The Ezra Miller conundrum: are superhero blockbusters too big to cancel?

Does cancel culture exist? If it exists in even the most flaccid state, who gets punished and who gets away with just a warning slap? Can money always spring the accused from Cancellation Island?

On Tuesday, Ezra Miller, who plays the zippy superhero in DC’s The Flash, made a rare appearance on the red carpet at that film’s premiere. The star acknowledged “everybody who supported me in my life and in the world along this decade-long, trying and very beautiful peregrination”.

Miller’s own peregrination took them – the chiselled actor identifies as non-binary – to some unfortunate places over the past year or two. They were arrested in Hawaii for disorderly conduct and harassment. A Massachusetts court granted a temporary restraining order against Miller “after parents accused them of grooming, abuse and intimidation involving a non-binary child”. A representative for Miller later apologised and announced their client was undergoing treatment for “complex mental health issues”.

[ The Flash: the Ezra Miller factor casts a pall over a film that is funnier than it has any right to be ]

Warner Bros, which controls the DC Extended Universe, has recent form in burying troublesome projects. A year ago the studio announced its latest take on Batgirl, largely completed at a budget of $90 million, would no longer be released on any platform. The always handy “studio insiders” told Variety the decision was “not driven by the quality of the film” (as if) but by “the desire for the studio’s slate of DC features to be at a blockbuster scale”.

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True, costing at least twice as much as Batgirl, the Flash is more blockbustery. Yes, it introduces at least one potentially promising new character. But it could, perhaps, have been downgraded. Many are the appalling event films that have been shuffled on to streaming services. A day release from Cancellation Penitentiary?

The news comes as conversations bubble up about other controversial talents on the spectrum of shame. An incisive article by Eric Kohn, executive editor of IndieWire, appears under the headline “Why Does Ezra Miller Get a ‘Flash’ Pass, but Not Woody Allen or Roman Polanski?”.

One can sense legions rising from slumber to wonder what awful fate is supposed to have befallen Allen or Polanski. The American filmmaker’s hitherto frantic work-rate has certainly slowed since, in the wake of #MeToo, the cinematic community revisited accusations of abuse against his adoptive daughter, but he has still managed to finish four films over the last five years. Polanski, who pleaded guilty to “unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor” in 1977, won the César Award for best director – essentially the French Oscar – for An Officer and a Spy in 2020. Both men have new films released this year.

That noted, we cannot pretend either director is welcomed into all the same spaces he owned five years ago. When I wrote about Allen’s so-so Wonder Wheel in 2017, I speculated it might be “the last Woody Allen movie we’ll review”. My point was not that The Irish Times was cancelling him, but that this might be his last film to receive theatrical distribution in this country. Sure enough, neither 2019′s A Rainy Day in New York nor 2020′s Rifkin’s Festival played in Irish cinemas. (Simultaneously, the whole industry changed and we began reviewing streaming releases in the film pages. But let’s not confuse the yarn.) An Officer and a Spy was also absent from the nation’s picture houses.

One can understand audiences not wishing to financially reward artists of whom they disapprove, but nothing can be gained by supressing films that have been already completed

Asked about Allen’s upcoming Coup de Chance, Thierry Frémaux, head of the Cannes film festival, said it was “not a candidate”, adding “the controversy would take over against his film, against the other films”. Apparently, Polanski’s The Palace, due for French release in late September, was not shown to the Cannes programmers.

It is, thus, fair to argue that Miller’s film and those of Polanski and Allen are being differently treated. In IndieWire, Kohn concluded, not unreasonably, that it is all about cash. “The odds of losing money on a theatrical release for these films is high – and that would be true even if the filmmakers had spotless records,” he writes. One might also point out that, though film is always a collaborative project, The Palace and Coup de Chance belong to their directors in a way the colossal Flash does not belong to its young star. How far up the cast list need you be to risk your film’s cancellation?

One can understand audiences not wishing to financially reward artists of whom they disapprove, but nothing can be gained by suppressing films that have been already completed. Polanski’s subsequent behaviour does not make earlier masterpieces such as Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby any less queasily persuasive. No grown-up reads books by only the most morally upright authors.

Let audiences see the films. Let them not see the films. After all, almost everyone will, even if the Polanski and Allen films do open here, choose the latest CGI fight in the sky instead.