The Flash is now in theaters and, unfortunately for Warner Bros, also all over the internet. We won’t go into specifics, save to say that there are a lot of clips from the movie on social media that clearly come from a pirate cam version. This means it’s all hands on deck for the Warner Bros’ copyright strike team, who are hard at work making sure that every unofficial video of The Flash is scrubbed from social media as fast as possible.

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This is effectively a game of high-speed whac-a-mole, though an unintended consequence seems to be that clips that aren’t even from The Flash are also getting deleted. It’s safe to say fans aren’t happy with these scorched-earth tactics:

We’re left to only imagine what the Flash might be doing to some poor baby:

Fact of the day: When a company has to copyright strike a scene of the Flash stuffing a baby into microwave… it probably isn't a good sign for the rest of the movie.

— Sir-Raptor (@Sir__Raptor) June 15, 2023

We can understand why they’re doing it, but let’s face it, it’s not a good look:

It’s funny seeing all these tweets about the Flash that are “this is the worst thing I’ve ever seen” and it’s “MEDIA HAS BEEN DISABLED BY COPYRIGHT OWNER”

— hoodwinkedfool 🐌 (@hoodwinkedfool) June 15, 2023

We can’t deny we’re curious to see the reactions over opening weekend:

I think it’s really funny that I’ve seen nothing good said about the flash movie, and that literally every clip or image gets immediately removed for copyright. DC is being such a salty bitch about nobody liking their movie and it cracks me up

— Kilgore Trout (@gmcbaine) June 15, 2023

These are a big selling point of the movie and if people think they look underwhelming…

I keep seeing "What this is so bad" over "Media removed by copyright owner" like man, it's not our fault you released The Flash movie

— DiamondDitto (@Diamond_Ditto) June 14, 2023

Not an unreasonable assumption:

Usually people wait till it hits digital or streaming to dunk on a bad movie, which is why I know THE FLASH is the hottest of garbage. People are out here getting DMCA takedowns over cell phone theater videos

— St. Nick (@nickmoscato) June 15, 2023

When the dust settles on The Flash we suspect it’ll primarily be remembered for its genuinely jaw-droppingly bad CGI. Given how long the movie has been in production we were shocked at just how bad some sequences looked. A common criticism is that VFX can look like an older video game, though in this instance it’s one hundred percent accurate, and the defense that it’s supposed to look like that doesn’t hold much water.

The Flash is now in theaters.