Up Next for DC Comics: The Flash

What? You thought it would be Black Lightning?


Producer and co-writer of the 2013 big screen adaptation of DC’s Scarlet Speeder, Greg Berlanti, did an interview with Superhero Hype about the DC Comics’ Green Lantern follow-up film, The Flash. It seems Berlanti and his cohorts are focusing on Flash alter ego Barry Allen’s job as a forensic scientist as they work on the script. Now while that is an essential part of Allen’s character, I can’t say I’m convinced that that’s the right approach. To whit:


“‘Flash’ as we’re getting into it is interesting, too. Though Barry Allen was a little lighter in the comic, I think because of the nature that he was a CSI and moved in this world of crime before this stuff happened. I think it’s tonally somewhere in between ‘GL‘ and ‘Dark Knight.’ It’s actually a little bit darker than when we were working on (‘GL’), because you’re dealing with somebody who is already a crimefighter in a world of those kinds of criminals and that kind of murder and homicide. I find you talk a lot about different films when you’re working on a film, and we spend a lot more time talking about ‘Se7en‘ or ‘The Silence of the Lambs‘ as we construct that part of Barry’s world, then I thought when we got into it. It helps balance a guy in a red suit who runs really fast.


In ‘The Flash,’ there’s the sci-fi component and there’s the crime component and it’s fitting those two things together, and the sci-fi thing, we obviously want to nail that and honor that and do that in a way that feels visceral and real and cool and probably more in the tone of ‘The Matrix” films or things like that.”


Hmmm… I can’t say when I think of Flash — who fights villains like Captain Cold, the Top, and Abra Kadabra — as a film that should be the same tone as “Se7en” or Hannibal Lecter or “The Matrx.” I’m not saying it couldn’t work, it’s just not what I expected. Also, you ever notice that filmmakers always namedrop popular or award willing films — nobody ever says “We want to make our latest film in the spirit of Leprechaun in The Hood!”


Still… as long as they work in Metallica’s “Ride the Lightning” on the soundtrack, I’ll be happy! What do you think of this approach to The Flash, folks? Let us know below!