For many, one of the highlights of Justice League was Ezra Miller's The Flash. Barry Allen provided fun, kinetic energy to the film and proved why a solo movie for the Scarlet Speedster was something to get excited about. But such a solo film has taken a long time to gestate, with multiple directors leaving the project in the years since it was announced. Now the Flash movie, titled Flashpoint, looks like it's finally in the starting blocks with Vacation directors and Spider-Man: Homecoming scribes, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, in negotiations to direct. In fact, the directors see some similarities between The Flash and the web crawler in how down-to-Earth the two characters are. As Jonathan Goldstein explained, this makes the Flash like DC's version of Spider-Man.
It's a relatable way in to a superhero movie in some of the same ways that Peter Parker was for the Marvel side of things.
Part of what has made Spider-Man such a popular comic book character over the years is this relatability. Peter Parker is just an average guy, who has to deal with school and work and girl trouble, in addition to his time fighting crime. Similarly, the young Barry Allen in Justice League is the closest thing to an audience surrogate on the superheroic team. Despite his own incredible powers, he is still in many ways just a kid surrounded by gods and legends. In Justice League, Barry Allen's dad is locked up for murdering his mom, a crime Barry doesn't believe he committed. Barry gets a job at the end of the film and remains committed to proving his father's innocence. While this isn't quite everyday stuff, Barry Allen's concerns are arguably still more personal and small-scale than the rest of the League's. Neither Spider-Man nor The Flash really have any idea what they're doing, and they are both just doing the best they can to get by and juggle their personal lives with their alter-egos. To Goldstein, this relatability makes them interesting and similar characters.
Now I'm sure some people will cite here that The Flash and Barry Allen both predate Spider-Man in the comics, but this is really about the role the two characters play in their respective universes and the approach the potential directors will be taking to Barry Allen in the Flashpoint movie. As the directors told Collider, Barry Allen doesn't have his life together; it's messy and complicated. He's more of a ground-level hero than Superman, similar to how Peter Parker isn't exactly playing on Thor's level. This is a smart approach to endear audiences to the character and really give them someone they can see themselves in and root for.
The Flashpoint story from the comics is pretty complex and comic-booky, and there are a lot of ways DC could go with it. So having a relatable and grounded Barry Allen at the center of everything sounds like the way to go. Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley have already shown that they can nail superhero relatability on the page; if they can bring those sensibilities and that same enthusiasm behind the camera as well, then there are a lot of reasons to be excited about Flashpoint.
Flashpoint does not currently have a release date, but stay tuned to CinemaBlend for all the latest in superhero news, and you can check out our DC release schedule to stay up-to-date on what's hitting next in the DC film universe. John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein's upcoming film, Game Night, hits theaters on February 23.
