After watching The Flash yesterday I would
like to share an obervation.
Both ‘Marvel’ and ‘DC comics’ had each produced
very similar movies round about the same time. Marvel studio’s made ‘Avengers: Endgame’
whereas ‘DC Comics’ made the movie ‘Justice Leage’. Allthough both these
movies had a distinct origin, their plots were surprisingly similar:
1) In ‘Avengers: Endgame’ the heroes of the
story were dealing with the great loss they had suffered in the previous
installment of the Avengers story. Half of humanity had been whiped out,
including half of the Avengers. This brought the surviving Avengers to a point
of defeatism and despair. The solution in Avengers Endgame? A weird twist of ‘timetravel’
to fix all the problems in the past so that all the dead people can be brought
back as if they never died…
2) In DC Justice Leage, the Leage was
mourning the death of superman, who was believed to be ‘the only hope’ for
humanity. The Leage was struck by defeatism and despair. The solution? Use a
magic trick and bring superman back to life…
In other words both these films used a plot
where a ‘magical fix’ had to be found so that things could be made back again
like they were before. In such films there is no educational value because
there is no learning process. The ‘solution’ is based on the flatout denial
of reality.
3) The Flash uses a plot which had in my view
more maturity. The protagonist discovers he can move at such a speed that he
can manipulate time. Off course he wants to go back in Time so that he can make a small unnoticeable
alteration that will actually prevent his mother from being murdered, because
that is the point that he cannot accept. In doing so he actually creates an
alternate timeline in which, yes, his mother still lives, but in which the
whole world is also drastically different. Additionally, in this new timeline all
of humanity faces imminent extinction simply because that is the inevitable
domino effect in that timeline. No matter how hard The Flas tries to manipulate
and re-manipulate time in order to correct the timeline, it all leads tot he same
inavitable conclusion: that humanity cannot be saved. The Flash will take his
time-correcting experiments to such a point that he realises that he is busy
destroying the very fabric of reality on a metaphysical level.
At last he realises that he can only create ‘stability’
again in reality by choosing for the one timeline in which his mother dies –
hence he makes that one last alteration and gives his mother one last goodbye.
Now I thought that was actually a good story, because in the end it ‘embraces’ the point of ‘loss’ and ‘letting go’ instead of ‘fighting it’. In fact the movie offers a great metaphorical demonstration of what can happen if you ‘fight’ the points of ‘loss’ in your life, instead of embracing them.
