Justice League will be retaining many of the classic elements that make its starring characters popular, but as with most comic book movies, there are also a fair amount of creative liberties being taken. We recently learned that Victor Stone's transformation into Cyborg in the DC film universe comes as a result of him getting caught in a car accident rather than a laboratory explosion. Now it's been revealed that when we meet Barry Allen, a.k.a. The Flash, in Justice League, he'll still be a student rather than a forensic scientist. As a new bio written for this iteration of the Fastest Man Alive reads:
Barry Allen is an excessively energetic student attending Central City College, where he studies criminal justice with the hope of one day freeing his incarcerated father. More than eager to team up with crime fighting Batman, Barry's remarkably quick wit is surpassed only by his ability to move at hyper speed.
At a recent Justice League promotional event in the Philippines, information on the DC movie's main heroes were displayed, including the above chunk of text concerning The Flash that was later posted on Reddit. Having Barry still pursuing higher education when Batman approaches him to join his gang of super friends is a drastic departure from the main DC Comics continuity, where Barry had already been a forensic scientist at the Central City Police Department for several years by the time he became The Flash. Still, since the DC film universe opted to cast a younger actor as its Scarlet Speedster, it's not terribly shocking to find out that he's still learning the art of forensic science. Perhaps by the time of Flash's own movie or Justice League 2, he'll have a job at the CCPD, allowing him to both solve crimes in his civilian life and move closer to legally freeing Henry Allen from prison.
However, this background change also calls into question specifically how Barry Allen gained super speed in the DC film universe. In most versions of Barry's Flash origin story (including the CW TV series), he is working in his lab one night when a bolt of lightning came through his office (in some tellings, hitting him directly) and shattered a case full of chemicals, causing them to spill on Barry. If Ezra Miller's Barry doesn't have a lab at the CCPD, then where did his accident occur? My guess is that the location was simply moved to a lab at the Central City College campus, and everything else played out similarly as it did in the comics. Following his recovery period (if he even needed one) and some time messing around with his new "talents," Barry decided to stop criminals as The Flash, eventually catching the attention of Bruce Wayne, who saw a future version of Barry during Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Justice League hits theaters on November 17, and be sure to look through our 2017 movie premiere guide to learn what this year's remaining releases are. The Flash's solo movie, Flashpoint, is also among the many DC film universe projects in development, but no release date has been assigned for it yet.
