The Flash: Michael Keaton Compares New DC Movie to '90s Comedy Multiplicity

Michael Keaton says that DC's upcoming The Flash movie is something akin to his 1990s cult-hit comedy, Multiplicity. In a new interview, Keaton was musing about how fans all over the world seem hold Multiplicity in particularly high regard - when he suddenly veered into connecting that old film with what he worked on in The Flash! Multiplicity saw Keaton play a construction worker and dad who gets cloned by a scientist in order to help meet all the needs of his overscheduled life - only to have that experiment get way out of hand. Apparently, that premise speaks to how Ezra Miller's Flash will have to battle himself:

"I mean just did The Flash and there's a similarity in how - I don't want to give too much away - but how he has to play against himself and with himself," Keaton said while appearing on Jake's Takes. "And we were talking about the difficulty of making multiplicity and the challenge."

Keaton's words resonate loudly with recent rumors and leaks from the set of The Flash. One big rumor was that The Flash movie villain will be a darker version of Barry Allen, which will also be played by Ezra Miller. That rumor resonated loudly with some even earlier set photos, which showed Ezra Miller on set in a motion-capture suit meant for a CGI costume. The assumption was that Miller's new Flash costume will be CGI; now, it seems possible that he could be suiting up for an entirely different role as this dark version of Flash.

What Michael Keaton said in this interview all but confirms that there will be a dark version of The Flash who is the antagonist of this Flash movie. It's an interesting concept - one that manages to side-step the most obvious (and played-out) conflict in The Flash myhos: the battle between Flash and his nemesis, Reverse-Flash.

Eobard Thawne has been trotted out as a permanent fixture of The CW's Flash TV series, and has made several big comebacks in the 21st century, after languishing in obscurity for a few years. However, DC fans have been somewhat vocal as of late, stating that they are tired of Reverse-Flash. It's also a massive story to explain how future scientist Eobard Thawne gets obsessed with The Flash, unlocks a way to achieve speed, and travels back in time to kill Barry's mom and start their feud. It's a villain origin that could arguably take a whole movie or series to introduce on its own - before getting into the events of this Flash movie, which will see Barry create and alternate DC movie universe timeline, by going back in time and saving his mom.

It's clear that while the DC multiverse storyline will be a major part of The Flash, the heart of it will be all about Barry Allen and coming to terms with the emotional trauma of his past. It would be a much more powerful story to have that internal conflict manifest itself as an external one, with Barry having to literally face a version of himself that has embrace the god-like power of the Speed Force in all the wrong ways.

The Flash is set to hit theaters on November 4, 2022.