Sprint into Fun: Review of The Flash

The Flash. Directed by Andy Muschietti. Starring Ezra Miller, Michael Keaton, Sasha Calle, Michael Shannon, Ron Livingston, Maribel Verdu, Ben Affleck. Rated PG-13 for partial male nudity, violence, foul language. Runtime 2 hours 24 minutes. 

After the obligatory action scene at the start (and who doesn’t love a superhero who saves babies and a dog), we move on to the central angst for Barry Allen aka the Flash (Ezra Miller): He is worried for his father, who is falsely imprisoned for the murder of Barry’s mother when he was a child. Overwrought, the Flash runs wildly fast and finds he traveled a short distance into the past.

Naturally, he wants to go back in time and prevent the death of his mother. Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) cautions him against this, saying he could destroy everything. Barry says he could also save Bruce’s parents. Bruce wisely says “these scars we have make us who we are." The emotional tug is too strong for Barry, so he goes back and does save his mother.

The way he saves her is reminiscent of the Isaac Asimov novel The End of Eternity, when a time traveler moves an ordinary-looking can and changes the course of a civilization. In this case, Barry has somehow removed the metahumans (Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman). What we have left is Batman, an ordinary human. Michael Keaton fills the cape in this alternate universe, and it’s a hoot seeing him as a burnt-out Bruce Wayne who no longer wants to fight the good fight.

Most of the dialog and character interplay are between Barry and a younger, pre-Flash version of himself. Because he didn’t quite come back to the present, the older, driven Barry has constant arguments with the college-age, carefree, obnoxious Barry. Ezra Miller is more than capable of filling both roles. While I was watching the movie, I wasn’t conscious of the fact that it was the same actor playing two characters; they seemed to be two different people.

Sasha Calle is a revelation as the anti-hero Supergirl. (Remember, Supergirl arrived on Earth after Superman, and that's why she exists in this universe.) This Supergirl brutally kills several bad guys. But at first she stays aloof from a world-threatening invasion. As she points out, she’s a Kyptonian, not a human.

Overall, The Flash is a treat for superhero fans. Although, the outfits are too tight in the loin area, if you know what I mean. One does not have to be a geek to recognize a number of multiverse cameos. And the plot holds up. They avoid the futility of endless cycles of endless multiverses, as well as the simplistic idea of always going back in time to fix things when something bad happens. This is more of a cautionary tale than just a show of superpower.

Book Review: Agnes at the End of the World

Agnes at the End of the World. Kelly McWilliams (Little, Brown 978-0316487337, $9.99, pb. 448pp) June 2021. Cover by Tom Bagshaw.

 

Agnes at the End of the World features Agnes, a young woman who has been raised in about the worst cult you can imagine. Most of the adult men (patriarchs) have multiple wives. It’s also a doomsday cult, with the leader—the Prophet—predicting the end of the world, hence the title. They are forbidden from having contact with the Outside, since all Outsiders are evil treacherous people. Agnes begins to doubt their teachings because her little brother Ezekiel has diabetes. She sneaks out to the cemetery once a month at night.

Holding a flashlight and blue picnic cooler, she hurried towards the small collection of headstones that rose from the ground like rotten teeth. The grass was velvet, the moon a white slice.

There, amidst the graves, a nurse gives her a supply of insulin. This nurse has only been kind and compassionate towards her.

The story is mostly from Agnes’ viewpoint, though sometime it’s from the viewpoint of her fifteen-year-old sister Beth. Agnes has been the model of a compliant girl, while Beth is more saucy (for a cult member). When the Prophet declares a revelation that Agnes is to be wife number six for a white-haired patriarch, she hesitates out of care for Ezekiel. The patriarch is sure the Prophet will get another revelation that he should marry Beth instead. Agnes has the stunning realization that the cult has been run on lies.

When Agnes finally escapes to the outside world, she finds a plague has ravished much of the world’s population. The story’s copyright is 2020, so McWilliams must have written it without being influenced by the COVID controversies and shutdowns. This pandemic is a nasty one—both animals and humans develop hard red carapaces, with bristles that can infect others. After a while, they gather into Nests—javelinas (feral pigs) together, crows together, humans together, etc. They are grotesquely intertwined with each other but still alive, though showing no intelligence.

Nothing is easy for Agnes, as she seems to have escaped from a bad world to a worse one, all while having to adjust to the Outside. McWilliams does a fine job with her up-close descriptions of Agnes’ constant dilemmas, having been taught that obedience is all and questioning is sin. When she takes refuge with others in a library, she is astonished that a teenage boy there just wants to play games on his device. Meanwhile she hauls water from a well, cooks, and cleans—not even half as much labor as she is used to. And she refuses to shed her prairie dress for a T-shirt and short pants, since she feels naked in them.

The character of Beth is problematic. She comes off as a bratty teenager who happened to be raised in a cult. And some things about Agnes do not fit. She often uses God’s name in vain while thinking, which does not match her upbringing. She learns to drive in one afternoon and escapes the cult by driving down black asphalt in the dark at eighty miles an hour for miles without crashing! She was only allowed to read the Bible and a few crude books for children. But she easily uses words like “illimitable,” “Gordian knot,” and “crypt keeper.”

Agnes’ most important internal conflict involves what she calls her “prayer space.” At first it seems to be a sense of peace she experiences. But she can use it to sense things and people beyond her sight. Outside the cult, she can sense things miles away. And it is not just an internal sense; at one point she uses it to ward off an infected javelina that charges her. Eventually, the prayer space helps her to sense that God is a fluid that permeates all things. Sometimes God tells her to do things, sometimes she can “use” it. This will be disappointing to readers who were hoping she could tease out the difference between the cult teachings and her core biblical beliefs. Others will find it an interesting science fictional element, somewhat akin to the Force in the Star Wars franchise.

McWilliams is a lyrical writer, going from scenes of twisted beauty to gritty details of survival. Be prepared for several pages at a time dealing with the prayer space as the voice of God. This is an original story, and readers should look at it carefully to see if it is their cup of tea.