Director: Jay Oliva
Stars: Justin Chambers, C. Thomas Howell, Michael B. Jordan, Kevin McKidd, Kevin Conroy, Sam Daly, Dana Delany, Cary Elwes, Grey Griffin, Nathan Fillion, Vanessa Marshall
The Flash has gone back in time and created a new timeline that’s different from the old one! Batman is now Thomas Wayne! Atlantis and The Amazons are at war! And Barry Allen has no powers…somehow he has to find a way to right the timeline and change the universe back to what it once was!
I do love alternate universe stories but they always seem to be worse off in the new timeline. I think it’d be interesting for a change for the new timeline to actually be better than the old one, and the hero has to struggle with leaving the old timeline behind. As far as I know there hasn’t been anything like that before, but if anyone knows of anything that’s similar please let me know because I’d be interested in checking it out!
But yes, The Flash finds the world changed. This elseworlds tale is really cool, and I’d love to see more of it. It’s fun to see how things have differed in this timeline, and the different directions characters could have taken. I think that it’s even interesting without the contrast of the prime universe, and some of the concepts are great in their own right. I mean, the Batman in this universe is Thomas Wayne after Bruce gets killed, and the Joker is Martha. While that’s a neat twist on the original concept, it’s also an interesting premise in its own right. I’d love to see a story where a married couple get torn apart, and one of them becomes a vigilante while the other becomes a villain.
The Flash’s personal trauma gets caught up in the war between the Atlanteans and the Amazons. Flashpoint packs a lot of story into its running time and it feels cinematic. The scope of the story is epic and could easily stand against live action films. Some fan favorite actors return to voice the characters (like Conroy and Fillion), and while some of the lesser known characters don’t mean much to me (like Grifter, I mean, were they supposed to be references to existing DC characters or were they exclusive to the Flashpoint universe?) I still was invested in the story.
It’s also doubly interesting for me because the Flash tv show is taking a lot of cues from this storyline, so it will be interesting to see how it will be adapted. Will they go full throttle and show the Flash in an alternate timeline? Will Ollie’s father be the Green Arrow? The possibilities are endless.
