How do you defend a box office disaster of super-heroic proportions like “The Flash?” The 2023 DC Extended Universe blockbuster was touted as something special and ended up making a paltry amount at the box office, offending fans with its uncanny, half-baked CGI, and was as big a mess plot-wise as the spaghetti multiverse demonstrated by Michael Keaton in the film itself. On top of all that, star Ezra Miller was not only arrested multiple times on assault charges in the lead-up to the film, but also faced some horrific allegations which involved grooming and abusing a teenager. Now, after previous attempts to exculpate himself, director Andrés Muschietti has once again defended his movie as being the victim of external forces.
The Argentine filmmaker spoke to The Playlist’s Bingeworthy podcast about the “Flash” debacle, revealing that he and his producing partner/sister Barbara Muschietti “just moved on” after the film’s anticlimactic debut. “[We] understood that sometimes there’s a headwind and a project that you dedicated a lot of work to,” he continued. “And we’re very proud of it. I think it’s a good movie.”
All of which is fair enough. Muschietti — who said he and his sister gave their “blood, sweat, and tears all the way to the end” for the film — has every right to be proud of his work. But it was the rest of his analysis that was particularly hard to take. The director seems intent upon shouldering precisely zero responsibility for the film’s shortcomings in comments that either suggest he thinks “The Flash” is perfect, or that the parts that aren’t perfect have nothing to do with him… the director.
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The Flash’s director blames people who didn’t see the movie for trashing it
Michael Keaton’s Batman sits in a plane in The Flash – Warner Bros.
“The Flash” was a glaring example of studios setting movies up to fail with oversized budgets. But even setting aside its hefty $200 million production costs (before marketing), the $271.4 million worldwide box office gross is pretty poor for a comic book movie that had been heralded as some kind of masterwork. DC Studios head James Gunn had hyped it as “one of the best superhero movies I’ve ever seen.”
Gunn’s support hasn’t wavered post-“Flash,” either. Andy Muschietti’s DC tenure looks set to continue with the “Brave and the Bold” movie and this time the filmmaker presumably feels he won’t be hampered by the external forces that sank his last DC project. In the director’s estimation, the disappointing box office for “The Flash” came down to people who “did not see it.” That would be a pretty impressive tautology on its own. But apparently the issue was that those people who failed to see “The Flash” couldn’t keep quiet about it.
“You know how things are these days,” said Muschietti during his Bingeworthy appearance. “People don’t see things, but they like to talk s**t about it, and they like to jump on bandwagons. They don’t really know. People are angry for reasons that are unrelated to these things.” There’s certainly some truth there, especially in the comic book movie sphere where “fans” have made demonstrable efforts to sabotage films they haven’t seen — at one point prompting Rotten Tomatoes to revamp its audience score system. But it doesn’t really hold for “The Flash,” because plenty of people who did see it didn’t love it.
Andy Muschietti still loves The Flash
Ezra Miller’s Barry Allen answers questions from reporters on some steps in The Flash – Warner Bros.
A 63% Rotten Tomatoes score might seem okay, but some of the “positive” reviews for “The Flash” aren’t exactly glowing. The Irish Times’ Donald Clarke called the movie “a thundering mess that ends with the usual boring battle in a CGI sky” even while admitting that it “passes the time better than Gunn’s own puzzlingly lauded ‘Suicide Squad.'” Richard Roeper thought it was a “well-acted but overlong adventure,” and the Washington Post’s Michael O’Sullivan wrote that the film “has its moments, thanks mainly to Miller.” These are some of the “fresh” reviews.
On the topic of Ezra Miller, the actor may have been good in “The Flash” but Muschietti was well-aware of the off-screen controversies and said that they caused a “publicity crisis” that was “undeniable.” That almost certainly contributed to the film’s failure, but it’s also yet another way of avoiding responsibility — and that’s really the problem here.
This isn’t the first time the director has spoken on this topic. In January 2025, Muschietti claimed that “The Flash” was kneecapped by Miller’s issues, people not caring about the protagonist, and women not liking superhero movies, I guess? Not a word about the misstep that was bringing back the greatest ever on-screen Batman in a movie that shared none of the boldly brilliant artistic vision of his previous two Dark Knight outings; nothing about the muddled tone or the bizarre CGI. Muschietti has addressed that last point before, claiming the visual effects choices were “intended.” It’s pretty poor stuff, isn’t it?
Nonetheless, Muschietti firmly stands by the film. He went on to tell the Bingeworthy podcast, “I watched it, like a week ago, and loved it again.”
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