Cory's Reads #31: How to Be a Hater

Accepting the end and empowering perspective

We have arrived at an inflection point in history. A flashpoint, if you will.

Five years removed from its initial release date, Andy Muschietti’s The Flash arrives in theaters this week. Of course, the film didn’t always belong to the Argentinian director. In fact, some version of a film about The Flash had been gestating at Warner Bros. since the late 1980s. David Goyer, Shawn Levy, George Miller, and Rick Famuyiwa are only some of the filmmakers to have walked away from the project due to creative differences. Finally, the studio found their match in the man behind 2019’s putrid It: Chapter Two.

For a film shrouded in chaos and controversy — to recap the problematic behavior of star Ezra Miller would be beyond the scope of this piece — early reactions to The Flash have been surprisingly positive, if also suspect. DC Studios chairman James Gunn was the first to proclaim the film’s excellence, referring to it as “probably one of the greatest superhero movies ever made.”

Gunn’s admiration was soon parroted by none other than Tom Cruise, our unofficial ambassador of cinema. After Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav granted Cruise a private screening, the actor reportedly called Muschietti to shower him with praise.

“This is the kind of movie we need right now,” Cruise said.

Cruise and Gunn were soon joined by an even more random cast of supporters, including NFL star Cameron Heyward and actor/musician Jaden Smith. Legendary author Stephen King prefaced his review on Twitter by saying “as a rule I don’t care for a lot of superhero movies” before admitting that The Flash was an obvious exception. “This one is special. It’s heartfelt, funny, and eye-popping. I loved it.”

It’s possible that each of these celebrities genuinely enjoyed the new film, but do any of us truly believe that it is one of the greatest entries in its genre? Or that it is an era-defining film? Watch this sneak peek and tell me if it portends a film we might describe as “special”.

Indeed, these positive reviews are only shocking insofar as they are funny. A positive review of any franchise film is about as unremarkable as it gets in our current landscape. An entire cottage industry has been made out of saying nice things about expensive blockbusters and filling in the narrative gaps that these films are too lazy or sloppy to fill in themselves.

I should know; I used to write for one of them.

What separates these high-profile reviews of The Flash from the countless others littering the world wide web is the brazenness with which these figures — most of them creatives — have whored out their credibility on behalf of a blockbuster that embodies so much of what is wrong with mainstream cinema today.

Our cultural ecosystem is more symbiotic than ever, but perhaps that is not such a good thing. Where are the predators? The parasites? The organic matter and the decomposers? (OK, that’s enough science out of me.)

I want Stephen King to tell me that The Flash fucking sucked. I want Tom Cruise to tell David Zaslav to go shove it. I want Screen Rant to admit that the MCU is nearly out of ideas.

I am not naïve to all the discordant discourse that still exists. I cover it plenty on this very site! But today’s pop culture is driven by identity. We are expected to identify with the things we love, and corporations aim to exacerbate that sense of belonging by inviting the likes of King and Cruise to our exclusive clubs. Unfortunately, maintaining membership requires a startling lack of curiosity as to the potential of our favorite works. When I find myself disliking a new film, I lament not just for myself, but for the fans who so clearly deserve better.

Film has always sat at the crossroads between art and commerce, but one of the more troubling aspects of contemporary mainstream cinema is its ability to convince us that art and commerce are one and the same. And to some extent, they now are. The proliferation of cinematic universes has turned narrative into a kind of currency. The same element that provides structure and emotion is the one that guarantees a new film, a new audience, a new record at the box office.

Fans and critics alike — and they are more alike than any number of Rotten Tomatoes reviews will ever admit — have now been made complicit in this compression of commerce and art. Our evaluation of a given blockbuster hinges on its ability to produce branching narratives or to draw in additional characters with whom we are already familiar. Our relationships to these films become superficial, nestled into the cozy confines of satisfaction and nostalgia.

The emptiness feels good. After all, when our stories can live forever, perhaps we can too.

And no storytelling device has erased our existential dread quite like the multiverse. The multiverse is what allows The Flash to bring Michael Keaton back as Batman over 30 years removed from his last appearance in the role. It allows the film to reset the continuity of the DC Extended Universe and usher in a new era. And it assures us all that nothing ever has to end.

Michael Shannon — unsatisfied with his return as General Zod in The Flash — hilariously compared the multiverse to “playing with action figures,” and he has a point. The thrill of the concept comes from the endless permutations it permits, but it also wraps a world in plastic and reduces character to a commodity.

Despite its seeming reliance on the multiverse, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse concerns itself with this exact friction. Beyond its mind-blowing animation, Across the Spider-Verse emerges as one of the year’s best films on the heels of its meta-commentary. Writing/producing duo Phil Lord and Christopher Miller embrace this world’s comic book roots, interrogating the aims of similar films to embrace the multiverse by introducing the idea of “canon events”.

Several Spider-Men recreate the popular meme in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)

Anyone who has picked up a comic book before is likely familiar with the term. With their intricate crossovers and connections, comic books have established a highly complex canon over the years. At times, this canon may be erased or rewritten. And yet, there are certain constants that remain essential to our favorite characters.

Bruce Wayne’s parents will die.

Superman will be sent to earth from Krypton.

And in the case of Spider-Verse, a police captain close to Spider-Man must die.

The multiverse in the MCU often undermines these moments, suggesting that continuity can almost always be reversed or rectified. Marvel can empty its storytelling chamber, and still replenish its supply. It’s a necessary byproduct of a sprawling story that must sustain itself fifteen years into its existence. But it’s also a boring one.

Even as the multiverse in Spider-Verse expands well beyond the scope of anything we have seen onscreen before, emotional beats are never sacrificed. If the multiverse presents a maudlin promise to viewers that nothing ever has to end, this latest spin on the premise suggests that may not be the case. Multiversal storytelling may tap into a deeper human desire to avoid pain, but aren’t the painful moments the ones we remember most?

Even the greatest stories are often remembered by how they end, but what if there is no ending in sight? I am cautiously optimistic about Lord and Miller’s commitment to limiting Spider-Verse to a trilogy, even if the commercial potential of the multiverse will likely reign supreme (development on a live-action Miles Morales adaptation is already underway). Cinema is going the way of the soap opera. Will future generations be following the same franchises we established decades prior?

We have had enough cautionary tales about artificial intelligence or the conflation of commerce and art to know that the studio executives behind them will never learn their lesson, or recognize the irony of their output. The onus falls on us to filter through the franchises and find the ones that matter.

Because many of them do matter. That much we can agree upon. I recently saw the very bad Transformers: Rise of the Beasts in a crowded theater. The film ends with a reveal that will surely have far-reaching consequences for the next decade of franchise filmmaking. It’s major, but it’s also incredibly stupid. And yet, the ill-conceived expansion of the Transformers-verse was met with uproarious applause in my IMAX theater at AMC Universal CityWalk. This movie matters to fans of the franchise, but that doesn’t mean its middling quality deserves to be overlooked. It is not for me to tell you what is objectively good and bad — such objectivity surely does not exist — but we must all reckon with the fact that some (a lot?) of this stuff is indeed very bad. Say what you will about Michael Bay and his incoherent babbling across five Transformers films, but there was at least a vision on display. The franchise’s latest entry should offend longtime patrons of the property, going through the motions until it can justify an onslaught of spin-offs.

Maximals and Autobots unite in Steven Caple Jr.’s Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023).

All I ask is that we have an opinion. I fear that mainstream storytelling’s increasing reliance on easter eggs, in-jokes, and multiversal machinations has rendered us all mindless minions (and not even the yellow and obnoxious kind) in our evaluations of what we watch. Our brains have been tickled (and perhaps turned to mush) so that is enough for us to sign on to sequels and cinematic universes galore.

The role of the contemporary critic is to resist these urges, not necessarily in order to make a clear recommendation to readers, but rather to create a great piece of art themselves. Critics certainly can act as cultural sentinels, but it is fair to acknowledge their reduced significance in a society where the difference between a Letterboxd review, a published piece, and a brief tweet is negligible. Still, the only real defining feature of this cultural ecosystem we have built for ourselves is that art begets more art. And if we all agree that the art is what matters most — and we better agree on that — then we owe that art our curiosity and our intellect. If we accept art’s degradation into pure commerce, we allow flavorless films like Rise of the Beasts and The Flash to persist. The critic’s only real obligation then is to create a beautiful piece of art in response to a particular work.

The power of a given piece lies in its perspective, positive or negative. I enjoy reading reviews and listening to podcasts, but that conversation you had on your drive home from the cinema? That’s film criticism! When I refer to film criticism, I am referring to any extension of the meaning-making process. Films and the discussions about them swirl together to create an artistic cocktail of interpretations.

Those extra ingredients will continue to prove crucial.

As studios work to undermine writers and explore the potential of AI, artists and their audiences must assign value to the art beyond its potential to bridge the gap between this universe and that one. And we don’t even have to like things in order to recognize their value! A bad movie can often lead to an impressive piece of criticism. I wrote such a review (if I do say so myself) on Sam Levinson’s Malcolm & Marie in 2021, and I’m half-tempted to tear apart his similarly terrible HBO series The Idol. The title of this newsletter does suggest a lesson in hatred, and it would be instructive, wouldn’t it?

Alas, art begets more art. And this terrible piece of art has already begotten plenty. I leave you with this excerpt from Prathyush Parasuraman’s excellent review for Film Companion:

“In the first episode, the chaos of managers, journalists, creative directors, executives, and intimacy coordinators swarming around Jocelyn has the energy of Levinson’s Euphoria. Those untethered, wide-eyed, anything-goes, slapstick, meandering, provocative exchanges that yield restlessness. This is the cacophony of fame, its exteriority.

What about its interiority? Moulded from trauma, all that cinematic trauma — a dead mother, a career on the verge of being short-circuited, passing references to a cheating boyfriend — Jocelyn is a character far beyond irony, beyond sympathy, beyond disgust, beyond concern, beyond emotional release, catharsis, whatever.”

That’s good writing! It is the kind of writing that reminds me — no matter how often I may run in the same existential circles here at Cory’s Reads — what truly matters. Pop culture is a playpen, a palace of pretense, a place where Tom Cruise and Stephen King can join forces and momentarily fool us into thinking that a film like The Flash is worthy of our time and attention.

And maybe it is. It got us this kick-ass piece of writing, after all.