Right then, back with a bang. I had the honour? Privilege? Punishment? Of being able to watch this before it was released, so some scenes may have been edited slightly for the final film. However, unless said final edits were to change the entire film to something completely different, I’m fairly confident that I can give my accurate take on the film.
What a mess. I don’t think I can remember when I last watched something that had such a clear lack of vision, such a mish-mash of ideas that either didn’t work or really didn’t work, in a long time. Scratch that, because that reminds me of DC’s own Justice League which came out just a few short years ago. At least that one had the excuse of being made by two completely polarised directors, although what we ended up with was one of the most generic, milquetoast blockbusters ever made, in a field that so often lends itself to crowd-pleasing mediocrity. But I digress, if I wanted to talk about Justice League, I would, but that about sums up everything I have to say anyway.
Back to the topic at hand, there are just so, so many baffling decisions. Too many fingers in the pie, methinks, but surely someone at some point was watching this all come together and said ‘come on, this is a mess’. First and foremost, how was Ezra Miller allowed to be in this film? From terrorising the people of Hawaii to the harassment and kidnapping allegations, why on earth didn’t the film makers do everything they could to distance themselves from this person? I won’t say anymore before I get too libellous, but I’m sure alternate arrangements could be made. This is just a drop in the ocean though.
Time travel/multi-verse stories are a penny-a-pound now, and this film combines the worst aspects of all of them. It’s a tick box exercise for all the worst cliches across the genres. The hero goes to find an old friend only to find they’re someone different? Multiple versions of the hero? Hero goes to find someone but uh-oh they don’t exist anymore? Really minute change that has no impact on anything (more on that later)? The threat of a collapsing muti-verse? All ticks, all in there. If DC were looking for a greatest hits video as James Gunn’s saga is about to launch, they have failed miserably. For a film which could have been so exciting and so interesting, and a farewell to the messy and muddled existing DC cinematic universe, they have achieved nothing. My annoyance at this film has only grown in the months since watching it, and I found myself frequently rolling my eyes in the cinema at the time already.
Oh yes, as all time travel seem to be required by law to do, there’s an overly simplified, kind of boring explanation of how the internal mechanics of all of this time travel and universe mixing works, which in this case is explained by an old and tired Batman with a bowl of spaghetti. Bring back ‘wibbly wobbly, timey wimey’ from Doctor Who any day of the week, because time travel analogies within fiction are almost always unnecessary. It’s a superhero film with a man who can run faster than light, another man who can’t run fast anymore and old Batman, just go with it. Why are we still doing this?
On the topic of ‘how did this make it in’, what was with the constant ‘Eric Stoltz was almost Marty McFly’ jokes? It happened first reasonably early in the film, where there’s a reference to Back to the Future and everyone other than Barry says how great Eric Stoltz is in the role, the actor who was first cast as the lead. I get that any mainstream film that even mentions time travel has to reference Back to the Future at least once, it’s a rite of passage, but this was incessant and just weird by the end. Was it all a set up for the Nic Cage cameo near the end, another actor who almost played a character? God only knows, but it wasn’t funny the first time and it wasn’t funny the twentieth. More to the point, why was this and about three other things changed as a consequence of Barry changing the past? I feel like there are going to be a lot of rhetorical questions here, but they serve to sum up my incredulity at a vast number of creative decisions made during the process of this film. As far as I can remember, Barry going back in time a few years manages to: save his mum, recast Batman and recast Marty McFly. That’s it. How weird.
However, there is one bright spot in this film, and it’s Sasha Calle’s portrayal of Supergirl. I fondly remember the TV series starring Melissa Benoist, and as cheesy and rubbish as the show often was, it had real heart. While her brief screentime doesn’t give her the time to shine that she deserved, I though Calle had a really nice performance in this film. She had the hope, and often the rage, that to me defines the character of Supergirl – she fights for what she believes in, but her anger at the injustice and terror that others face highlights the basic strokes of her moral compass. Honestly, written down that all sounds really broad and obvious, but I don’t care. She was a fun character to watch on screen.
I could go on all day about my issues with this film, but I won’t. This negativity has gone on for just about long enough. Any interesting or emotional moments were undercut by the other nonsense going on. Ezra Miller wasn’t good at acting any role they had, and as they had three that’s impressive in its own right. Michael Keaton and Michael Shannon clearly had no clue why they were there, but I don’t blame them. A payday is a payday. There’s a glimmer of light in the future with James Gunn taking charge, as I’ve enjoyed most of his superhero films so far, but I’m just so bored of it all. At least Across the Spider-Verse was good.
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