Why Did ‘The Flash’ Bomb This Hard?

I saw The Flash this weekend, I liked it. It was fun. But I came back and looked up the numbers and Holy Bomb Batman, this is brutal.

The Flash is a massive miss by DC, perhaps not in terms of its quality (again, it’s fun!) but financially, this is essentially a disaster. A $55 million domestic opening for a high profile superhero movie like this is horrific. That’s even below the now-meme Black Adam which had a $67 million opening. It did get above Shazam! 2’s $30 million, which also, was an enormous disaster, and that movie made a comically small $130 million worldwide. But it does not appear that The Flash will recoup all of its enormous production and marketing costs.

But why did it bomb this badly? It almost doesn’t make sense, so I wanted to look at the factors.

The Last String of DCEU Movies Have Been Especially Bad – At a certain point, people are going to give up on this current iteration of the DCEU, and that’s absolutely what’s happened lately. Look at the last DC movies before The Flash, in reverse chronological order:

• Shazam! Fury of the Gods – Very bad, performed badly
• Black Adam – Pretty bad, performed badly
• The Batman – Pretty good, performed well, but not the DCEU
• The Suicide Squad – Very good, performed badly because everyone was confused about it being a Suicide Squad sequel or remake when the first one was extremely bad. Plus it was rated R
• Zack Snyder’s Justice League – Pretty good, no performance really because it was on HBO Max, mainly for Snyder superfans
• Wonder Woman 1984 – Very bad, performed badly enough to kill another Wonder Woman movie
• Bird of Prey – Pretty bad, okay opening at $84 million, worldwide gross of $200 million, not good

Past that, you start getting into the DC movies that were mostly pretty good and did well. Shazam!, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, but this is 2017 through 2019, four years ago. It’s been four years of middling-to-bad DC movies since then.

Everyone Knows the James Gunn DCU is Coming – Why continue to really invest in the DCEU when it’s about to more or less fully die with Aquaman 2 after this? While it’s been suggested that Ezra Miller could potentially stay The Flash, there are no Flash projects that have been announced. DC is moving on, so why shouldn’t audiences?

Ezra Miller – I am actually not referencing their past crime spree, as I simply do not think there is a large enough “boycott the movie” contingent because of that. But I will say that Ezra Miller is not a Ben Affleck/Henry Cavill-level movie star and a draw themselves. Black Adam was a worse movie than The Flash, but it starred The Rock, who is one of the biggest, most recognizable stars in the world. The Flash just didn’t have that with Miller.

Keaton Batman – I don’t mean to say that Keaton’s Batman was bad in the movie. He was good. But I just don’t think that Keaton’s Batman appearing in the movie was the kind of draw they were imagining it might be. Keaton’s Batman was in 1989, Batman Returns was 1992. I’m willing to bet a large chunk of the viewing audience when he was Bruce Wayne were either little kids or not even born yet. I am guessing something like Christian Bale’s Bruce appearing instead from the Nolan Era (The Dark Knight Rises was 2012) would have made a bigger impact, even if Keaton is a great Bruce himself.

Just Okay Reviews – Superhero movies are not fully made or broken by reviews, but it’s certainly helped propel Marvel over DC the last 15 years. The Flash has a 66% on Rotten Tomatoes. “Fresh” overall, not amazing, even compared to other DCEU movies. Audience scores are 84%, but that’s not unusual, and I’ve certainly seen much better. But this is part of the problem, the movie is actually pretty good! It’s just that not enough people saw it. Not nearly enough.

The point is, I don’t think it’s just one thing. But the DCEU is almost fully dead, and we’ll see if James Gunn can reverse this trend starting with Superman Legacy.

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