The Hollywood hype machine tends to be one of the most well-oiled enterprises in all of popular culture, but The Flash has been discovering firsthand that telling everybody a movie is one of the greatest to ever exist within its genre of choice has the potential to backfire.
Recommended VideosWarner Bros. went hard on letting the world know that greatness was in our midst; as well as screening multiple times and handing out free tickets for advanced previews, everybody from company co-CEO James Gunn to end-of-level bossman David Zaslav via Stephen King and Tom Cruise were rolled out to give The Flash the pre-emptive red carpet treatment.
However, based on a solid-if-unspectacular Rotten Tomatoes score of 73 percent that doesn’t even rank it among the Top 20 best-reviewed DC Comics adaptations ever made, the hype train has started grinding to a halt. Not only that, but the backlash already appears to be underway, all while those opening weekend box office projections continue trending downwards.
After so much positive buzz – which was admittedly largely manufactured and perpetrated by the studio – The Flash may not be all that it was touted to be. And yet, the reasons couldn’t be more simple, after an anonymous insider mused to The Hollywood Reporter that “It can’t be the studio telling you it’s good; your friends have to tell you it’s good.”
It sounds obvious, but it’s also entirely on the money. The people who get paid to make the movie and stand to earn even more should it succeed are always going to praise it from the rooftops, but it’s Joe Public who gets the final say, which is where The Flash is starting to fall short.
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