The multiverse as a concept is all the rage right now as it’s factoring in to practically all the biggest superhero movie releases of the year — Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and, of course, The Flash. While even casual audiences are becoming much more savvy with the notion of other Earths and variants, however, the Ezra Miller vehicle’s particularly perplexing use of multiple timelines could well prove to be more of a hindrance than a hook.
The recent Flash trailer lent hard into its multiversal appeal, heavily featuring Michael Keaton’s Batman and also dropping Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne into the mix as well. Although folks have a grasp on how Robert Pattinson’s Bat operates in his own universe or that Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker is a separate entity, two very different Dark Knights sharing the screen is only leading to confusion for card-carrying comic book film fans.
Take this recent Reddit post, for example, in which one fan was flummoxed by the relationship between Keaton and Affleck’s incarnations, mistakenly believing the former to be the older version of the latter.
This particular individual’s question was soon cleared up by some helpful responses, but even a member of the r/DC_Cinematic community — so presumably someone with a decent understanding of the superhero genre — struggling to understand the multiple Batmen surely means that regular theater-goers have no hope of getting their heads around The Flash‘s mind and multiverse-bending plot.
Clearly, The Flash will be a huge treat for those who know DC inside out, what with its callbacks to everything from Man of Steel to Tim Burton’s Batman movies, but the film still needs to appeal to general audiences in order to become the humongous hit that Warner Bros. Discovery sorely wants it to be. After all, Black Adam and Shazam! Fury of the Gods have both recently shown us that a fan-pleasing cameo or two doesn’t a box office success make.
The Flash comes to cinemas on July 16.