They say good things come to those who wait, but whoever came up with that aphorism clearly wasn’t talking about The Flash. After an entire decade of development, the Scarlet Speedster’s first solo movie hit theaters this past weekend, and it has sadly proven to be as big a bomb as fans had feared all along. While it has to be said that many out there enjoy the film, many do not (to put it lightly) and it’s looking destined to die a horrible death at the box office.
That makes it all the more tragic that there was the potential for Warner Bros. to deliver a much more fan-pleasing version of The Flash. As they watch Ezra Miller’s Barry Allen throw a baby in a microwave, Snyderverse loyalists are crying into their popcorn imagining the superior Flashpoint adaptation that was originally teased many Comic-Cons ago.
At SDCC 2017 (three years after the movie was initially announced), The Flash was temporarily rebranded as Flashpoint with Jeffrey Dean Morgan expected to reprise his role as Thomas Wayne from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. This then heavily suggested his on-screen wife Lauren Cohan would be back as Martha Wayne. Likewise, Ray Fisher’s Cyborg once upon a time had a huge part to play in proceedings. And comic book readers will know Wonder Woman and Aquaman have major contributions to the Flashpoint narrative as well.
As @UberKryptonian went viral for pointing out on Twitter, what “baffles” them about The Flash is that WB was “so gung-ho” about adapting Flashpoint and yet it jettisoned “the actual Flashpoint storyline and the killer cast” that was already lined up and ready to use.
If The Flash had managed to make it to the screen in the bygone days before James Gunn’s incoming reboot, we may well have had a film that was both more faithful to the comics and the original DCEU. Heck, even bringing Morgan and Cohan back for this version of the movie could’ve worked, as a kind of final send-off for the Snyderverse. Alas, we got babies in microwaves instead.