Michael Keaton’s Caped Crusader Steals the Limelight in Latest ‘The Flash’ Trailer

By Shubhendu Vatsa - News Published: 28 Apr 2023

The DC multiversal war is on and there’s only a few we can turn to. Ahead of its first full screening at CinemaCon in Las Vegas, Warner Bros. unveiled a brand new trailer for The Flash, starring Ezra Miller as the Fastest Man Alive. However, Michael Keaton’s Batman stole the show, delivering some electrifying dialogues and incredible action.

Drawing heavily from the fan-favourite Geoff Johns and Andy Kubert’s 2011 comic book known as Flashpoint, the new trailer for The Flash ups the ante and shows us, Barry Allen, using the speed force to traverse back in time to save his parents. However, preventing that event from happening messes up the timeline and results in Barry winding up in an alternate reality in which metahumans don’t exist. This allows General Zod, played by Michael Shannon, to rise to power and invade Earth. In this alternate timeline, Barry will need to rally a new team of heroes that can help him save the multiverse and undo his time-travelling shenanigans.

New Trailer Coming at 12 PM PT. #TheFlashMovie pic.twitter.com/Kx4R2TxC3k

— The Flash (@theFlash) April 25, 2023

The second The Flash trailer opens up on Wayne Manor, with Keaton’s Batman explaining why and how he became who he is. “I lost my parents. That pain made me who I am,” says Keaton’s Batman as he waves his hand over a picture of Thomas and Martha Wayne. We also get our first look at the Batcave and the Batwing in all its glory. Keaton continues “I spent a lifetime trying to right the wrongs of the past as if fighting crimes would bring my parents back. You actually did it.” This is followed by a few shots from Barry’s past showcasing his parents and how he lost both of them in just one day. “I went back in time to save my parents, but instead I completely broke the universe,” Miller’s Barry says in the footage.

The real threat of the movie is then introduced as Shannon’s General Zod plots his nefarious takeover of planet Earth, declaring, “This world must die.” Instead of Henry Cavill’s Superman, we find Sasha Calle’s Supergirl in this newly created timeline, who agrees to help Barry and company in their fight against Zod. Michael Keaton utters his iconic line from his 1989 Batman movie, saying, “You wanna get nuts? Let’s get nuts.”

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And things do start to get crazy from here on out. What follows after is all the chaos and crazy one would expect to see, with two Barrys (the Barry of the present who went back in time and the Barry of the past) linking up with Batsy and Supergirl to take on Zod. We hear Barry saying “I have to undo what I did,” following which we get to see Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne for the first time in this trailer. He tells Barry, “These scars we have… make us who we are. We’re not meant to go back and fix them.”

Image: Warner Bros

Later in the trailer, Batfleck drops out of the hangar bay of his plane in a brawny new Batcycle, while in another shot Sasha Calle’s Supergirl flies above the clouds carrying one of the injured Barry Allen. A shot of her screaming “What did you do?” at someone is also thrown in following which we jump to a ruthless shot of her hurling a metal pole at Zod’s head so hard that it thrashes him into a wall. Good thing Zod has his trusty helmet on. We then see Keaton’s Batman shielding Barry and a few others from a bullet storm in a dark tunnel by extending his bulletproof cape. Pretty neat!

“No matter what we do, we’re not going to be able to fix this!” one Barry to another, as we see one of the Barry-ies getting absolutely wrecked by blasts of lightning. The trailer ends by taking us back to that nighttime shot at the snowy prison facility as Keaton Batman readies both the Barrys to jump out of the Batwing using the parachutes. Bruce nosedives out of the Batwing without any sort of parachute, leaving one of the Barry in complete and utter awe. The whole thing is further complemented by the perfectly timed shot of the moon and the Batwing, which creates the iconic Bat symbol up in the sky.

We can’t wait to witness the collision of different DC worlds when The Flash hits the big screens on June 16. Check out the trailer above or via the link below.

Shubhendu Vatsa

Shubhendu Vatsa is an experienced reporter specialising in video game, eSports and technology coverage. A BTech IT graduate, Shubhendu has previously written for entertainment-based publications such as GiveMeSport, Touch, Tap, Play, Attack of the Fanboy, EssentiallySports, Twinfinite and The Load Out.

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