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(Jewish Group)The Flash" a missed opportunity, continues disappointing history of Jewish superheroes
"The Flash" is a missed opportunity, continuing the disappointing history of Jewish superheroesThe year is 2017 and I'm sitting in a not-so-crowded theater, watching "Justice League," DC's latest film in their (now almost defunct) superhero cinematic universe. The film is average at best and would not yield solid results financially or critically, especially when compared to the Marvel Cinematic Universe's multiple successes in the same genre.
What pleasantly surprised me about the film, though, is the scene in which Bruce Wayne/Batman (Ben Affleck) goes to recruit Barry Allen/the Flash (Ezra Miller) to join his team of superheroes, and Barry mentions that he's Jewish. Now, six years later, after several delays and a development hell that saw various writers and directors join and leave the project, DC has finally released "The Flash," focusing on Miller's character. So, despite the film's controversial baggage (more on that in a sec), one truth still remains — this is essentially the first superhero film to star a Jewish protagonist. Congrats, DC, you technically got there before Marvel!
"The Flash" had the chance to set itself apart, to focus on a cultural representation . . . to be about something bigger than just more well-trodden multiversal shenanigans.
Ultimately, though, this fact will go down in history as nothing but a footnote because this film doesn't even attempt to utilize this representation for anything. In the film, the Flash uses his superspeed to travel back to the past in order to prevent his mother's murder when he was a child, but by changing the past, Barry finds himself in a drastically altered timeline, where there's no Superman, the Bruce Wayne that he knew is now a completely different Bruce (Michael Keaton), and the rest of the Justice League heroes no longer exist. Barry's family may be whole, but with General Zod (Michael Shannon) attacking Earth with his army, there's no one to stand in his way. So now Barry must find a way to fix the mess he had brought upon.
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Representation is supposed to matter, apparently some minorities are excluded from this belief.