Impossible Movie: The Flash

The biggest problem one faces when making a live action film about a superhero …is that they’re making a live action film about a superhero. It’s a preposterous concept – people who can fly and throw cars and shoot laser beams out of their eyes, often clad in bright spandex. Batman, who is less superhero and more self-made crime fighter, is arguably the easiest to adapt because he has no super powers at all but, instead, must rely on training and specialized gear. He’s entirely human. Iron Man, too, is reliant upon technology; without it he’s just a smartass playboy. The X-Men have mutant powers that are each limited in function, less effective against certain obstacles or enemy mutants and are often conceived more as extensions of personality than solve-all solutions.

By rule of thumb the more powerful and outlandish the superhero the more difficult it is to challenge them and make them semi-credible and sensible--all within and 2 hour average running time. Superman: The Movie managed to slide by with a certain novelty in seeing a man fly and catch helicopters and whatnot. It was a cheery piece that followed in the wake Star Wars, so audiences were still riding high and happy enough just to see such whimsical things up on the big screen for the first time, or at least for the first time with big studio money.

However, looking back, the film no doubts commits one of the lamest deus ex machinas in cinema history when its title hero brings Lois Lane back from the dead by rewinding time via reversing the rotation of the Earth. This is a prime example of superheroes translating to the big screen with silly results. Don’t get me wrong, Superman: The Movie succeeds on charm, but it wasn’t until the sequel that audiences were treated to something a bit more compelling when fellow Kryptonians, General Zod and his cronies, busted out of the Phantom Zone and gave Supes a run for his money.

Superman Returns suffered nary the same fate only without the protection of being an original; it’s plainly disconnecting when the protagonist can solve a crisis (a giant Krypton-infected land mass) simply by lifting it from the ocean and launching it into outer space, although the earlier scene where he rescues a nose diving passenger plane is pretty exciting. When it came time for “smashing!” both Ang Lee’s The Hulk and its reboot The Incredible Hulk impressed with what can only be described as state-of-the-art exercises in FX disaster and rampage. Beyond that, how much danger can we feel for a character so indestructible and so completely meta-human?

Next summer Hollywood will try its hand at two more outrages comic book classics, Thor and The Green Lantern. To make comprehensive an Asgard demi-God living amongst regular folk or a test pilot turned intergalactic do-gooder who can project goopy, green glowing abstractions from his power ring is enough to make any filmmaker’s head spin. How well directors Kenneth Branagh and Martin Campbell, and their respective writing teams, handle these adaptations is dependent upon how well they can integrate their heroes into something relatable for the audience and/or how well they translate the visual iconography of these heroes in action, with tension or unique style, and without making it look downright laughable. No matter their extreme proportions, the common thread shared by most comic book characters is some additional aspect of their nature or origins–at least one underlying theme–that can make for engaging storytelling.

Superman and Thor resonate our yearning to believe in mythic ideals; The Incredible Hulk can be fitted with Frankenstein pathos, whose power is not a blessing but a curse; Captain America embodies the WWII motif and a general sense of nostalgic patriotism; characters like Spider Man, X-Men and the Fantastic 4 are ridden with angsty issues regarding coming-of-age awkwardness and social acceptance. The Punisher is a revenge story, Batman explores psychological content.

No superhero is too niche or esoteric for a good script to flesh-out, downsize, or tweak to make interesting: Doctor Strange could be our first psychedelic, mind-bending superhero movie and Swamp Thing would make a great R-rated fantasy horror à la Guillermo Del Toro. Hell, even Aqua Man can be refashioned into something sleeker and seized for its potential environmental themes. I say all of this, of course, in reference to the one well known superhero who, after some consideration, I think is damn near impossible to adapt into a feature film.

The Flash is one of our oldest superheroes, dating back to January 1940. Since then the mantle has been donned by various characters, a quasi-family of Flashes, linked together by one of the more bizarre storylines of the DC universe involving different Flashes who move between time and exist in multiple parallel dimensions. To simplify, the three names most commonly associated with The Flash are Jay Garrick (the Golden Age), Barry Allen (the Silver Age) and Wally West (the Modern Age); and of those three Barry Allen is arguably the most popular and often referenced. What I find notable about The Flash is just how completely square he is as a character. Allen is not an outcast from another world or a millionaire recluse or a misunderstood freak or a troubled teen.

He has no tragic back story, no real personal issues and doesn’t lead any kind of eccentric lifestyle. He’s a (generically termed) police scientist who suffers a lab accident–doused by lightening struck chemicals–that grant him the powers of super human running speed and matching reflexes. As follows, he sports himself a red body suit and fights crime for Central City. That’s it: Barry Allen, The Flash, red tights, runs fast. ‘Tis true, the comic book chronology of the character(s), spanning some 50 years, is ripe with varying dramatic arcs, victories and defeats, loved ones lost, and even death--and then rebirth. But speaking in terms of a condensed or, more likely, single threaded feature film, the origins, rise and generality of The Flash is all but void of any uniquely thematic angle.

With a little invention I’m sure it wouldn’t be difficult for a couple screenwriters to lay down for a film version some sort of conventional internal conflict or driving motivation to fight crime. So a film-worthy dramatic arc might not be impossible to conjure but finding a way to actually visualize The Flash in all his glory quickly reveals some serious roadblocks. Superman flying is preposterous, but also highly cinematic, with wind and clouds and Earth-curvature vistas.

Spider Man web-slinging between skyscrapers gives audiences a virtuoso thrill, and other mentioned superheroes can be visualized with similar effect. Easiest of all are things like Wolverine’s claws and Captain America’s shield, which, if done right, can render some dynamic action. But The Flash poses a definite problem in this department. Bear in mind that a film version is going to require multiple action sequences, which raises the question: How do you make accessible to the audience said action when the character can, in theory, move faster than the speed of film itself?

On the comic book page all is frozen in still imagery, leaving room for the reader to project the whole of action in their own mind. But film is motion – real space and real time. Therefore The Flash would be nothing more than a trailing red blur. Is this enough to sustain viewers for an entire feature length running time? Also consider that much of the narrative is dictated by geography, and when your hero can cover great distances in mere seconds, plotting, pacing and tension take on a whole new dilemma.

Perhaps utilizing bullet-time effects might help with comprehending The Flash in motion, but it might also run the serious risk of gimmicky, unoriginality and could deflate the very aesthetic of The Flash. Perhaps subtle variations can be explored, finding a happy medium where we can experience The Flash’s super speed field from his point of view but also from eyes of an average pedestrian. I don’t know.

Another keen point of interest in this particular DC universe is The Flash’s arch nemeses known as The Gallery of Rogues. They are united band of criminals that include Mirror Master, The Trickster, The Pied Piper and Captain Boomerang. Never mind them; it is the leader of The Rogues that has the most potential. His name is Leonard Snart, aka Captain Cold (a precursor to Mr. Freeze), who is possibly even simpler than The Flash. Having mastered cyclotron ‘absolute zero’ technology, Cold devised what is simply referred to as a cold gun, which fires an energy beam that, you guessed it, freezes enemies – a proven counter defense against The Flash. But Captain Cold is not some maniacally laughing psychopath. Stoic, dignified, honor-bound and highly ethical, Cold does not believe in senseless violence, kills only out of necessity and still feels remorse afterwards. The guy even enforces a no-drug rule over his Rogues! In an age when movie villains have become such disturbing agents of chaos or corruption, Captain Cold embodies a kind of old fashioned lawful evil. This brings up a larger issue anyhow where the totality of The Flash seems the product of a bygone era when a brightly colored, straight-laced superhero that can go *zoom!* was more than enough to captivate the minds of young boys. I wonder if the material is just too naïve for today’s snarky-to-cynical audiences.

Could they make a moody, self-loathing Flash movie? Should they? I’m not a comic book nerd or collector. I read them casually from time to time before discarding them entirely. It was a glancing image of The Flash, a striking one indeed, that got me thinking on the subject to begin with. I personally find the anachronistic nature of the The Flash rather charming, but, technically, am still not sure how one could pull it off as a motion picture.