In some odd way, Ezra Miller’s “complex mental health issues” enhance his interpretation of Barry Allen in the DC Extended Universe “The Flash.” This Barry Allen is, in the first scenes, a young man with darting eyes, filled with restless impatience and emotional instability. By day, he’s a police forensic investigator for Central City, but his side gig is protecting the public as a member of the Justice League. 

The Flash is given assignments by Alfred Pennyworth (Jeremy Irons), when Bruce Wayne/Batman (Ben Affleck) or Diana Prince/Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) is busy elsewhere. Today is no different as he’s waiting for his usual breakfast–something with too many calories for a normal person to eat, but the Flash has a high metabolism and running on empty means that not only will he figuratively crash and burn, the world might literally crash and burn as well. 

If you don’t know the Flash’s backstory, Barry Allen feels his father was wrongly convicted of killing his mother. In the TV series, some impossible event involving lightning surrounded his mother’s death. Here, the matter is a can of tomatoes and his father’s trip to the grocery store, with Barry only witnessing his father at his dying mother’s side with a large chopping knife sticking out of her bleeding body. Intent on eventually proving his father’s innocence, Barry Allen became an forensic investigator. According to the DCEU (as opposed to the comic books), during an internship at a lab, a lightning bolt comes through the open windows and strikes Barry while also causing various chemicals to spill on him. This gives him the cosmic energy field and force which is based around velocity and movement that is called Speed Force.  

During one of his current missions, he learns that he can go back in time. He asks Bruce Wayne, what if he could go back in time to save his parents would he? Of course, we all know about the butterfly effect. Or at least we know about how the death of one butterfly could send a ripple of changes through time as portrayed in the 1952 Ray Bradbury short story, “A Sound of Thunder.”

That’s a bit different from the chaos theory and the usage of the term by mathematician and meteorologist Edward Norton Lorenz. 

• Understanding the Butterfly Effect

Yet ultimately, the meaning is the same: That a small change can cause larger consequences. Bruce Wayne warns against Barry Allen going into the past.

Bruce Wayne: If you were to go into the past, you have no idea what the consequences could be.

Barry Allen: Bruce, I could fix things. If I could just go back in time, I could save people. I could save my mom. I would save your parents.

Bruce Wayne: You could also destroy everything. 

Bruce Wayne reminds Barry Allen that the pain of losing his parents made him what he was: The Batman. Who would Barry Allen be if his mother doesn’t die? 

Barry decides to change his history without really interacting with his parents. As a result, his mother never dies, but Barry, instead of returning to his present, finds himself face-to-face with himself as a college student in a new version of the past. This version of himself is more outgoing and about to go on a date with Iris West (Kiersey Clemons). This might be all Back-to-the-Future-ish fun if Michael J. Fox never replaced Eric Stolz and if  evil Kryptonian General Zod (Michael Shannon) didn’t show up. Future Barry knows that only another Kryptonian can defeat General Zod so he seeks out this timeline’s Bruce Wayne/Batman (Michael Keaton) to find Superman.

While this isn’t a perfect film, even as far as superheroes go, “The Flash” is surprising entertaining and shoots arrows that will open wounds that bleed nostalgia. Mind you, it has already been established that other iterations of each superhero exists. In the Arrowverse, the TV version of the Flash (played by Grant Gustin), encounters Ezra Miller’s Barry Allen in the zone of Speed Force during the 2020 crossover event “Crisis on Infinite Earths.” Even the older version of the Flash, John Wesley Shipp (Earth-90), who played Barry Allen on the CBS TV series from 1990-1991, appears in the Arrowverse. If there were an award for best usage of cameos, the Flash on TV and as a film would surely be nominated. 

While Gustin’s Flash is more likable and has the kind of charm you wouldn’t mind being around, Miller’s Flash is the kind of geek you’re not sure if you can trust, who may or may not be responsible or reliable and is more likely to make you nervous. And I’m saying that as a geek. 

There were moments in the Flash that made me smile and hit me hard in the heart. Director Andy Muschietti keeps the action flowing and the CGI isn’t too overwhelming because this is at its center, an emotional story about a son trying to save his mother. If I had seen this film two years ago just after my mother died (29 May 2021), this might have shattered me and she lived into her 90s.  

Unfortunately the biggest speed bump here is neither Muschietti nor Christina Hodson’s script gives us a worthy villain. I’m not saying that as a criticism of Michael Shannon’s acting, but the limitations given to him in time and lines. He’s just a minor bump in the road instead of a vividly developed bad guy emanating evil as deep as a sink hole. Maybe he’s have been an okay guy if he’d had a better mother. Who knows. 

 I won’t give anything away, particularly the surprise ending, but I will say that I could have done without the post-credits scene. Still this film packs more smiles per hour than expected in it 144 minutes. 

“The Flash” is the 13th film in the DC Extended Universe.  The film will have it’s premiere in Los Angeles on 12 June 2023 and will be released in the US on 16 June 2023.