Ezra Miller’s The Flash Is Being Called As Good As Spider-Man: No Way Home
The upcoming, frequently delayed Ezra Miller movie The Flash is at the same level of quality as the 2021 film Spider-Man: No Way Home, according to those who have seen the unreleased film. According to Deadline, the Ezra Miller Flash movie has been compared to the Tom Holland blockbuster film, which was both critically acclaimed and one of the few enormous commercial successes of cinema during global quarantine. The article does not reveal the identity of the individual specifically comparing the two movies, except to state that they were “non-studio,” i.e., not affiliated with Warner Bros. Discovery.
The Deadline article also notes that the Ezra Miller Flash movie’s release date has been changed yet again, this time bumped a week ahead to June 16. That puts the film in the popular Father’s Day weekend, where it will be competing against the Disney Pixar film Elemental (which recently released its first teaser trailer) and No Hard Feelings, a raunchy Jennifer Lawrence comedy being released by Sony Pictures.
In terms of counter-programming, it makes a lot of sense: the Ezra Miller Flash movie has been hotly anticipated for years now and is one of the primary candidates to make a dent against the still-powerful Pixar brand and a resurgent Jennifer Lawrence, who seems to be recovering from blaming her team for the success of her career. Warner Bros. Discovery’s slate of superhero films is currently in recovery mode, but if the film is as good as is being reported, it could go a long way to boosting DC Studios.
Ezra Miller first began playing the Flash in 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, introduced as part of director Zack Snyder’s ambitious plan of a shared DC Comics universe to compete with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Miller’s goofy take on Barry Allen was one of the few breezy elements of the Snyderverse (as it came to be known) and thus embraced by fans, so a solo film was inevitable.
There have been plans for a movie starring the Scarlet Speedster for years before Ezra Miller was even involved, and originally The Flash was scheduled to be released in 2018. With that in mind, the movie being moved up a week does not seem like that big of a deal. The production was chaotic (to say the least), burning through directors Seth Grahame-Smith, Rick Famuyiwa, and the partnership of John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein before settling on It’s Andy Muschietti. At some point in there, the film also lost Billy Crudup (who had previously played Barry Allen’s father), who was replaced by Ron Livingston.
The various complications of Ezra Miller’s personal life have also butted up against the release of The Flash, as the actor has faced allegations of many varieties of misconduct. Much as James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water has to be one of the highest-grossing movies of all time just to recoup costs, it may be that The Flash will have to be incredibly good just to salvage Miller’s reputation (in critics’ eyes, if not the law). We will just have to wait for Father’s Day.
