The Flash is in serious trouble. Warner Bros.’ heavily-hyped summer tentpole has drastically underperformed at the box office, to the point where it may go down in history as one of the most expensive flops of all-time.
Fingers are already being pointed on who’s going to take the blame, be it new DC head James Gunn for confirming in advance that this is a narrative dead end for the DCU, Ezra Miller’s antics driving potential audiences away, or images of the terrible VFX being plastered all over social media.
It’s worth noting that The Flash saw several substantial delays before release, so you’d think they would have had time to make the VFX as good as possible. We’ve gone into why that might not have been the case, though since its release it’s been unfavorably compared to many other superhero movies from years past.
Now one of the more pointed comparisons has been made to Snyder’s Justice League, with the director famously working on VFX shots using a greenscreen set up in the driveway of his house during COVID lockdowns:
The difference here is that, whatever else you might think of Snyder, the man knows digital trickery inside and out. He’s heavily involved in VFX direction during his movies, and formed close working relationships with the artists working on them. We don’t know how involved The Flash director Andy Muschietti was with his various teams, but whatever happened, something clearly went wrong.
Snyder’s impromptu CGI work looks better because, despite being shot in his driveway, he’d figured out the shot he required and knew the technical process to achieve it. This attention to detail is all over his DCEU work, particularly in Man of Steel‘s still best-in-class superhuman combat.
Snyder is probably too polite to give his true opinion on The Flash, though we’d love to know his unvarnished take on what he’d have done better.
The Flash is now in theaters.