DC die-hards still stung by what ‘The Flash’ could have been had it picked up Zack Snyder’s breadcrumbs

Another day, another case of DC fans complaining about the many opportunities missed to capitalize on what Zack Snyder had previously set up in the DCEU.

The Flash owes pretty much all of its success to the Michael Keaton cameo, his presence in the trailers gave enough nostalgia to get fans to buy tickets and actually go to the theater. Not many fans, but still a lot more than would have gone had Keaton not been in the movie. But could The Flash have used the concept of the multiverse to give us a more interesting and satisfying story, instead of just using nostalgia as a crutch?

A Fan in the DC Cinematic subreddit asked fellow DC diehards whether they thought The Flash could have been a better movie had it done away with Keaton and went with a storyline that was closer to the original Flashpoint comics. 

The original storyline saw Thomas Wayne taking on the role of Batman and Martha Wayne becoming the Joker. In this universe, Bruce Wayne was the one who was killed by the mugger in the alley resulting in his parents taking vastly different paths in life. It follows that Snyder may have been planning for such a storyline in the DCEU considering the fact that he cast such big names for relatively small roles. Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Lauren Cohan are both well-known actors who could have easily taken bigger roles within the universe.

I’m sure that was the original plan since they introduced such significant actors in the roles.

Many fans agreed that they would have loved to have seen the payoff for these two characters who barely got a chance on screen.

Yes. Like why set that up and not pay it off? The Flash felt like a closing chapter to the DCEU. And I guess Aquaman is going to be the epilogue. But if they knew that ahead of time they could have done it.

Of course, with all the changes going on at Warner Bros. and multiple spectacular flops at the box office, the DCEU was shifted and some would say mangled so many times that it barely resembled the original vision. Many comments in the subreddit expressed their anger at WB for messing with the original vision too much.

the DCEU seemed to be consistently trying to do what Marvel was doing and rewriting scripts to do it, so it’s likely they found out that Marvel’s multiverse movies would be bringing back Patrick Stewart, Toby, Andrew, and wanted to do something to bring back an older actor for the nostalgia factor too at the box office.

In the end, producers decided to take the easy route and bank on that nostalgia rather than take a risk on a storyline that general audiences may not be familiar with. It was cool to see Keaton back as the Dark Knight, but it might have been a lot cooler to see Morgan and Cohan’s takes on Batman and the Joker.