What to Make of Ezra Miller's Red Carpet Appearance?
Ezra Miller's appearance on the June 13 red carpet premiere for Warner Bros. The Flash brings forth myriad questions. There are smaller ones, yes — What's with the black sweats (?), high-collared shirt, white blazer? Are those custom metal Flash brooches — but the main query that's bugging us is: why is it okay to put Ezra Miller on the red carpet?
Miller, who uses they/them pronouns, is at the center of a massive media firestorm of their own making. From alleged assaults and reported child grooming, the past few years have delivered nothing but bad news from Ezra Miller.
In 2022 alone, Miller was arrested for violent altercations in Hawaii (twice), burglary in Vermont, and had yet another run-in with the police over child safety.
With a "controversies" section on Wikipedia that far outstrips the description of their career, Miller is capably making the case for not platforming them.
Instead, Warner Bros. and DC have elected to push out The Flash, a $200+ million blockbuster that's nearly a decade in the works and stars Miller as the titular superhero.
Why not just shut the movie down? It's not like DC is incapable of shelving otherwise complete movies (see: Batgirl 2022).
Instead, one must assume that Warner Bros. believes that The Flash is capable of bringing in enough cash to warrant a wide release, even with Ezra Miller's involvement.
There's plenty of history of tentpole DC films bringing in big bucks, to be sure, and The Flash will probably take home a huge profit no matter what. Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad (2016) were awful movies, for instance, but their revenues tripled their budget (or more).
But those two movies didn't have the baggage of placing Ezra Miller center stage, essentially giving a presumably mentally ill and deeply problematic individual undeserved attention.
Ezra Miller is not someone that major film studios ought to be willing to make an exception for. Just seeing them on the red carpet amongst A-list peers is unnerving.
If anything, Miller's presence at The Flash's premiere is indicative of studios' scruples. Cash is king and everything else is irrelevant, otherwise the #MeToo movement might've the lingering impact it necessitated and the demands of WGA writers would've been met a long time ago.
