The Flash (2023) Review: Michael Keaton Saves the Multiverse

🦸 This review is part of the The Old DCEU – Every Film Reviewed – watch every DCEU film from Man of Steel to the finale (2013–2023).

The Flash is the film that had no right to be good and managed to be anyway. By the time it reached cinemas in June 2023, the circumstances surrounding it were so comprehensively adverse — a lead actor in the middle of a serious legal and personal crisis, a franchise in visible transition, a production timeline that spanned COVID and the DCU announcement — that the critical baseline was “hopefully watchable.” The film that arrived is, while genuinely flawed in specific and visible ways, a substantially better piece of filmmaking than those circumstances promised.

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The Flash (4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray) (opens in a new tab)

The Keaton suit-up sequence and the Speed Force visuals deserve 4K treatment. The correct format for the film.

Director Andy Muschietti, whose IT films demonstrated that he understands grief as a structural element in genre storytelling, builds The Flash around a specific emotional core: Barry Allen trying to undo his mother’s death, and the multiverse mechanics that result from that attempt. It is, at its center, a story about the specific self-destructiveness of refusing to accept loss — and Muschietti anchors the spectacle in that emotional logic with more consistency than most superhero films manage. When the multiverse sequences arrive, they’re in service of Barry’s grief journey rather than simply franchise opportunity.

Ezra Miller is better in this film than their previous DCEU appearances. Playing two versions of the same character — present-day Barry and his younger alternate-timeline self, who grew up differently because the event Barry changed means his mother lived — allows Miller to create a genuine dynamic that the film’s middle act earns consistently. The younger Barry is lighter, less formed, more unguardedly funny. The contrast works. The dual performance is the kind of technical achievement that gets undervalued when controversy overshadows it.

And then Michael Keaton arrives. And the film becomes something else entirely.

The Return of the 1989 Batman

There is a specific cultural weight to Michael Keaton’s Bruce Wayne that belongs entirely to a generation of people who grew up with Tim Burton’s Batman as their definitive version of the character. Keaton played Batman in 1989 and 1992, then stepped away from the role when Joel Schumacher’s direction for Batman Forever didn’t align with his vision of the character. He didn’t return. For thirty years, his Wayne existed only in nostalgia and in the specific visual memory of that suit.

The suit-up sequence in The Flash is the best four minutes in the DCEU. Keaton plays an older Bruce Wayne who has been living quietly in a run-down Wayne Manor since retiring the cowl — someone who has had three decades to process what being Batman cost him and is not entirely sure, watching these young people need him, whether he has enough left. His first full Batman appearance in the film is framed with exact understanding of what it means. Muschietti doesn’t try to make it cool — he makes it right. Keaton walks into that moment with the weight of three decades of absence, and the film treats that weight with the reverence it earned.

The kitchen scene that precedes the suit-up is the film’s emotional peak outside of the final act. Keaton’s Bruce explains to Barry — in the least superhero way possible, with a bowl of pasta and a lifetime of accumulated loss — what he’s going to have to do and why. It is quiet, specific, and the performance of a man who has been playing the character for thirty years and knows exactly what he needed to say in this particular scene at this particular moment in the story.

The Multiverse Problem

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The Flash DC Multiverse Figure (opens in a new tab)

The Flash's suit design from the film is one of the DCEU's more striking costume choices. Well-detailed.

The film’s central dramatic mechanic — the multiverse allows the DCEU to acknowledge its own continuity without being bound by it — is handled with more emotional intelligence than most multiversal superhero films attempt. Barry’s manipulation of the timeline doesn’t just create an alternate universe: it creates a divergent timeline in which he got what he wanted (his mother alive) at the cost of consequences he didn’t anticipate (Zod’s invasion landing in a world without Superman). The film uses this not as a plot device but as a metaphor: you can go back and fix the specific thing you couldn’t accept, and the universe will show you what you actually broke.

The CGI controversy is real and worth acknowledging. Specific sequences — primarily the battle with Zod’s forces in the film’s second half — have visual effects that range from impressive to noticeably unfinished. Reports of production timeline and VFX crew issues explain this; it doesn’t make the sequences less distracting on screen. The film has clear production problems and specific moments where they show. This is an honest review: the CGI is not consistently good.

The ending — the timeline Barry returns to is not the one he left, and the final scene makes this clear in a way that simultaneously serves the story and provides narrative cover for the DCEU-to-DCU transition — is more emotionally effective than it has any right to be. The specific image of the timeline change is handled with a light touch that acknowledges the franchise reality without collapsing into it.

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The Flash (Blu-ray) (opens in a new tab)

The HD transfer handles the Speed Force colour palette well. Essential for DCEU completionists.

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Is The Flash (2023) good despite the Ezra Miller controversy?

Yes — the film stands on its own merits. Miller’s dual performance is genuinely compelling, Keaton’s Batman return is extraordinary, and the emotional architecture of the grief storyline works. The off-screen context is unfortunate; the film itself is significantly better than expectations.

Is Michael Keaton's Batman return worth watching The Flash for?

Absolutely. The suit-up sequence and the kitchen scene are the best four minutes in the DCEU. Keaton returns not just as Batman but as an older Bruce Wayne carrying three decades of retirement, and the result is genuinely moving.

How does The Flash connect to the DCU reset?

The film’s multiverse mechanics provide narrative cover for the franchise transition. Barry’s timeline manipulation results in a different timeline at the film’s end — a storytelling mechanism that justifies the DCEU-to-DCU character and continuity reset.

Who directed The Flash (2023)?

Andy Muschietti, known for the IT films. He brings genuine emotional intelligence to the grief-mechanics of Barry’s story and handles the multiverse spectacle with more craft than the production challenges would suggest.

Is The Flash suitable for kids?

PG-13. Action throughout and heavy themes about grief, loss, and the cost of trying to undo the past. Fine for 12+ with parental discussion. The multiverse sequences may be confusing for younger viewers without prior DCEU context.