"The Flash": Farewell to the superhero

Special author: Zhang Jia

After the screening at the Cannes Film Festival, "The Flash" received rare praise from superhero films, which continued uninterrupted in subsequent secret screenings. Although Rotten Tomatoes only gave a freshness of 72% when it opened the score, it did not affect the audience's praise in the slightest.

After "Avengers 4", this pomp and circumstance has become difficult to see. Superhero movies have entered their own recursive dilemma, new characters cannot provide novel imagination, old characters can only rely on acquaintances to walk fans cameo, only "Guardians of the Galaxy 3" is still tirelessly interpreting the playful character of that group, and is only affirmed with a sad difference.

Four years after "Spider-Man: Far From Home", Marvel has only won this brilliant record. Similarly, DC falls into the same dilemma. The originally low-production DCEU has been continuously postponed during the epidemic, and those high-profile characters (Halle Quinn, Wonder Woman) are surprising. Rolling Guide brings Marvel's exaggerated, playful style into the serious DC Universe, once saving the Suicide Squad and its spin-offs ("Task Force X: All Assembled", "Peacemaker"), but it cannot change the fate of Shazam and Black Adam. ("Joker" and "The New Batman" work wonders by exploiting the true potential of DC Comics in a universe that has nothing to do with the comic book market, a path that even Nolan never imagined.) ）

Task Force X: All Assembled

However, "The Flash" found some kind of breakthrough possibility that belongs to DC. Compared with Director Za's "Man of Steel", "BVS" and "Justice League", it adds too many uncool jokes (even a serious bat will analyze its childhood shadow under the action of the lasso of truth), but compared with Marvel's gags, it still has not given up concave love, those human secrets and warmth.

The main plot of "The Flash" is very concise, and it is not even a spoiler: young Barry Allen missed his mother, used his fast stunts, violated the theory of relativity, broke through the time barrier, and returned to the past to save his mother, but caused chaos in time and space. He teamed up with himself in the new space, Batman (Keaton's Bat), and Supergirl, remade "Man of Steel", unsuccessfully fought against General Zod, and his self in the new time and space gradually blackened, and finally gave up saving his mother and returned to the future.

The movie "The Flash" is adapted from the 2011 comic book "The Flashpoint Paradox", which was made into the animated film "Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox" two years later. Compared with comics and animation, the biggest change in the movie version is that the Flash returns to the past and meets his past self, a self who has changed history, celebrates birthdays with his mother, and has new possibilities, and the two fight side by side and appear on the screen. But in comics and animated stories, the Flash who returns to the past becomes his past self and gradually has memories of a new time and space.

This adaptation proves that DCEU's cosmology is extremely similar to Marvel's (MCU), both abandoning Einstein's bubble model and adopting the river model, that is, there is a main cosmic timeline, everything develops according to the main line, and what happened will happen again, but the subject of time travel will maintain its uniqueness and will not become its past self (watching the 2012 New York War in "Avengers 4", the Flash will also meet a younger self). However, any contingency that breaks through the "sacred timeline" will cause instability in the universe, causing a large number of forks in the only main line, and many new possibilities (the female Loki Sylvie kills Kang of the Time Authority, causing the time fork to break through the red line; The Flash goes back to save his mother, and multiple spherical parallel universes collide with each other).

This cosmological setting helps the film focus on the Flash in the main timeline. Although there are still many other superhero cameos, the film abandons the title of "Justice League" in the anime and becomes the Flash's solo movie. He intervenes as the Other into a new time and space, leading us to see the changes and differences in this world. At the same time, the story closely revolves around his family emotions and self-perception in order to confront the blackened version of himself, symbolizing the fission of the character's personality. Even the special effects have changed for this: it is difficult to see the quick shots of the Flash saving people or attacks, and more to realize the slowed world from his own perspective; Director Anders also responded that a large number of abstract and distorted visual effects accompanied by supernatural force were deliberately done by the film to allow the audience to substitute the main perspective of the Flash.

This focus has become the key to the good reputation of "The Flash". When Wonder Woman regains the emotions of the past, Thunder Shazam "the most important thing is family", and Black Adam one-sidedly boasts about special effects and ignores the Shazam universe, "The Flash" points out a balanced method of DC comics superhero movies: while introducing relevant characters and echoing the plot of the series, excavating the character and emotional space of the characters, and moving towards the characters' own world under the arrangement of large-scale scenes.

DC's earliest comic book superhero movies can be traced back to 1966's "Batman: The Big Movie", and then the Superman series and the Batman series have been unfolded one after another, with different styles of films, and there is no lack of some classic works, such as "V-shaped vendetta", "History of violence", "Watchmen" and "The Dark Knight", but until the third Batman "The Dark Knight Rises" directed by Nolan in 2012, DC did not combine the movies into a series and let the characters collude with each other.

At the same time, Marvel began to build the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) from 2008's "Iron Man", connecting many movies in the first phase through ending Easter eggs and detailed associations, and finally concentrated in "Avengers". Although the box office of the first few films was only about 500 million, the global box office of "Avengers" in 2012 reached an unimaginable 1.5 billion US dollars at the time.

Superman: Man of Steel

This great success deeply rocked DC. So starting with "Superman: Man of Steel" in 2013, DC also began to form its own extended universe (DCEU).

However, compared with Marvel, the complex personnel changes at the top of DC have led to the lack of macro planning of the series, the lack of connection between the stories of various films, and the one-sided pursuit of the blockbuster market, which has also caused those familiar DC characteristics to the audience to no longer exist: the irrational impulses of the characters in the face of extreme events, moral ambiguity, human nature distortion, and unsparing criticism of political and social issues, which have become historical memories and are excluded by the DCEU. Only "Wonder Woman" and "Aquaman", two modest commercial films, are still successful.

"Aquaman"

And this time, DC finally learned the lessons of the previous game and also learned from the Marvel experience. In the past ten years, many roles have been accumulated, and superhero movies have also entered a new stage in Hollywood film history, and DC has the capital to carry out a big counteroffensive.

The first is the big IP cameo. Since "The Avengers", superhero movies have found that several IPs placed in one movie can reap unexpected market responses. Since then, Marvel has gradually placed other characters in his personal movies, and by the time of "Captain America 3: Civil War", it was already like another "Avengers", and in the fourth and fifth stages, this method was used with pleasure.

"Zack Snyder version of Justice League"

Similarly, DC also tried to follow suit in "BVS" and "Justice League", but because the production company's editing was contrary to the director's style, the quality of the film was seriously affected (only the four-hour version of "Justice League" on HBO lived up to expectations). "The Flash" plays well on the advantages of IP cameos. In this film that revolves around Barry Allen personally, we can see many familiar faces in the first scene: Big Ben Batman, Butler Afu, and Gail Gadot Wonder Woman, who appeared with BGM at key moments. As the story unfolds, we can also see the legendary Supergirl, as well as General Zod and his men in "Man of Steel".

The appearance of General Zod provides the possibility of plot connection. There is a tight timeline in the MCU, and we can tease out the history of this universe through characters, events and key details, and subsequent films are cleverly linked on this basis. But the messy DECU lacks that foundation. "The Flash", as the finale of this series, goes straight back to the beginning of the extended universe, remaking "Man of Steel" once with different characters, reminding us of the Superman who was not present, and providing another tragic ending to the story.

Superman: Man of Steel

In addition, DC's long history of comic books also provides a path that is difficult for Marvel to reach, that is, the return of classic actors. In "Spider-Man: Homeless", Marvel made an attempt to call back the original Toby Spider and the "Extraordinary" series of Garfield, earning enough feelings. But the film is a mess in order to achieve the climactic shot of the three worms in the same frame, the plot arrangement and character shaping are a mess, and even the key parallel universe setting is again caused by the Dutch brother's "Virgin Heart" and has nothing to do with the main plot of the MCU.

But "The Flash" cleverly uses a parallel universe setting, allowing the Flash to return to the tampered past, a fork of the timeline, and here it is logical to insert the original Batman Michael Keaton in 1989. In the parallel universe, we see Superman played by Nicolas Cage, and at the end of the film, the third generation of Batman George Keoney appears.

Today, when comic book movies are stimulating and boring, "The Flash" has not got rid of the stereotypical routine of superheroes: lack of aesthetic CG special effects, discordant scene scheduling, lack of imaginative action design, and even important clips of performing God's speed to save babies, which also make people nostalgic for the classic bridge of Quicksilver in "X-Men: Apocalypse". Coupled with the commonplace settings of traveling through time and space, parallel universes, and one person playing two roles, it is difficult for "The Flash" as a commercial blockbuster to provide a little new fun.

But the Keaton Bat throughout tells us that this movie is not just a superhero film after Marvel, it unfolds in a way that relives old dreams, taking us back to the era when the superhero theme has not yet developed deformed, those Batman logos with yellow backgrounds, retro and exaggerated cape designs, and the Batmobile. At that time, the character personality would not be influenced by market research, the script writing had not yet been patterned, and the director's editing power could still be in his own hands.

As a result, "The Flash" accidentally touched the ontological level of the comic book movie, which used all the superhero techniques, but it seemed to be an irony. It goes back to superhero prehistory, stands at the end of the DCEU, and summarizes everything for nearly half a century.

Rolling Director announced that DC will officially enter a new phase, the new series is called DCU (DC Cinematic Universe), where the cast and story will all be reconstructed. The Flash became the final work of the DCEU. In the comics, "Flashpoint" is also a major event in the main plot, after which DC movies entered the "N52" era (indicating that there were 52 new parallel worlds in the DC multiverse known at that time). At the end of the movie, Barry Allen returns to his own world, thinking that everything is back to normal. But what he saw was a strange Bruce Wayne. George Clooney, who is over 60 years old, cannot continue to play Batman in the new series, and this surprising and unfamiliar ending makes a surprise end for the DCEU. Its abruptness is a wonderful parody of superhero blockbusters, throwing us back to the humble and sincere era of "Batman and Robin".

After fully boasting of all the elements of a superhero movie, "The Flash" ushered in an anti-climax. In traditional superhero movies, the climactic scene near the end is usually a battle to the death with the villain, where the most expensive shots and the most gorgeous special effects are stacked. But in contrast, after losing to General Zod many times, the Flash meets his blackened self and interprets the time setting, but there are no long-term spectacle scenes. Instead, at the climax of the story, the movie has the Flash go back to the supermarket and give up saving his mother. This indoor drama was given a long time, the two actors calmly performed with the help of delicate lines and movements, the picture always stayed in close-up shots and close-ups, the expressions of the characters were overwhelmed, and the rare true feelings in superhero movies were revealed here. After two hours of running and noisy, we were unexpectedly greeted with a sincere touch, mother and son loved each other, and death was inevitable, as if all these absurd stories were rationally explained.

The Flash is a vindictive blend of all superheroic elements, unexpectedly triggering an irony of the film itself, and at the end of the story, it ends in an almost anti-superheroic approach. The praise it has received comes from the deep digging of inner emotions after focusing on the main body of the characters, and perhaps from our desire for simple emotions after being bombarded by superhero audio-visual.

About the author: Zhang Jia, a doctoral candidate in liberal arts, an academic worker, writes novels, focuses on literary and intellectual history, film criticism, cultural studies, and French postmodern theory.