Not having seen The Flash, I won’t weigh in on the debate between Jonathan Nicastro (against) and Sahar Tartak (for) concerning its quality. Instead, I want to dwell on something both reviews mention only casually (and counts as a spoiler, I guess, so stop reading if you’re one of the few people interested in seeing this movie who hasn’t already). At the end of The Flash, one last bit of minor multiversal meddling by Barry Allen/The Flash (Ezra Miller) produces a reality in which not Ben Affleck but George Clooney is Bruce Wayne/Batman.

Now, not having seen the movie (which doesn’t sound very logically consistent anyway), I am not going to investigate this too deeply. But it seems possible that Miller’s Allen, described by Jonathan as “whiny, odd, and overly talkative” (a characterization to which Sahar largely assents, though she defends it as a creative choice), might be trapped in the universe in which Clooney is Batman. That is, he is stuck in the continuity of the 1997 Batman & Robin, when last Clooney portrayed the role. I go back and forth on whether this movie is a complete disaster or a camp masterpiece (the answer is probably both, though the latter unintentionally). Regardless, it was poorly received enough to kill Batman’s cinematic aspirations for the next eight years, until Christopher Nolan could revive the character.

For some reason, it seems fitting to me that this annoying version of the Flash may now be stuck in a world of Arnold Schwarzenegger ice puns, Bat credit cards, and — egad – rubber nipples. It’s an appropriate punishment for someone who is not only hubristic enough to think he can tinker with the timeline, but is also bothersome.