A lot of directors talk about toy boxes these days, with blockbuster movies being little more than elaborate playdates with the audience where recognisable dolls are mashed together. We are in the Golden Era of IP, with crossovers and multiverses a staple of mainstream cinema. Studios have realised how easy it is to pander to nostalgia, and how much of a lock it seems - if you bring back a character we love, played by the original actor, it doesn't really matter if things are any good. All that matters is that we recognise them. It has been a way to take the risk out of the equation. But The Flash might have finally broken the formula.
I suspect this trail leads back to the live-action Disney remakes. Even before that, Disney was hedging its bets by mandating Pixar continue to produce reliable sequels long after the arcs were complete, as a safety buffer alongside the new projects. But the live-action remakes feel like a turning point. We'd all seen The Lion King before, the performances were worse, and it wasn't even live-action, just more realistic animation, and still it grossed over $1 billion. Disney has since tactically opted to throw the lesser remakes straight onto streaming, but with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Little Mermaid 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:chugging along in the theatre still and Snow White set to🎃 arrive next, the strategy is still underway.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Spider-Man: No Way Home threw this into overdrive. The movie brought back both Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire, along with a host of villains. While the movie offered some closure for these characters - Garfield catching Zendaya's MJ having failed to catch Emma Stone's Gwen in his own universe was a high point - it was mainly an exercise in milking childhood memories. The arrival of e🌸ach new character was even met with a beat of silence to allow the audience to scream and cheඣer.
Since then, the idea of bringing back old characters has been leaned upon for easy profits, in the wake of No Way Home clearing 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:$1.5 billion. If we take 'successful' to mean 'beneficial to the story' then I'm not sure even Spider-Man was successful, but in any case no attempt since has blown the roof off like the return of Garfield and Maguire. We know 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Star Wars is planning this, and I expect to see a lot more of it. Some reckless executive has already pitched a version of this for 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:James Bond or Sherlock, I can feel it in my bones.
As a general rule, I don't like it. I think it shows a lack of respect for your audience and limits your ability to tell stories with any emotional weight. The 'stories' we made up as kids when we slammed action figures together were fun, but they weren't really narratives, they were just a bunch of stuff that happened. I want movies to be more than just a bunch of stuff that happens. Spider-Verse has gotten it right, by creating all original characters and worlds within the IP it can play with, rather than cashing in on cheap nostalgia. But even then the end result is fans wanting crossovers and cameos, so maybe we deserve our current media landscape. But surely we don't deserve The Flash.
As you may be aware from the copious leaks the movie has endured, there are a lot of cameos in The Flash. Some make sense in universe, at least passably: 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Wonder Woman shows up at the start during a run-of-the-mill superhero disaster and helps save the day. Others have more weight: Michael Keaton is Batman for the majority of the movie, and while the plot is as tangled as Batman's metaphorical plate of spaghetti draining any narrative power, Keaton is not treated as an action figure but as a real character, alive and with agency in his own world. The rest of them, not so much.
First off, there's Christopher Reeve. Aside from the fact that he's dead, you ghouls, all he does is stand there. Helen Slater's Supergirl just floats there in CGI too, even though Slater is still alive. I understand the idea of 'cinema as toybox', even if I hate it, but why would your action figures just stand there and do nothing? We also see Nicolas Cage reprise his role as Superman from the cancelled Superman Lives movie, but he does not interact with any character despite having actually filmed his part rather than being CGI'd in. With Adam West's Batman, George Reeves' Superman, and Teddy Sears' Jay Garrick, it's little more than a PowerPoint presentation of old archive footage.
It's like something you might see in a museum of superheroes playing on a little screen next to their costumes in a glass box, an exhibit most fans would rush past to see the toothbrush Scarlett Johansson used on the set of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I'm never going to be on board with throwing a bunch of old characters on screen and calling it a movie, but I understand that some people would be. Surely even those people want to see the characters do something rather than just be there? If not, I have a free idea for a $1 billion dollar movie - just show a picture of RDJ as Iron Man, and then a picture of Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman. Swap back and forth between them for way too long, say like 2 hours 15 minutes. Then in a post credit scene it's Chris Evans, and you think he's going to be Captain America, but really he's the Human Torch. Also Rick Flag's yellow t-shirt is there.
The Flash is an insulting movie in a lot of ways, but I expected that from the outset. What surprises me is how accidentally insulting it is, believing simply having old characters exist on screen is enough to get 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Andrew Garfield Is Back levels of fandemonium. These are some of the worst cameos I've ever seen in a movie. Though some land (the Clooney Batman reveal does feel integrated into the story), most exist to be clapped at. I suspect the applause will be quiet and scattered at best.