The Flash (Andy Muschietti, 2023)

So, in their attempt to keep up with Marvel, having only three heroes most people have heard of, the DCEU fall back on The Flash, who can...run incredibly fast. This apparently means he can reach such a velocity that he can breach the barrier between alternate universes and try to undo the death of his mother. Naturally the butterfly effect of trying to alter time comes into play, and whatever he or his younger version in the alternate universe try to do to change events is cancelled by the halfheartedly explained immutable timeline, or somesuch.

To the film's credit, it is made clear that the hero hasn't got a clue about consequences either, and despite the usual overabundance of digitally-animated action and fight sequences, it is actually quite good fun, bringing together multiple versions of Batman from over the years to assist the hero (principally Michael Keaton reprising an older Batman from Tim Burton's films) and incorporating numerous other nods to genre fans.

But they shouldn't take this as the way to go in the DCEU. Marvel have already tried quite a few times, and it's not a pony with many tricks.

6/10

28 Weeks Later (Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, 2007)

Horror franchises where the first part had something new to offer are more unkillable than zombies, so more zombies is what we get. The US military has taken over Britain, presuming that the rage virus has finally been eradicated, except of course there'd be no film without it. Cue large chunks of London being laid to waste and mass slaughter of innocents, so the real enemy is actually 'shoot first' American foreign policy, which funnily enough makes more sense now than it did when the film was released in 2007. The gruesome action is, of course, relentless, so chaotically shot that anything could be happening for all you know, and there's virtually no attention paid to the geography of the city, location scouting apparently having been done by a particularly clueless American tourist with a checklist of landmarks. It is still a riveting ride, but that's the basic minimum you could expect, and it depressingly closes on a final shot promising a worldwide continuation of the menace, and therefore a sequel.

4/10

The Old Guard 2 (Victoria Mahoney, 2025)

How prescient Lulu's 1969 Eurovision winner, Boom-Bang-a-Bang was, when it comes to dealing with action film sequels. Because that's what so many of them do, just add more booms and bangs to their predecessors. The Old Guard was a product that really didn't deserve a continuation, being a pot of ripped-off ideas, mainly from Highlander, but apparently that wasn't enough to stand in the way of milking a cash cow for more. So, Charlize Theron and her crew of immortals must foil the plot of the first ever immortal to kill them all, and this naturally means lots and lots of gunplay and the standard unfeasible martial arts. Sure, the action sequences are competently constructed, but take them away and there's really nothing left.

4/10