Now that The Flash is available to rent and purchase, more high-quality clips from the movie are going around completely devoid of context, mostly. That has never been more evident than the renewed confoundment over the film’s breakout scene after a longer clip went viral.
Earlier this week, fans scrutinized a cameo (in an already polarizing scene) featuring Jay Garrick as The Flash, but at least one person wanted people to know it wasn’t even the most absurd CGI shot in the film.
“Lot of people complaining about the cameos in The Flash and no one praising it for this iconic scene in which a dozen babies fall out of a hospital window and plummet towards various Looney Tunes style comedic deaths,” Tom Gran wrote.
In one of the earliest scenes in the film—even before The Flash takes on the multiverse—Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) is called to help stop a robbery in Gotham. He’s running late, he hasn’t eaten yet—and his speed-running means he burns a lot of calories, so he needs to eat a lot to use his powers—and he has to save several babies from plummeting to their deaths (or dying in a series of absurd ways) and the nurse who was flung out of a collapsing hospital.
After a number of trials and some quick eating, Barry saves every baby (including one he put in a microwave so it wouldn’t be burned) and the nurse, who is understandably traumatized by what she just went through, is seen screaming.
The scene was the subject of a recent New York Times Anatomy of a Scene video where director Andy Muschietti explained how it was designed to establish several things about Barry Allen and how his powers worked.
“What I wanted is to put our superhero to a test,” Muschietti said. “I wanted to put his superpowers to a test, and basically explaining that even if you’re the fastest man alive, you can have trouble saving different people at the same time.”
“No baby was harmed in the production of this scene,” he added.
Out of context, the scene is pretty silly. The babies don’t look great from a visual effects standpoint, and the many ways Barry spots how they could die—flames, knives, chemicals, to name a few—feels like a live-action rendition of that animated short from Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
The Flash was not a huge box office success, so for some people, this was the first time anyone had seen the scene even out of context.
“This is the movie a few months ago y’all were tryna convince me was “The BEST Comic Book Movie since the Dark Knight” lmfaooooooooooo GTFO!!!💀” @LamardcherAime wrote.
Others couldn’t get past the babies falling.
And more than a few people pointed out how X-Men: Apocalypse had a similar scene with Evan Peters’ Quicksilver saving everyone from dying in the destruction of Charles Xavier’s school.
The Flash quickly moves on from this hospital scene. Still, the scrutiny of those CGI babies demonstrates one thing: Already criticized when it came out last month, it’s going to face even more of it now that the people who didn’t want to support Miller or didn’t want to pay to watch it can see those scenes out of context.
