The man who can run faster than the speed of light sure took his sweet time getting here. The first official trailer for the long-awaited The Flash movie arrived earlier this week, and the wait may have been worth it. The movie in DC’s schedule that has faced the hardest obstacles to overcome in the process of its release delivered a 3-minute insight into what fans can expect to experience this summer. While some audience members might still be on the fence about the film and how it will transition the current DC Elseworlds movies into James Gunn’s master plan for the DCU, most would agree that the trailer helped alleviate some of those worries to bed.
So, with so much to unravel from the first official footage fans got to see this past Sunday, let’s look at everything we learned (and confirmed) in the trailer.
Before the trailer was released, it had been speculated for quite some time what the plot of The Flash was going to be as it was presumed that the film would loosely follow the same storyline from the DC Comics known as Flashpoint. Now that we have the trailer, those assumptions have been confirmed. While the stories won’t mirror each other exactly, the main plot points seem to revolve around the same narrative – Barry Allen (The Flash) tries to go back in time to save his mother from being murdered, resulting in drastically changing the present.
From what we saw in the trailer, the official story seems to show Barry Allen attempting to go into the past to prevent his mother’s murder, even at the warning of Batman (Ben Affleck). However, the consequences of his actions result in a world where meat humans don’t exist, meaning Earth has nobody to defend it. Barry must then race to fix the new world that he’s created, and he does so with the help of a different Batman (Michael Keaton) and a surprise reveal of Supergirl (played by Sasha Calle).
Other than the surprise reveal of the previously mentioned Supergirl, most of the characters shown in the trailer were already known to be reprising their roles in the film. Despite his recent troubles with the law, Ezra Miller has managed to stick around as one of DC’s most popular and notorious heroes, and the studio decided to stick by him regardless of the publicity. It was announced that Ben Affleck would be making one last return to the big screen as Batman. Hence, his sighting in the trailer wasn’t surprising, and it was announced long ago that Michael Keaton’s Batman would be making the long-awaited return that fans are extremely hyped to see.
The two biggest takeaways from the trailer regarding the cast are that Michael Shannon will be reprising his role as Zod and newcomer Sasha Calle getting a turn at playing Supergirl. Both characters appear to have major roles in the film as Barry’s new present is a world where Zod won the battle of 2013’s Man of Steel, and Supergirl will team up with Barry and Keaton’s Batman.
There’s quite a bit to process with how much fans got from the trailer, but it also left us with a few new questions. First, fans know that there will be (at least) two Barrys in the movie. It was mentioned at the beginning of the trailer that Barry could go to “any universe” he wanted, meaning that there’s got to be more than 2 Barry Allens in the world who could show up.
Second, we know General Zod will be an antagonist, but we’re still not sure if he will be the main one. In the Flashpoint comic, it’s revealed that the entire plan of Barry’s mother getting murdered (resulting in Barry going back in time to stop it) was orchestrated by a supervillain known as Reverse Flash. Fans have speculated for quite some time that this particular villain will pop up in the movie, just like he does in the comic, but nothing was confirmed in the trailer.
Next, one of the questions that fans undoubtedly have, thanks to the reveal of Supergirl, is whether or not this character will continue on into James Gunn’s DCU future. It was announced last month that James Gunn has a Supergirl film planned, but it was one of the last projects he mentioned and wasn’t given a release date. So, while Sasha Calle might get a chance to keep her rendition of Supergirl going, fans won’t know for certain for quite some time.
Following that, audiences know that ‘The Flash’ will reset the current DC film franchise and lead the studio into James Gunn’s 10-year DCU plan. This was also announced last month when Gunn confirmed that the next four DC projects being released in theaters would still somehow tie into the upcoming DCU.
Lastly, fans got confirmation that the film will be released on June 16. Although that release date has been pushed back many times already, there’s no guaranteeing anything yet – but with such a long wait and knowing that the film is finally almost here, the trailer definitely has fans hyped to see if The Flash will be worth the wait.