Possibly an exercise in how tastes change (or maybe the industry), but in 1989 it was Tim Burton's Batman that marked the beginning of my career as a dyed in the wool moviegoer. The excitement and anticipation was something I hadn't felt since the days of Star Wars over a decade before, and it reminded me of what it felt like to be a kid in love with a movie.

That was the only reason I had any interest in this film at all. By 2017 I was thoroughly sick of superhero movies to begin with, and then DC mishandled the entire Justice League canon with Zack Snyder's overblown, cut-to-shreds turkey (although I'm yet to watch the extended cut that apparently corrects everything wrong with that).

On top of that I wasn't the least interested in The Flash as a character. And I knew it was another multiverse story, an idea flogged so mercilessly to death lately the decision not to see anything else about it is almost a political statement on my part to film studios that doing this is no longer okay.

And Ezra Miller seemed to be a piece of shit as a human being, captured on video assaulting a woman in a bar, throwing chairs, screaming abuse at people in public, etc, etc.

In fact, seeing how Warner Bros was going to handle the PR conundrum was going to be far more interesting than the film was ever going to be, its only choices seemingly whether to keep its star out of the limelight and make his absence even more obvious or trot out some not-his-fault bullshit about divorced parents, depressive anxiety, substance abuse and identity politics (call me a cynic but I'm sure the decision to adopt them/they pronouns was studio marketing's idea in a desperate attempt to give him some sympathy).

Then the reviews came out and were everything I'd hoped (poor), signalling another glimmer of hope that we might be at the end of the comic book adaptation craze.

So I was never going to pay to see it and it would have been way down my list on streaming one day, but I was on a plane and my curiosity to see Michael Keaton in the role that won me over so completely as a 20 year old won out.

But, inasmuch as I can be bothered recalling it, Barry Allen (Miller) already has his powers in the days before General Zod is set to invade Earth around the time of Man Of Steel. He goes home to find his mother lying dead, murdered, while his father's gone to the store for groceries, and runs so fast in his grief he ends up manipulating time and being able to go back and alter the past.

When he goes undercover to give his father the can of tomatoes he forgot at the store the first time, which caused him to leave home again and somebody unknown to sneak in and kill his mother, Barry returns to his own time to find another version of himself.

He also realises that it was because his father went to the store a second time that he gained his powers, so he and his other self have to team up to engineer it to happen again, which causes more unintended consequences across history, etc etc.

It's basically the theme, if not the plot, of whichever of the recent Spider Man movie series has Peter asking Dr Strange to make everyone forget he's Spider Man but ends up screwing history up in the process. As Barry 1 and Barry 2 go on to try and reassemble the Justice League, they discover messing with time has caused more far reaching effects.

Superman's cousin Supergirl (Sasha Calle) is actually the one who's come to Earth after the destruction of Krypton, Cyborg doesn't exist (like they were every going to have Ray Fisher back after his social media screeds against the studio), the Bruce they know is gone, Batman instead is the one from our universe in the late 80s, now older and ostensibly retired, and Diana Prince/Wonder Woman is nowhere to be found.

But Zod's forces attack as they did in Man Of Steel, setting up a desert-set smack down with each character having some dimension of personal importance in the battle, and it all descends into the orgy of migraine-inducing CGI you read about in the reviews.

The only fun moment of the whole thing is when director Andy Muschietti and the writers have Barry talk to almost every Batman and Superman from across the multiverse, everyone from Adam West's Batman to the Superman Nicolas Cage never got to play. It gets no points for originality because we already saw that in a Spider Man movie too when Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire reprised their roles, but it's still enough to raise a wry smile.

Other than that it's the same overblown crap as before, without even the storytelling finesse Marvel used to have (but has now lost), and I'm very glad to report that it's lost money, so as consumers, moviegoers might finally be rejecting this entire business model.