Say what you will about The Flash, but one has to give credit where credit is due; it wasn’t afraid to be weird, and that’s a superhero genre rarity whose pursuit deserves respect, even if the results didn’t quite manifest in either the parts or the sum that you may have liked.
From start to finish, The Flash was drenched in a distinctly uncanny energy that permeated scene after scene, line after line, visual effect after painful visual effect. And some would argue that this energy peaked when the titular speedster first sprang into action by rescuing a legion of airborne babies from a collapsing hospital. Indeed, there was a lot to write home about with that opening scene.
But what about the thoughts that you’d rather not put on a piece of paper? Well, r/DC_Cinematic has that ground covered, and it recently mutated into one conversation that continued far longer than anyone might have anticipated.
Indeed, when those infants lined up in the sky the way they did, few could be blamed for wondering if The Flash was about to play the most horrific game of hopscotch in cinematic history. Thankfully, director Andy Muschietti drew a line there, but the more twisted audience members still got the next best thing.
From there, a swift transition was made in the form of beating one of the deadest horses in superhero movie discourse at the moment.
In any case, when it comes to being weird and taking risks, you’re always going to run the risk of being more poorly received than if you had just stayed in the same lane as your genre brethren; it seems the baby rescue scene just happened to end up being one of the blows against The Flash, and that’s even without what would have been a stairway to an R-rating and bans in an umpteen number of countries, probably. Better luck next time when you get the Brave and the Bold reins, Muschietti.
The Flash is now streaming on Max.