It’s fairly safe to say that each of the main characters involved in Justice League – Batman, Aquaman, Cyborg, Wonder Woman, Superman and The Flash – are highly anticipated in their own ways. The Flash, however, generates a very specific kind of excitement. Being one of the younger members of the team, and being a character that already has a successful show on television, The Flash has a wide audience all of his own – so there’s a lot of curiosity surrounding the effects he’ll require when it comes to the finished film, Justice League.
We have had the briefest of glimpses – in Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, and in the teaser trailer for Justice League – but how exactly will the movement of The Flash be depicted in his first, full-length, theatrical outing? Thankfully, The Flash actor Ezra Miller is currently promoting Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, and the press have asked that very question.
“Sometimes they make me run. Which I was outraged because I thought, you know, playing The Flash, this will be great, you can’t see him running so this will be easy! No, no, Ezra, we need you to run. We have this enormous treadmill that’s called, I think, The Tumblelator, that’s like 25 feet long, goes 45 miles per hour and its bouncy, like a trampoline. Pretty much a dream come true. Then, they strap me into a harness, we do all sorts of stuff. What we’re creating is a vocabulary; where choreography meets visual effects. And what we’re trying to implement is a wide diversity of tactics of how we create these moments. A lot of The Flash is his perception.”
It sounds great, and complicated, but it raises the issue of what effect this ‘team-up first’ strategy might be having on the DC Extended Universe as a whole. With regard to characters such as The Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg, decisions taken by Justice League director Zack Snyder and writer Chris Terrio with regard to the way powers are depicted will have a direct impact on those characters’ respective solo movies – due to be made and released over the coming four years.
It undoubtedly begs the question as to whether this is a factor in the pre-production issues currently being faced by The Flash movie, as it’s now lost its second director – Rick Famuyiwa – due to “creative differences.” It must be difficult to enter a project full of ambition with regard to how you’re going to implement your vision for a character, only to find that the same has already been determined by somebody else. While we wait for the director issue on The Flash to be resolved, though, we have this unique depiction of the character in Justice League to look forward to when it’s released on November 17th, 2017.