The Flash speeds his way to one of the best DC films yet

First time in a very long time (a decade?) that I went and saw a movie on opening night. I’ve been looking forward to The Flash for a long time, even though I’m not as high on the DC films as I am on Marvel. This movie had a ton of buzz, despite James Gunn’s upcoming reset of the DC Universe. And I have to say, for me, it delivered.

I’m not a comics guy, but I have watched the CW Flash show, which was really good for the first few seasons. As such, I knew Barry Allen’s story. As a child, his mother was killed and his father was wrongly accused of the murder, sending him to prison and leaving Barry on his own. After receiving his superpower of super speed a few years ago, he is now The Flash, a member of the Justice League along with Batman and Wonder Woman (who show up in the opening fight), and others (who (mostly) don’t). The opening city-saving scenes are incredible and set the stage for a lot of action in this movie.

One day, Barry is doing his running fast thing when he goes so fast that he breaks through time and space itself, and goes back in time. This gives him the idea: he can go back in time and save his mom from dying. Despite Bruce Wayne’s objections that all could go wrong, Barry does it anyway, because he thinks he has a foolproof plan to save his mom without messing up the timelines. Of course, it doesn’t work out as planned, and Barry ends up returning 4 years earlier than expected. Though his mom is now alive, Barry runs into his younger self, and the timeline has definitely been f’ed up. Being 4 years ago, Zod is just now coming to earth, the plot of the film Man of Steel from 2013. In that movie (and in Barry’s timeline) Superman stopped Zod; unfortunately in this timeline, there is no Superman.

Barry and his younger self go to Batman for help, but here again, the timeline is different, and Barry’s Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) has been replaced with “an older model” (Michael Keaton). Still, Barry is able to convince him to team up and try to find others in this world who can help stop Zod. They are able to locate a super person (not giving away much when I say it is Supergirl, as she was in the promos), but things do not go well for our team. The more Barry tries to fix things, the more they go wrong, until an explosive conclusion. All because Barry cannot accept his mother’s death.

Say what you will about Ezra Miller, and he has had plenty of off-camera problems that nearly derailed this movie from ever coming out, but he (or they, as they prefer to be called) is incredible and heartfelt in this picture. Even when all the action is going down, and there is plenty of it throughout this movie, the viewer never forgets that Barry is doing everything to be with his mom again. A lot of heart in this superhero movie, and the ones that are able to pull that off tend to be the best ones. And it is super funny too; the audience with me was laughing the whole way through. I loved it from beginning to end. There’s a lot of fan service in the final act, but if you are up on your DC lore from the movies at least, you’ll be in on all of the Easter Eggs and have a great time. ★★★★★