Hello and welcome back!
Today is going to be a little different. I’ve chosen to focus on two superhero movies that share the same core point: Undoing a personal tragic event in the past that ultimately risks destroying all of existence.
Although I don’t believe in the practical existence of time travel (or the multiverse, sorry Hawking), I do love movies that deal with it. The recent run of superhero movies has also shifted into this very narrative as they try to use the multiverse to raise the stakes.
The big two, Marvel and DC, have tried to provide their own definition of these two concepts. For me, it doesn’t matter how you choose to define time travel and the multiverse, just make sure your own story sticks to the logic you’ve created.
And with that… here’s a comparative review1 on Spider-Man: No Way Home and The Flash.2
Spider-Man: No Way Home
Genre: Superhero
Language: English
Gist: After being framed for a terrorist attack and being outed as Spider-Man, Peter Parker decides to cast a spell that erases everyone’s memories. But it comes at the cost of the whole multiverse collapsing.
Short Review: NWH was one of the biggest, most anticipated movies of the year — one that I was so excited about that it kept me jittering awake the night before the premier. It was a cultural moment.
Largely perceived as a three-film coming-of-age series, the few chinks in NWH’s plot were overshadowed by epic cameos that were 30 years in the making, and the emotional, heartbreaking arc of Peter learning that growing up involves a lot more sacrifices than we bargain for.
SYWT? If you’ve been a big Spidey fan through the ages, this one should definitely be on your list.
The Flash
Genre: Superhero
Language: English
Gist: Barry Allen is the fastest man alive… maybe fast enough to go back in time and save his mother from dying. But will the laws of time let him get away with it?
Short Review: The Flash has been ambitiously positioned as a film that is supposed to wipe off the DCEU’s failures and prep the grounds for a new era. With comedy that perks you up to no end, all the versions of Barry you encounter in this film are going to find a place in your heart. He not only triumphantly carries the movie, but also renews hope for DC’s future.
However, there is something to be said of the fact that none of the Batmen or even Supergirl leave any impression on you.
SYWT? Surprisingly, yes! This is one of the better DC films.
Contains spoilers :)
Spidey’s problem: Peter decides to make everyone forget that he is Spider-Man. But the slight mess-up in the spell causes tears in the fabric of the multiverse. Because of this, Mr Bad Guys now cross into Peter’s world.
Flash’s problem: Barry figures out that he can save his mother by altering the past just in a teeny-weeny way. Still, any change to the past, changes the whole timeline, with the possibility of different universes crashing into each other.
Peter and Barry both find themselves in a situation where they desperately want to change the past. Barry can literally time travel, while Peter has access to a not-so-friendly neighborhood Dr Strange.
But what happens next is a thing that sets the two characters apart: Barry immediately realizes what a bad idea this was, whereas Peter doesn’t understand or accept the gravity of his actions3. And this in turn, determines who the bad guy is.
For Peter, he has to tough it out with the multiple villains he faces. The fights are commendable, but what’s even better is his solution — help these bad guys find redemption and send them back home where they can lead better lives. On one hand, I wasn’t really impressed by the villains, nor did their fights raise the stakes for me. In fact, I thought a lot of the structural plot points were weak. On the other hand, Peter’s compassion and childlike hope of second chances and seeing the best in people was quite special.
In Barry’s case, I do like that an alternate version of him is the main villain because it’s always a woefully wonderful crisis to see characters fight themselves — Even when they win, they lose a part of themselves. The Flash could’ve milked this plotline… But no. There was no build-up, the villain just randomly appeared at the end, and worse yet, they don’t even have a showdown! He was killed off just as randomly as he was brought on screen. What an utter waste!
Where Peter and Barry converge: Sadly, for these superheroes, it comes down to personal happiness versus everyone’s livelihood. Peter and Barry both ultimately accept that they have to let go of the past. There is no way to cleanly deal with this mess other than by shouldering the sacrifice. For Peter, this means erasing his existence in everyone’s memories, and for Barry, he has to go back in time, undo his actions and let his mother die.
In a weird way, these films also seem to say that our personal tragedies keep the multiverse afloat. Food for thought and some literary reading there.
NWH knocked it out of the park with the way it paid tribute to Spider-Man’s live-action legacy.4 The whole time, you’re just staring at the screen with stars in your eyes. Marvel needed an Endgame-level win, the kind of hype that breaks records, and this was it!
But I do have to wonder if you can forgive the movie’s plot inconsistencies just because it looks good and carries nostalgic weightage. This made it impossible for me to rate the film anything above 8½.
I cannot express how surprised I was that I liked The Flash. Most of it has to do with Barry’s character and the film’s treatment of physical comedy. The direction was astounding, even if the CGI looked cheap.
Moreover, I was impressed with the simplicity of the Flashpoint. Other renditions of this story have Barry either figuring out who killed his mother or/and fighting off the murderer to stop her from dying. In fact, Barry’s quite obsessed with uncovering the killer’s identity (as any bereaved child should be). But instead of giving us something we’ve always seen, the film shows us that superheroes can save lives with just a can of tomatoes5.
As mentioned earlier, both these movies heralded the multiverse in full swing for their respective silver-screen franchises6.
But Marvel’s time travel and multiverse logic hasn’t always been well accepted, with too many of its movies/shows being riddled with loopholes — not to mention, some of their central plot points are getting too vanilla now. In that sense, NWH’s introduction to the multiverse may have left fans more disgruntled than before.
In fact, during The Flash, DC even dared to subtly make fun of Marvel’s multiverse explanation and came up with a “better” one themselves. This is important for DC — they’re at a point where they can start making better movies than Marvel on a clean slate. And The Flash is refreshing enough to give fans hope.
While the Marvel vs DC argument will go on till kingdom comes, it’s obvious that Spider-Man: No Way Home and The Flash served a larger-than-life purpose than drove their respective franchises forward.
First of all, I want to say thank you for letting me indulge in this unwonted long-form review that I promised I wouldn’t get into 🙈 But a change is needed every now and then, right? Plus, I had too many feels about both these movies in tandem.
What are your thoughts about NWH and The Flash? Come talk to me in the comments below!
Before I go:
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What’s stuck in my head7:
With all my love,
sal.
Warning: my review won’t be from a self-proclaimed comic book expert's POV. You can go to Reddit for that.
It truly disappoints me that Ezra Miller is capable of playing such complex characters and yet has a horrible rap sheet in real life. Please choose to watch The Flash as per your moral discretion.
Peter’s naive actions in NWH have always grated me, even though Spidey is supposed to be my absolute favorite.
But Across the Spider-verse did it better.
This reminds me of “Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain.”
Granted that Marvel teased it way earlier in its TV shows. But it has always been miles ahead of DC planning.
The 13th issue’s song had to be TS, come on.