The tables have already started turning on The Flash, and the long-gestating DCU blockbuster only arrived in theaters today, not that we couldn’t have predicted this exact outcome from a mile away.
Thanks to a marketing blitzkrieg from Warner Bros. that touted it as one of the greatest superhero movies ever made, expectations had risen through the roof as a result. However, the downside is that all of those early screenings and advance previews slowly but surely began chipping away at the Scarlet Speedster’s veneer, even though it’s a perfectly acceptable comic book adaptation.
The CGI conversation simply refuses to go away, too, with director Andy Muschietti claiming that it was done intentionally despite nobody on the face of the planet believing him. Even the box office projections have been tumbling downwards, but the filmmaker remains adamant that he delivered a winner, or at least that’s what he said to IndieWire.
“Making films is a process of learning to trust your instincts and finding things that excite you. When you finesse those instincts, then everything else is secondary. You can’t make a movie that doesn’t reflect your instincts. Of course, it’s not only about my instincts: It’s the screenwriter, Christina Hodson, and the cast is incredible. Ezra had so much to do with the success of the movie. I don’t know about the box office success because the movie hasn’t come out yet, but I think it’s a cinematic success because of all our combined instincts.”
He might change his tune come Monday when the numbers begin to roll in, but it’s not as if he hasn’t just been hired to reboot Batman in The Brave and the Bold. Regardless of whether The Flash sinks or swims, he’s firmly embedded in the DCU for the foreseeable future.