Losing the spark

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, June 16th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: And I’m Paul Butler. This week we kicked off our June giving drive. And let me thank each and everyone one of you who’ve already stepped up to the plate and given since Monday. What an encouragement for our whole team. One of this week’s early givers emailed us this voice memo recording with an explanation for why she and her husband give—and they want to invite others to join them in supporting Biblically objective journalism.

KAREN HOLMES: My name is Karen Holmes. My husband Mark and I live in Littleton, Colorado. When we give to WORLD, we become part of a team, advancing a journalistic vision with eternal consequences. WORLD's reporting offers a view of current events rooted in the biblical belief in the sovereignty of God. While sometimes I laugh at the puns or pray about what is happening, I always learn from the content. Since Johnny Franklin and Carl Petz stay up late to get the program to us early, let's do our part to equip the home team. Thank you.

BROWN: Oh that’s great. We are a team. Some of us are in front of the mic, while others are behind it—editing scripts, putting the program together, and making sure that you get this podcast each and every morning.

If you’d like to join Mark and Karen Holmes and the amazing team of WORLD supporters you can do that easily and securely online today at wng.org/donate. And if you’ve already given but would like to record your own encouragement for others to join you, you can email that to us. The address is: editor@wng.org.

BUTLER: Well, coming up next on The World and Everything in It: what’s new on the big screen. This weekend DC Studios’ The Flash and Pixar’s Elemental debut in theaters. Here’s WORLD’s arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino with what to expect.

COLLIN GARBARINO: Over the last 12 months, multiverses have gone mainstream at the movies. Everything Everywhere All at Once won multiple Academy Awards for its interdimensional shenanigans. Doctor Strange dived into Marvel’s multiverse of madness, and Sony's animated Spider-Man is currently hanging around with alternate versions of himself. DC Comics’ Flash is supposed to be Earth’s fastest superhero, so it’s a little ironic that DC Studios has been the last to arrive to Hollywood’s multiversal party. Better late than never? Well, that’s hard to say.

BARRY ALLEN: Time has a pattern that it can’t help reliving.

Ezra Miller returns as Barry Allen the speedster in a red suit after appearing in DC’s Justice League movies. Though Barry is a superhero, he’s still an insecure young man who suffers from losing his parents more than a decade earlier. He’s like an underappreciated clean-up guy for Batman and Superman. But after running faster than the speed of light, Barry discovers he can time travel.

BRUCE WAYNE: So you’re saying you can travel back in time.

BARRY ALLEN: But Bruce, I can fix things. I can save people. I can save my mom. I could save your parents.

Batman, once again played by Ben Affleck, isn’t convinced it’s a good idea.

BRUCE WAYNE: You could also destroy everything.

Barry’s supposed to be a smart kid, but he ignores good advice, enters the past, and begins to meddle. Things go sideways quickly. Barry teams up with an alternate, cooler version of himself. And in this new fragmented reality Michael Keaton, who played Batman back in 1989, is back as the Dark Knight.

BATMAN: Yeah, I’m Batman.

The two Barrys convince the aged crusader to come out of retirement to save the world.

The Flash earns its PG-13 rating with strong language and partial nudity, both of which are played for laughs. DC films usually suffer from taking themselves too seriously, but not this one. The Flash is all about jokes and cameos.

BARRY: What’s the play!? Batman, what do we do!?

BATMAN: We try not to die.

In fact, DC should have taken the script a little more seriously. The studio crammed references to 70 years of various movie and TV adaptations into the film, but the shaky plot feels like an afterthought. The visuals don’t make up for the weak writing. Some of the speed scenes are inventive, but at times the computer-generated imagery looks sloppy.

I admit there’s a certain thrill that comes with seeing Michael Keaton wear Batman’s cowl once again.

BATMAN: I spent a lifetime trying to right the wrongs of the past.

But nostalgic fan service offers the only thrills in The Flash. The story and effects just aren’t up to speed.

The Flash isn’t a great movie, but it’s far and away better than the other big movie opening this weekend, Pixar’s Elemental.

EMBER: Sorry, buddy. Elements don’t mix.

Elemental is set in Elemental City, where citizens made of earth, wind, fire, and water all live alongside each other. But not always peacefully.

The movie is an animated rom-com, in which a water elemental named Wade falls in love with a fire elemental named Ember. Ember likes Wade too, but she’s afraid her father won’t approve of her dating a water guy.

BERNIE: You really food inspector?

WADE: As far as you know, yeah.

BERNIE: Then inspect this!

In Elemental City, the fire people are the most recent immigrants, and the movie aspires to explain the Asian immigrant experience in America. Water people stand in for white folks. There’s a scene in which Wade’s rich liberal family attempt to be gracious to Ember while indulging in cultural stereotypes. It’s meant to be cringey, but it elicits groans for the wrong reasons. Everything’s just too on the nose.

The movie might have been better if it had just been about Koreans living in America, but swapping ethnicity for elementality without creating unique problems and situations makes for poor social commentary. That lack of originality makes for some lazy jokes as well.

WADE: You’re so hot.

EMBER: Excuse me?

WADE: No, I mean, like you’re smoking! No! I didn’t mean it like that.

EMBER: Are you done yet?

WADE: Yes, please.

Elemental comes across as a bad animated remake of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. But this time we get some gay couples in the background because—you know—representation. It’s almost funny how Pixar adds the LGBT elements into the movie, but makes sure they can easily be erased with different voice acting for international markets.

The only thing going for Elemental is that at an hour and a half, it’s relatively short. Even so, kids are going to be bored out of their minds with this sorry attempt at a story, and adults won’t fare much better. I kept checking my watch throughout the second half of the movie. It’s a shame that Disney has managed to quench Pixar’s creative flame.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

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