The official release of The Flash is less than two months away, leaving fans with mere weeks to obsess over its every detail.
The film’s most robust trailer yet recently arrived online, providing fans with their most in-depth look yet at the upcoming DC flick. It was almost instantly subjected to criticism from a certain subset of the fanbase, who quickly found time to lambast the movie for daring to lean on CGI throughout. One scene, in particular, really rankled irritable fans, who simply couldn’t get over the… lack of realism?
There is, in fact, quite a bit of CGI in every one of The Flash‘s trailers. Spoiler alert: There’s going to be a lot of CGI in the final product as well, because it’s a bit of a challenge to find a real actor capable of, you know, running fast enough to alter time and warp the multiverse. It’s also challenging to find an actress capable of flight and laser vision, leaving the team behind The Flash with no option but to fudge the action scenes a bit.
That isn’t stopping salty viewers from whinging about a key moment near the trailer’s end. In doing so, however, they’re really only serving to expose themselves as fair-weather fans. As one longtime Flash fan pointed out, the scene in question — which simply sees Barry, Barry, and Supergirl come sliding into focus from afar — is classic comic book. Viewers with a taste for the DC comics that created these characters instantly spotted it as a clear-cut comics shot, a fact that was lost on movie-exclusive fans.
User @Croc_Block was quick to point this out, sharing the scene via tweet and adding that those who hate the shot clearly “don’t read comics.”
They’re not wrong. Comics are chock-full of dazzling lineup poses just like the one seen in the Flash trailer. In fact, if more comic book movies pulled shots directly from the comics that inspired them, we’d be seeing far more petulant fans coming out of the woodwork. As it is, many studios work hard to create a line between comic book adaptations and the original product, based on the knowledge that some viewers simply don’t find the classic comic book storytelling method appealing.
Those of us who know, know, however, and we hold a special place in our hearts for scenes just like this one. It’s a bit cheesy, sure, and CGI can only do so much in making super-powered scenes look real, but we’ll take excessive CGI over never seeing those classic comic scenes hit the big screen.
As @Croc_Block went on to say in the comments of their tweet, there are “so many cool things going on” in the scene that whining about the fastest man alive looking unrealistic really shouldn’t matter. It’s not supposed to be realistic — it’s a movie about a man who can run faster than the speed of light, which (news alert) is actually impossible — it’s supposed to be fun. And fun it seems to be, based on the slew of trailers available online.
@Croc_Block continued to defend their viewpoint against naysayers in the comment section, as people complained about the “execution” of the shot, and — in classic mansplaining fashion — demanded that they locate and point out the precise panel from a Flash comic containing an exact replica of the cinematic shot. These exhausting arguments were quickly shut down by our OP, who simply had no energy for the naysayers.
At the end of the day, The Flash is a comic book movie. It’s bound to lean heavily on CGI, and — in some instances — that CGI might not look great. It could be a deal-breaker when audiences actually see the film, or it could work just fine in context. We’ll know for sure when the movie hits theaters in mid-June, but until then, we’re bound to see plenty more complaining from the sidelines.