The Flash review: Michael Keaton’s Batman is the real star of this DC multiverse mashup

• These Flashes have appeared not just in their own comics, but across the DC comics universe from Teen Titans to the Justice League.
• At the same time, it is launching James Gunn and Peter Safran’s new DC Universe of film and TV as they take over as the heads of DC Studios.
• Indeed, Warner-DC has largely used another actor to promote The Flash: Michael Keaton.

Serving the fans

• Slipping through the flow of time using the “Speed Force” (which grants him access to extradimensional energy), Miller’s Flash goes back in time.
• The result is by turns a bombastically nostalgic and watered-down variant on Burton’s earlier blockbuster films.
• Discovering the Batcave, the younger version of Allen gleefully pulls a dustsheet off the Batmobile prop from Burton’s 1989 film.
• Fans of comics are also rewarded with new twists on old favourites, such as an aside to the Superman-as-Soviet-superhero comic Red Son (2003), when Batman and the Flashes go to rescue a Kryptonian held in captivity by the Soviets.
• Standing out among these myriad superheroes – the true star of The Flash, despite its title – is Keaton’s Batman.