What Are We Doing?
Jesus Christ.
I gotta be honest with you upfront. I have no intention of seeing The Flash. There are a lot of shitty movies that I’ll watch—for example, I saw both Transformers: Rise of the Beasts and The Little Mermaid this month—and yet, you won’t catch me dead at a screening of The Flash.
I don’t have anything against the character itself. The guy runs fast, I respect it. But a movie starring an individual with a crime spree that rivals the Zodiac Killer, which also is a lame retread of a cinematic universe that I care little about focusing on yet another multiverse story for some reason is too much even for me. The trailers make it look like every other blockbuster you’ve seen over the last few decades and I just have no investment in this type of shlock. If you do, all the power to you. Go nuts.
The thing that bothers me the most about this cinematic monstrosity isn’t that it’s yet another rehash or that it’s trying to hit you over the head with intellectual property or that it looks like shit … but that it’s become fair game to take deceased actors and throw them back into these stories for applause and to satiate a certain type of fan.
Perhaps this is a spoiler—but if you haven’t seen The Flash by now, you weren’t going to and you’re definitely better off—but bringing back Christopher Reeve for a cameo is one of the grosser moves in recent history.
For those who don’t know …
"Just ahead of its dismal release weekend, leaked footage (that was quickly taken down with a copyright complaint) revealed more of its multiverse of cameos that includes digital recreations of deceased actors George Reeves, Christopher Reeve, and Adam West during its climax.” -IGN
Reeve, who died of heart failure at 52 years old in 2004, may have had his family consent to his likeness being in the movie, but there’s something really disgusting about using an actor that passed away (who would have hated being included in something like this) to add to a story that he was never a part of. It feels distasteful at a minimum and the more I think about it, the more it feels like a shitty way to remember someone.
This feels even more resonant with the AI boom that studios are using to bypass the work of writers, creators and artists.
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This has been a big part of the WGA strike as writers want reassurances that artificial intelligence won’t be used to take their jobs, and Disney using AI as an intro to one of its newest shows feels like a slap in the face to their own employees and those striking. Also, it just looks like garbage. Have real craftspeople work on something instead of producing a green glob.
This is the best you can do? Disney is projected to be worth $164 billion. You can’t hire a real team of people to put something together for one of your signature shows? What are we doing here?
Also, maybe don’t gut Turner Classic Movies. When you have Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Paul Thomas Anderson teaming up to fix your screw-up, boy, you really botched this one. That’s all that I have right now. It’s been a long week. I’m tired. Go watch 2015’s Bridge of Spies. It’s pretty good.