Yahoo News The Flash filmmakers break down key comic book differences
When it comes to The Flash, there's an entirely separate multiverse that exists outside of the film's plot. Various directors and screenwriters came on and off the project over the years, including Seth Grahame-Smith and Rick Famuyiwa, bringing with them their own differing takes on how to make a solo movie in the new DCEU about the Scarlet Speedster. When filmmaker Andy Muschietti (Mama, the It films) got the job, some of those narrative bricks had already been laid.
"I can tell you that I read all the iterations," Muschietti tells EW over the phone in an interview with Barbara Muschietti, his sister and fellow producer on The Flash. "My pitch was essentially about the emotional core and heart of the movie. I knew I could do a superhero movie with all the traits: scope, size, spectacularity. But probably the most difficult thing was to provide a strong emotional story. And we found it."
Warner Bros. Pictures; DC Comics 'The Flash' movie versus the 'Flashpoint' comic book
The final version of The Flash that will hit theaters this Friday comes with a screenplay written by Christina Hodson (Birds of Prey) and a screen story by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (co-directors on Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves), as well as Joby Harold (Transformers: Rise of the Beasts). (Daley and Goldstein were two of those filmmakers that were once in the running to direct.)
Inspired by the 2011 comic book event Flashpoint, written by Geoff Johns, The Flash sees Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) tapping into the Speed Force to move so fast that he's able to travel back in time. He changes the past in order to prevent his mother's murder and his father's false arrest for the crime, but doing so creates a new reality. The superheroes of the Justice League that the world once knew no longer exist, which leaves Earth defenseless when General Zod (Michael Shannon reprising the role from 2013's Man of Steel) comes to invade. Barry is forced to team up with his past self to find this reality's Batman (Michael Keaton) and Kryptonian (Sasha Calle's Supergirl) to save the world.
The Muschiettis discuss adapting certain elements from the comic book source material, but not everything.
"We didn't want to give the audience a literal adaptation"
Warner Bros. Pictures; Could Jeffrey Dean Morgan reprised his 'Man of Steel' Thomas Wayne role for 'The Flash'? The director says they weren't debating that.
Andy describes Flashpoint as playing "more like a mystery" than the emotional arc he wanted to explore.
In that story, the Flash wakes up at his desk in the forensic investigation department of the Central City PD to find the whole world has changed, and there's no indication of how it got that way. Wonder Woman and the Amazons of Themyscira are locked in an ongoing war against Aquaman and the kingdom of Atlantis, and the conflict is threatening to tear apart the entire globe. Barry no longer has his speedster powers, his mother is miraculously alive, and the Justice League doesn't exist.
Another key difference in this reality is the Wayne family tragedy. Instead of Bruce witnessing the death of his parents, it's he who died in that fateful shooting and it's his father, Thomas Wayne, who would go on to become Batman. Fans of Zack Snyder's Man of Steel had wondered whether Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who played the Wayne family patriarch in that film, would return for this story arc in The Flash.
When it comes to Morgan's Batman and the Themyscira-Atlantis war, Andy says they didn't debate having those elements from the comic play out in the film. "We didn't want to give the audience a literal adaptation of the comic book. I think that's one of the good decisions that we made," the director says. "If you see the movie, you don't know where this is going. And as much as some people would've liked to see that literal adaptation, I think we did the right thing. I think that they will be gratified by seeing that the story takes another direction."
Instead, The Flash spends more time showing the relationship between Barry and his parents, which includes Maribel Verdú as his mother, Nora Allen, and Ron Livingston as his father, Henry Allen. That, Barbara says, was essential. "That's the anchor of the film," she adds. "Had we not had enough of that, to service other parts of the comic, it would've been a different movie."
Flashback
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures and DC Comics Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) teams up with his past self and Supergirl (Sasha Calle) to save the future in 'The Flash'
Another key difference from comic to screen is the presence of two Barrys. Flashpoint plays out mostly in the present with the DC speedster grappling with the repercussions of his time tampering. The Flash sees Barry trapped in the year 2013, where he has to deal with his past self.
Much like Batman, the Flash is a character who's shaped by a familial tragedy. The failures of the authorities to catch his mother's killer and confirm his father's innocence fueled Barry to become a forensic investigator, to make sure he could do what the justice system couldn't. The film presents an alternate version of Barry that is untouched by that trauma. Past Barry is much more of an obnoxious burnout than the determined, if also anxious, Barry of the present.
"There's two sides to it," Andy explains of developing these two iterations. "One is what's on the page and all the conversations we had with Christina about the differences between these two characters: the hardships that young Barry didn't live, and what makes an unlikely odd couple [from] two sides of the same character. Then the other side of it is the execution of Ezra. Ezra magnified the differences between these characters."
"Andy and Ezra worked tirelessly on giving life to those two characters — aided, by the way, by the pandemic because we couldn't go anywhere," Barbara adds. "We were basically hammered to the floor in the U.K. Every second we were there, every hour, every weekend was spent on making the Barrys better and funnier."
That development continued throughout the production, until the last day of shooting, according to Barbara. "There was a lot of improvisation and things that happened [in the moment]," Andy says.
Switching up DC's titans
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures and DC Comics Two Barrys (Ezra Miller) and a Batman (Michael Keaton) race to save the day in 'The Flash'
Michael Keaton began his journey on The Flash, appropriately, jogging. The Muschiettis remember the actor, who starred as Batman in the Tim Burton-directed movies, trotting into the Italian restaurant where they were treating him to lunch.
"He is the most energetic human being you'll ever meet," Barbara said during a Los Angeles press conference for The Flash pegged to CinemaCon. "One of the missions was, when you had him on set, you had to be on the ball 100 percent and keep him busy, because you don't want that man bored."
Instead of the Thomas Wayne route from the Flashpoint comic, the filmmakers wanted to bring back a classic movie Batman that audiences would recognize in the alternate timeline of The Flash. Keaton's Bruce Wayne is retired and living in his estate when the Barrys meet him in the context of the movie.
Keaton received a slightly updated Batsuit for the job. "You know the story. He was like, 'That old suit was impossible to work with.' He was very frustrated because he couldn't move his neck or anything," Andy said at the conference. "The design was perfect, but it's very often in movies that the better a suit looks, the more uncomfortable it is."
"Alex Burns, our costume designer, made a fantastic suit where this guy could actually move his neck, lift his leg," Barbara added.
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures/DC Comics Sacha Calle arrives in 'The Flash' as Supergirl, making her the first Latina actress to play the part
Alongside Keaton is Sasha Calle, the Daytime Emmy-nominated star from The Young and the Restless who is the first Latina actress to play the role of Supergirl/Kara Zor-El in film.
In the reality presented in Flashpoint, Kal-El crash-landed on Earth as an infant and was immediately captured by a secret American government organization. He never absorbed the sun's radiation to receive his powers, so he never became Superman. In the reality of The Flash, it's now Kara in this position and the Barrys have to bust her out.
According to Andy, the change came from "the need to make something that people don't expect." He tells EW, "I went to make a movie with some surprises, with that feeling that we're watching something that we haven't seen before."
It goes back to that initial directive: not to give a strict one-to-one adaptation of the comic. And now, the DC universe has a new hero in Calle's Kara. "What Sasha brings is just crazy," Barbara says. "Strength and at the same time vulnerability. We saw that in her first read in the audition. She's very different from the past Supergirls and we loved that. As soon as we got her tape, we knew that she was it."
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