My colleague Jonathan Nicastro has written a scathing criticism of The Flash, commenting that his trip to the theater was money and time wasted. My father and I watched the movie this weekend as well – a Father’s Day trip. 

After the movie, I came to conclusions far more positive than those of Nicastro. Firstly, regarding what Nicastro calls “bad” CGI (he’s referring to the moments shown here), I appreciated their cartoonish nature. In superhero movies based on a comic-book series, it’s more than appropriate to bring viewers into a relatively simple, animated world. 

Nicastro also criticized Ezra Miller’s interpretation of Barry Allen as “whiny, odd and overly talkative,” saying he would have preferred the “endearing, funny, and soft-spoken” Barry Allen played by Grant Gustin for the CW’s show. But in this movie, Barry Allen’s “overly talkative” nature was an anxious personality trait out of his control. Yes, he was annoying. That was the point. This Barry Allen was a courageous young man, motivated by truth and virtue to fight crime, whose jitters made him the punchline of many a mean joke by people like his dismissive colleagues. We empathize with Allen nonetheless, and we laugh in good nature at his word-vomit moments, which he himself isn’t proud of. When Allen meets a parallel version of himself in another universe, even he realizes how annoying his chatter is. Seeing Allen discover his flaws in a multiversal mirror is funny, not to mention humbling. Sure, it’s a small exercise in patience. But movies should require some effort on part of the audience members, contemplating what’s on the screen instead of just falling in love with the “good guys” in a snap.

Nicastro’s great qualm, though, is neither casting nor CGI, but plot. I’ll summarize briefly below (spoilers included), though Nicastro does so more thoroughly.

Barry Allen goes back in time to save his mother from being killed, only to discover that this leads to a butterfly effect that will inevitably destroy the world, no matter how hard he tries to save both. Allen is ultimately forced to sacrifice his mother for humanity’s sake, returning to his youth and allowing her tragic fate. Nicastro is correct in noting that this plot point teaches the “immutable, inexorable, and necessary” nature of the past, which we would not want to change even if we could. 

Nicastro’s criticisms lie with what happened in the movie after Allen lets his mother die. Allen makes a minor manipulation to the past to save his father from being falsely convicted for his mother’s death. This change, of course, causes Allen to return home and discover a new timeline which includes, in addition to his father’s acquittal, a new Bruce Wayne (played by George Clooney instead of Ben Affleck, the latter of whom plays Wayne way at the start of the movie). Nicastro writes that Allen has just spent an entire journey learning not to change the past, and writes that this ending renders “meaningless the entire plot” and makes “its protagonist imbecilic and irresponsible in addition to irredeemably annoying.”

Here, I disagree. Allen has a complex understanding of the way time works. He knows that some adjustments to the past have more severe consequences than others, causing an inevitable end to the world. Saving his mother’s life was one of those adjustments. As far as he knows, strengthening his father’s alibi for the trial wasn’t. Doing so was a flawed and irresponsible compromise on his part. Considering that Allen was forced to let his mother die, from his point of view, a smaller manipulation of the past was warranted. He could make his story just a little less tragic without destroying the universe. Is that really so much to ask? 

Of course, things would be best if Allen could not travel through time in the first place. But he has this power, and he’s going to use it. At times, it will be catastrophic, and at times it will be benign. He believes that he can harness it for good, which is not a crazy thing for a superhero to believe. The plot serves as a reminder that we are flawed beings who aren’t meant to have these powers. Handling them wisely is a steep challenge. For this reason, the movie ends in a mistake. Who are we to expect perfection, when that expectation is precisely where Allen went wrong?