Warning! This post contains SPOILERS for The FlashOld comments by Superman star Christopher Reeve appear to be a stunning takedown of The Flash is filled with cameos and other methods of appealing to nostalgia, including an appearance by the late Christopher Reeve.
Newly rediscovered footage of Reeve, however, appears to contradict the very message of The Flash. Check out the tweets by UsUnitedJustice and John Frankensteiner, as well as Reeve's quote below:
“He suffers from a very bad disease called sequelitis in, which what the majors do is you take what grossed $100 million domestically last year and get the key ingredients back again and try to pump it up a few more times. Of course, the quality is a sliding scale of diminishing returns, and I think very rarely do you get an improvement on what went before it. Because often what they’ll do — and I know this happened in the case of a film that I worked on — is they’ll make all the promises above the line.
"They’ll get the heavyweights. The top actor, the director, whatever. They’ll say ‘It’s gonna be wonderful. We’ll go back to the original. It’s gonna be great.’ But then they don’t give you the resources. They don’t give you the tools to go and work below the line. The audience now — listen, if the film is not spectacular, why pay the four pounds or the seven dollars or whatever to stay home and watch TV instead…
"I don’t like to dump on previous employers, but it is true that they want to reach their hand into the till again and come up with a fistful of gold, and they don’t always want to put out what it takes to make the quality. They’re agents, and they’re businessmen, and they’re lawyers who’ve gradually taken over the business, and they really they don’t have a love of film. They make movies.”
Reeve's comments criticize the prevalence of sequels in media that borrow popular actors from previous iterations while failing to honor the effort and heart that went into their creation. With Reeve receiving a cameo in The Flash long after his tragic death, it seems to be a stunning critique of the very movie that Reeve is now starring in.
How The Flash Was Able To Include A Christopher Reeve Superman Cameo
Christopher Reeve's appearance in The Flash comes 19 years after his untimely death due to complications resulting from his paralysis. Using archival footage from the Superman films, DC Studios managed to utilize CGI to bind together that footage. The end product is that it feels as if Reeve filmed the part himself. The development is a technological marvel, but it is becoming as controversial as Grand Moff Tarkin (Peter Cushing)'s appearance in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story after Cushing's own death.
There has been no official confirmation about whether DC Studios reached out to Reeve's estate to request the use of Reeve's likeness. California law does, however, protect the deceased for 70 years after their death, meaning that DC Studios should have reached out, if only to protect The Flash from liability. With that in mind, the executor of Reeve's estate would have likely signed off on Reeve's appearance, though there is no way to truly know until the estate or DC Studios makes an official comment.
Considering that Superman III and Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, his cameo has brought further criticism to The Flash. Reeve did not approve of sequels that try to honor actors while failing to achieve the main message of prior movies, and the entire concept of a multiverse of cameos appears to be exactly what Reeve was complaining about. Reeve's appearance in The Flash seemingly flies in the face of his previous comments. In the end, it only proves Reeve's point.
Source: UsUnitedJustice / Twitter, John Frankensteiner / Twitter
