So I dunno if it's because I'm getting old and whatnot but this has to be one of the most confusing convoluted messes I've had the misfortune to sit through since the last Marvel multiverse mess. Seriously what did I just watch? The current trend of having a ''multiverse'' is way way WAY out of hand geez! This all reminds me of the old days watching 'Red Dwarf' on BBC2 which would often have plots involving different versions of characters and time or dimension jumping etc...And even back then I didn't really like a lot of it as it all becomes too messy and the stakes go out the window. Well low and behold that's essentially what we have now, no-stakes movies where anything and anyone goes because it doesn't matter anymore because muh multiverse.
The start of this movie was just bad, so so bad! The Flash has gotta save all these babies that have just been flung out of a skyscraper in the most epic case of bad CGI I have seen since the last DC CGI mess. I mean was it supposed to be dramatic? Surely you'd think it would be but apparently not judging by the crap visual gags and stupid faces the Flash is making. It's also the start of many many different cameos from many many different versions of characters with Ben Affleck as Batman (in the worst Batsuit ever) and Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman.
From there I just felt like I was being pummeled with a never-ending stream of more and more elaborate machinations to show Barry's past, present, and his inevitable insertion into another timeline which leads to so much multiverse madness. Honestly the sheer amount of exposition crammed into this movie is insane. But this all leads to the main reason why I watched this movie (along with the majority of people my age), Michael Keaton as Batman and all his Batman stuff. Did this suffice? Well yeah it kinda did. It satisfied me to some degree. The fact they recreated various rooms in the Wayne mansion from back in the original movies was impressive. The Batcave, a glimpse of the Batmobile, the greater use of the Batwing, a very little nod to the 89 version of the Joker, and of course more Batman 89 kickassery was all pleasing to an aging warhorse such as myself.
But that's as far as it went for me, the brief scenes of Batman 89 goodness were lovely and I found myself simply wanting to see more of just that. I wanted more nods and winks, I was wondering why Batman 89 didn't call up other characters from his timeline to help, Catwoman? I found myself also liking the various other brief alternate universe cameos we get in the big finale too. But here lies the problem. I enjoyed all these little cameos and was interested to see more of them, but I was completely uninterested in the actual main story surrounding the Flash. The entire Supergirl angle merely offered the worst CGI of the feature and I can't remember if that battle was in the original Henry Cavill movies or not (it's all one superhero blur to me).
But yeah the entire sequence where one version of Barry Allen is going back in time over and over to try and get a result where Supergirl and Batman 89 survive is pretty much a good summation of this entire multiverse craziness frankly. No stakes, and even when it appears there might be some consequences, chances are they can always multiverse their way out of it somewhere along the line. Most of this movie is a huge bad-looking CGI blur with some of the worst fight sequences I have ever seen. I know it sounds cliche to say the effects were ''like a videogame'' or ''in-game videogame sequence'' but oh boy do these fit the bill here. The movie looks truly terrible half the time with obvious CGI humans being thrown all over the gaff like obvious CGI ragdolls. Everything has that horrible plastic CGI sheen to it. The effects used to paste Michael Shannon's head into his Kryptonian battle suit were laughably bad, I could go on.
This just felt overwhelming...in a bad way. It looks like there's been a lot of thought and imagination put into the feature but that's an illusion. Essentially it's a headache of a plot trying to cover lots of bases whilst sticking lots of nostalgia and nerd treasure into the fold seemingly in an attempt to please everyone. In the end this just doesn't work, or it didn't work for me. I just didn't care, I no longer care about these superhero flicks and their hyper CGI noise. Why do the effects look worse now than they did back in 2008 with the original Marvel movies? Explain this to me. And who else was more into the Nic Cage Superman universe than everything else? All this movie did was show me how much I wanted a Nic Cage Superman/Michael Keaton Batman team-up flick, and what we missed with a Nic Cage Superman franchise.
4.5/10
