 | MOVIE #1,554 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 04.18.24 Starting in 2020, I decided to watch & review the entire Nicolas Cage filmography in alphabetical order. This is 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 – Chapter 61. I have a sort of unwritten rule that I don't watch the mainstream comic book/superhero movies. But it's not what you think: it's just that I'm 100% better than that and I assume they're filth which is clearly beneath me. OK it's exactly what you think! That was a joke. Haha? It’s always the same, every single time (AKA Marty is and will always be right about this). So when I saw that Cage had a brief cameo as Superman in the DC tentpole, I thought, “shit I guess I have to watch this one for the project,” which was immediately followed by the thought, “but do I?” I ultimately decided to take the plunge on this 2-hour and 24-minute CGI hellscape for a variety of reasons. |
I have no idea if I'm missing something, going in cold to this cinematic universe and what have you. How many movies has this The Flash been in before? No clue. Don't care. Right from the opening set-piece, we see that he is friends with Batman (I think that's Ben Affleck but maybe it's just a CGI mirage?) and Alfred (Jeremy Irons slumming it) already and we're dropped into this crazy action full of big laughs. There are a few things I heard through the grapevine about this movie: 1) that it’s supposed to be funny (to what degree I'll find any of this even a little bit humorous should be interesting), 2) there is an INSANE scene involving babies falling out of a building at the beginning, and 3) there is a multiverse element to the story which leads to Michael Keaton reprising his role as Batman, which is another reason I decided to check this out.
The baby set-piece is as advertised, just bonkers beyond belief and it ends with one of the little guys in a microwave and what I assume is a meta joke about mental health at the actor Ezra Miller's expense? It's A LOT, undoubtedly, but it's also entertaining in its own way. I can only assume it will be all downhill from here.
Well, I got a little lost along the way (just realized this is the 13th movie in this DCU timeline!), but my main takeaway was absolutely, “you know what, this is not horrible!” He might be a complete psycho IRL, but Ezra Miller has a charming screen presence and, while perhaps not LOL funny, I was politely amused by some of the goofs. There’s a lot to like here, from using Danny Elfman’s original score during Keaton’s Batman moments to a host of smaller scale action sequences (like when young Barry first gets his powers) that called back to a simpler, better time for this genre. For the end of this — as I assume is the case with ALL superhero films made in the last ~10 years — is gobbledygook nonsense, a total CGI pile of vomit. You enter a void where it seems like they don’t care if the audience couldn’t possibly accept these figures as anything less than computer-generated monstrosities, low-grade cartoons. Like prisoners forced to eat slop. This isn’t a The Flash problem: I’ve seen the big climax of Avengers: Endgame and it looks just as bad. It’s in these moments when I genuinely feel like a member of a different species — how is anyone over the age of 12 enjoying this shit?
And that brings us to the Cage ‘cameo’ in the middle of it. I went in with low to no expectations and, well, the movie completely delivered in that regard…
I didn’t realize this was a non-speaking part, for starters, and I think we can drop the bullshit and state the obvious: that is a fucking cartoon! That is not a human-being!! Cage actually had to clear up speculation that he was even on the set to begin with (while also admitting that he doesn’t know what happened in the finished product either). I’m not here to judge a 140-minute movie on 40 seconds, but I owe it to my fellow Cageheads to definitively say, there’s nothing to see here, move along. Look, multiverse plots are beyond played out at this current juncture, we all know this. And there’s this really twisted trend of using the story device simply to show off different versions of a studio’s I.P. in a way that would have otherwise made no sense. So you wanna see George Clooney’s Bruce Wayne for one minute in the 2023 movie The Flash? Multiverse, baby. The 2021 Spiderman flick that made nearly $2-billion is based entirely on this gimmick. However, with the flop of The Flash and other recent comic book entries (on both sides of the isle — superhero hatred is finally a non-partisan issue!), perhaps we’re seeing a sea change. One thing I know is that I don’t give a shit about any of it either way!
Alright, next time on The Year of Cage, we are finally back on track with the alphabetical (we’re in the “O”s) watchlist: it’s the 2014 American-Chinese-Canadian action film Outcast, set during the Crusades and co-starring Hayden Christensen — it’s sitting pretty at 4% on R.T. We are so back, y’all.
THE VERDICT: 7 CAGES OUT OF 10 • CLICK HERE for all 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 Chapters + Ongoing Rankings.
CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,553 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,555 ⫸
⫷ MOVIE #1,553 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,555 ⫸
The Flash is a 2023 American superhero film based on the DC Comics character of the same name. Produced by Warner Bros. Pictures, DC Studios, Double Dream, and the Disco Factory, and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, it is the 13th installment in the DC Extended Universe (DCEU). The film was directed by Andy Muschietti from a screenplay by Christina Hodson and a story by Joby Harold and the writing team of John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein. It stars Ezra Miller as Barry Allen / The Flash alongside Sasha Calle in her film debut, Michael Shannon, Ron Livingston, Maribel Verdú, Kiersey Clemons, Antje Traue, and Michael Keaton. In the film, Barry travels back in time to prevent his mother's death, which unintentionally results in his being stranded in an alternate past. It was released on June 12, 2023.
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