavor.

I'm not the only one who thought the film was a waste of time— apparently most of the country did as well. Don't take my word for it though, check out its weekend box office numbers:

(Totals are rounded off, and for the domestic box office)
Week 1: $70 million
Week 2: $21 million (a SIGNIFICANT drop off!)
Week 3: $8.3 million
Week 4: $4 million

Wow! Those are some pretty grim numbers. 

So far the movie's made $263 million worldwide. That doesn't sound too awfully bad, until you realize the budget was around $220 million (that Warners will admit to). Based on its exorbitant base cost and the millions they spent to promote the thing, insiders estimate it'll have to gross at least $400 million just to break even!

That seems pretty unlikely at this point, as theaters across the nation are dropping this cinematic turd like it's infectious. Check out the number of theaters playing it over the weeks:

Week 1: 4,234
Week 2: 4, 234
Week 3: 2,718
Week 4: 1,723
Week 5: 778

Based on how quickly it's vanishing from cineplexes, there's no way it's ever gonna make back its money or turn a profit. It's gonna be a massive financial failure for Warner Bros., to the point where hey'd have lost less money by just dumping it onto their streaming service!

Warner Bros. executives are reportedly absolutely gobsmacked by the movie's poor performance, and can't fathom why it's such a flop. Yeah, that's a bald-faced lie, told for the benefit of the press. The execs knew exactly what kind of bomb they had on their hands.

As proof of that, you need look no further than the movie poster. Check out how Michael Keaton's Batman appears at the very top, looming over the Flash himself. In fact his head's way bigger than the title character's! Count in the Batplane, and Batman takes up a whopping 50% of the entire poster!

The trailers followed this same formula, focusing on Keaton's Batman, with a scant few seconds of the Flash thrown in to justify the title. 

Clearly the Warner execs knew this movie was gonna be a hard sell, so they concentrated on Batman 1988 to try & lure people to the theater.

Is it really a mystery why no one's interested in seeing it? It stars Better Than Ezra, er, I mean Ezra Miller, a mentally unbalanced actor who's been arrested multiple times on serious and disturbing charges. 

And even without the legal troubles, there's also the fact that Miller isn't leading man material, and doesn't have the acting chops to carry a film by himself.

Then there's the fact that the movie feels like it's well past its expiration date. The Justice League came out in 2017 for corn's sake, making it a little late for a sequel. Plus as I mentioned above, it rehashes a plot the TV show did nearly a decade ago. Innovative!

It also features a multiverse storyline, which was probably a new and original concept when the script was first written. Unfortunately it was delayed so long that Warner rivals Marvel Studios had time to release a whopping THREE multiverse themed films in the interim— making The Flash look like a pathetic copycat trying to cash in on the trend long after it's over.

With a pedigree like that, how could it lose?