After nearly a decade of production the world finally got a movie about the fastest man alive and though there has been near universal praise for the movie I myself was left feeling rather unsatisfied with the final product.

Full Warning there will be spoilers…

But before we get into why I ended up feeling very negative towards the film let’s talk about what I loved about it, and yes there were many aspects that I did genuinely adore about it. Right out the starting gate the film seemed a tad slow, the beginning was a tad underwhelming, with the only highlight being The Flash saving a hospital ward full of babies.

But what really won me over was when the film fully embraced the nostalgia train,that is when things really began to accelerate. So, from the moment Michael Keaton appears the film gets exponentially better. He slipped back into the role of Batman like you or I would feel slipping into an old comfortable pair of shoes. As much as I love the realistic Christian Bale take on Batman and the bombastic take that Affleck gave us I really missed the more fun take that Keaton gave us.

Obviously Keaton is not doing any of the action, but he still embodies the character perfectly. And this movie gave us a more content Bruce Wayne one that won his war on crime and one that found happiness in his solitude, while also giving him one last ride to show who he really is. At first I did not like this but thinking about it, I really grew to like the idea of a content Batman over a bitter lonely old man. 

Then we have Supergirl, I have seen some people comment that Sasha Calle’s performance was dull and uninspired, but I will counter that and point out that this version of Supergirl was a teenage girl who after being stranded on Earth was captured, imprisoned and probably tortured for over half of her life. So Sasha’s choice to play the character hurt and reserved made perfect sense to me. It is just a shame that we barely had any time with her because I would have liked to have seen what she intended to do with the character.

And now we have Ezra Miller. Personally I never liked Miller’s particular take on Barry Allen, but I have come to accept that this is their interpretation of the character . But on saying that I really enjoyed his multiple roles in this movie and seeing the Two Barry’s interact was quite the treat.

An absolute highlight for me was Maribel Verdu in the role of Nora Allen. I know in a superhero movie it is weird to praise a character who has very little screen time, but in the few scenes we see her in you can truly understand why someone would be willing to risk the fate of the Universe to save this women. In fact I would argue that her final scene with Barry is probably my favourite scene in all of the DCEU, I’m not too proud to admit that this particular scene had me tearing up ever so slightly.

Big shout out to Saoirse-Monica Jackson making her big screen debut and doing a fantastic job of hiding her Northern Irish accent – I am allowed to say this I know first-hand how out accent can be very hard to conceal.

It was also nice seeing most of the original Justice League cast returning for this movie, it is a pity that we never got a cyborg cameo but I can understand the reasons for that not happening. Of course the DC cameos did not stop there we had a brief shot of Adam West, George Reeves, Christopher Reeves, Helen Slater and Teddy Sears who all appeared as DC Heroes in the past. They even had Nic Cage appear as Superman fighting a giant Spider – which references the unmade Superman Lives film. But personally I think they could have done more especially with the existence of the old Captain Marvel serials, Shazam, Black Adam, Green Lantern, Val Kilmers Batman, the 1990’s Flash and of course the Arrowverse characters. I know someone might argue that this might confuse the general audience, but how many people alive today know who George Reeves and Teddy sears are?

As for the action for the most part I have no complaints. I think it looked fluid and just fun to watch without ever getting boring. In fact I have to heap a lot of praise on the editing team, they seemed to know when to perfectly cut scenes short and when to draw them out.

Now for the things I hated…

Firstly this one is not a hate it is a dislike Kiersey Clemons was massively underused in this film. The women can act we know that but when she appeared her character, Iris, had zero chemistry with Barry Allen and in the end when it is implied they will get together it just made zero sense. It felt forced and unearned, maybe this was due to reshoots and cut scenes, but honestly it would have been better without the character of Iris.

As for my big reason for hating this movie, the one thing that made me go from enjoying it to outright disgust, it was the ending. Here we have a film that warns us about fate and how we should not try and alter the past, even in the most minor of ways because it can and will mess up the timeline, and we have Barry once again travel back in time to change things to allow his father to be released from jail. And then it is revealed that we now have a George Clooney Batman.

This just pissed me off because you had this honestly beautiful scene of Barry saying goodbye to his mom and suddenly its all laughs and jokes. Instead why not have Barry go back in time and maybe rediscover a piece of evidence that exonerates his father or find out who the real killer was. So yes that broke it for me, not only was the ending turned into a big dumb joke, but we had a forced romance that does not work and on top of that it seems the film makers forgot the message of the film.

Maybe I am being to harsh but I think this film could have been amazing if only for a few key changes. Still it is one of the best films in the DCEU, but that is not really saying much now is it.