‘The Flash’ Director Defends DCEU Disaster: “People Don’t See Things, They Like To Talk S*** And Jump On Bandwagons”
Far past the point of delusion and entering into ‘full break from reality’ territory, The Flash director Andy Muschietti has claimed that the film’s box office failure was not a commentary on its quality, but rather the unfair result of online s***talking delivered by people who didn’t even watch it.
Making a recent appearance on The Playlist‘s Bingeworthy podcast in promotion of his upcoming IT prequel series Welcome to Derry, Muschietti was at one point pressed by host Mike DeAngelo as to whether or not the backlash to the Scarlet Speedster’s solo outing had led him to reevaluate his approach to filmmaking, to which the director recalled, “No, we just moved on and understood that sometimes there’s a headwind and a project that you dedicated a lot of work to.”
Turning to defend the film against its critics, Muschietti then asserted, “And we’re very proud of it. I think it’s a good movie.”
“A lot of people did not see it. But you know how things are these days — people don’t see things, but they like to talk s*** about it, and they like to jump on bandwagons. They don’t really know. People are angry for reasons that are unrelated to these things.
“Of course, we had a publicity crisis with Ezra that is undeniable. And I’m not questioning that. But yeah, we love the movie. And actually, we really recommend it.”
“This may seem immaterial now, but we also had so much support from the studio, really, at a point where they could have been like, you know, backing out because of all the issues we were having with publicity. And they went all in, and we all went all in.”
“And again, we love the movie. We, you know, we gave it our blood, sweat, and tears all the way to the end. And I watched it, like a week ago, and loved it again.”
Unfortunately for Muschietti, this defense doesn’t exactly track with reality given how many people, in particular critics, saw The Flash around the time of its release, especially given that it hit HBO Max barely two months after its theatrical release, and all but a handful walked away from the experience both disappointed and embarrassed for everyone involved.
To imply that the film’s negative reputation was the result of an online hate campaign also ignores the material fact that it was just plain dogs**t in practically every regard outside of Michael Keaton’s performance as Batman.
As a Flash story, it failed to treat his 67 year publication history with any respect, eschewing core concepts like The Rogues and the Flash Family in favor of poorly adapting, of all things, Flashpoint – with no substantial payoff to boot.
As a film, it not only bore a bloated runtime and regularly insulted its audiences’ intelligence, presenting them with plot points that ranged from the absurd – Batman could have just ejected from the Batplane instead of sacrificing himself for a forced emotional beat – to the quickly-dropped – the opening scene makes a big deal out of Barry’s calorie monitor, only to forget about it pretty much – and overloading their eyes with some of the worst CGI and costume direction ever produced.
And as a general production, the fact that it starred one of the most widely-disliked actors in the modern era and was based on a similarly-panned ‘ironic’ version of Barry Allen meant the film was doomed from the start, with its fate ultimately being sealed by Muschietti’s decision to soullessly slap the likenesses of iconic DC film actors like Christopher Reeve and Adam West onto CGI recreations of their persons and use them as a cheap ploy to win fan overs.
All in all, The Flash was a textbook definition ‘bad movie’ – and no amount of gaslighting from Muschietti will change that.
Insultingly enough, this is not the first time Muschietti has offered such a dismissive excuse for The Flash‘s failure.
Speaking to the topic in January during an appearance on the La Baulera Del Coso live show, as hosted by independent Argentinian media network Radio Times TU, the director told his hosts, “When you make a movie there are some things that you can’t control, and one of them is that when actors have a PR crisis. It was a big blow against the film. Then things added on, like superhero genre fatigue.”
“Years later, I was finding out things like, that when a movie like this comes out, there is an expectation to bring in all four quadrants of the audience,” he continued, referring to a Hollywood demographics standard which divides audiences up into the four distinct categories of ‘Men Over 25’, ‘Men Under 25’, ‘Men Over 25’, and ‘Men Under 25’. “When you make a $200 million dollar movie, the studio is expecting to bring even your grandmother into the cinema. And I think, in private conversations, I was later finding out things like, that a lot of people don’t care about Flash as a character.”
“Half of the four quadrants, the two female quadrants, there are a lot of women who are not interested in Flash as a character,” he concluded. “And well, these are things that were setbacks for the film.”
And while the arguments disproving Muschietti’s claims are as numerous as they are easy to find, perhaps the most simple is the fact that the hero’s solo series on The CW ran for nine seasons, which a show does not do without significant support from both male and female viewers.
