I hate it when parts of a series are ignored. It just turns everything into a mess like Highlander and Dallas.
Spoilers Been working on an Arrowverse "viewing order"...
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Wait, Highlander? Aside from its own problems in continuity and actors aging, as long as you watch it in release order you're generally in good shape.
Unless you're talking about the movies. At which point, each movie is its own entity and only crosses over with the events of the others when mentioned.
Except The Source. Which didn't happen. THE SOURCE NEVER HAPPENED.
Mark
Unless you're talking about the movies. At which point, each movie is its own entity and only crosses over with the events of the others when mentioned.
Except The Source. Which didn't happen. THE SOURCE NEVER HAPPENED.
Mark
Considering that Jimmy's a redhead in the comics and almost always brown-haired on TV and film, I've never seen the change in his skin color as being particularly novel. I mean, they're both just shifting the balance from carotene toward melanin...
I never cared for Welling's voice. The only Clark Kent actor who sounds less Superman-like to me is Dean Cain.
The young Clark we saw doesn't look like Welling anyway.
Looked like a redhead. That was a first, I think.
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C'mon man, you know it's more significant than that.
The young Clark we saw doesn't look like Welling anyway.Looked like a redhead. That was a first, I think.
Sometimes people with light hair in childhood get darker-haired as adults.
Sure, as far as our culture's preconceptions and history are concerned, it is, and challenging those preconceptions and making amends for that history is an important step forward. But it just underlines how stupid and arbitrary racism is, the fact that people don't see the contradiction between not caring in the least about a difference in pigment levels in the hair and totally freaking out about a difference in pigment levels in the skin.
My point was that they racechanged Pete on Smallville, who was Clark's best friend. In Supergirl, James Olsen is his best friend. Just saying the pattern could make sense, in universe, in character, for the Welling Clark to end up with a similar friend when he's older.... not going into the race issues at all.
Now, Wally West is an *entirely* different issue.... :P
Now, Wally West is an *entirely* different issue.... :P
It was never Welling; it was the network and WB. no flights, no tights. And in the end, it was a budget issue. This is one of the biggest urban legends about the show ever. I already addressed the incompatibilities; alternate universes and all; just do like Superman Returns, and replace the crappy latter half of the series with the divergent path towards Supergirl.
It just makes no sense to spend that much time developing the backstory of a major character, and then never touch it again, when there is a multiverse in play.
It makes perfect sense. There are countless different fictional interpretations of Superman, as there are of many other characters. A multiverse is an option, not a mandate. Just because the makers of The Flash find it useful to tell stories about the multiverse, that doesn't obligate them to twist their storytelling to pander to the wishful thinking of fans by cluttering up their series with a promiscuous sampling of all the alternate realities out there. Every adaptation has a right to reinvent the characters and the universe however they see fit. If they find it useful to borrow ideas from another interpretation, if it serves the new stories they have to tell, then they can do that. But the claim that it "makes no sense" for them to choose not to do that is itself nonsensical.
Tom Welling is a fan of Supergirl, but he says that he see no connection or parallel between Smallvile and Supergirl. I liked Smallville, but I really have no desire to see it folded into Supergirl, even as a parallel universe. If and I consider it a big if, we do see Superman I'd rather see a completely original take with no connections to any past versions. Berlanti and Co. done a great job coming up with their own versions of pretty much every other character they've tackled, so I'd like to see what they come up with for Superman without having to rely on an early version for their backstory.
If you want to see the Smallville Clark as Superman, that's what the Season 11 comics are for.
Yeah, hair color can get darker but I wouldn't mind seeing a slightly redheaded/auburn Superman. It would be different.
I think you just proved his point.
But in the multiverse as established in the CWverse, alternate characters still LOOK like they should. Barry on Earth 2 looks like his counterpart, not to mention the Jay/Zolomon thing. Why wouldn't Superman from the Supergirl verse, even with some different history, look the same as the Superman established in the SV-verse? Thats why I'm saying it would be fine to retcon the latter seasons, but still say that this guy is the grown up Superman. It would be a great easter egg for fans of SV, while just introducing "Superman" to everyone else.
Because Smallville isn't a part of the same 'verse, nor likely multiverse.
I'm sorry, it just isn't.
While I'm sure that would be nice to Smallville fans, what about fans of other versions of Superman?
What about people who headcanoned bits of Man of Steel or Donner's Superman into their ideas of who the Superman in this universe is?
I think the previously established practice in Superman productions of actors from previous versions returning for cameos (in different roles to the ones they originally played) is an adequate easter egg and if any homage to Smallville is waranted it should be done like that, not in some forced convoluted retroactive multiversity inclusion.
Again, the multiverse is a choice, not a requirement. They don't need to include any realities except the ones they want to include. I mean, come on, it's not like Tom Welling has an exclusive claim to the role. All the arguments you're making about him could just as well be applied to Henry Cavill. Or Brandon Routh, if he weren't already the Atom.
But isn't Cavill to expensive?
I also prefer Welling or Routh as Superman.
I also prefer Welling or Routh as Superman.
In that case we are getting Laura Vandervoort as Indigo later in the season, and she was even Supergirl on SV, so that makes her inclusion even more appropriate.
There's one other problem with trying to say that Smallville is part of the Arrowverse multiverse, none of the other characters look like they did one Smallville. The Flash has already established that people look the same in all of the universes, so if we were going to use that as a way for Tom Welling to be Superman, than Aaron Ashmore should be Jimmy, Vandervoort should be Kara, Justin Hartley should be Green Arrow, Phil Morris should be Martian Manhunter, Michael Shanks should be Hawkman, Pam Grier should be Amanda Waller, Keri Lynn Pratt should be Kat Grant, Gil Bellows should be Maxwell Lord, Anna Mae Routledge should be Livewire, and Michael Ironside should be Gen. Lane. It just wouldn't make sense at this point to have Supergirl's Superman look like Smallville's when none of the other characters who've been on Smallville and the Arrowverse shows look the same.
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I wasn't proposing him as a candidate, I was just pointing out that Smallville is not the only screen Superman universe out there. Phoenix219 was talking as if it were inevitable that Smallville would have to be referenced, and that's not true, because it's just one variant of the Superman mythos out of many -- and, if you ask me, a very problematical one that would be a poor choice to base a different Superman's backstory on.
Despite my serious problems with Man of Steel, Cavill is the first actor since Christopher Reeve that I've really been able to find totally convincing as Superman. And now that I see Routh as Ray Palmer, I think he could've made a terrific Superman if he'd had better material. (Yes, I know those seem to be opposite sentiments in a way. I can't explain it, that's just the way it falls out for me.) But Welling only occasionally gave me the barest hint of being kind of credible in the role.
Or at least that they can look the same. It's been hinted (though far from confirmed) that the '90 Flash might be part of the same multiverse, and though it has three namesake characters played by the same actors (Tina McGee, the Trickster, and Tony Bellows), it also has namesake characters who look different between the two versions (Barry Allen, Henry Allen, Iris West, Captain Cold, and Linda Park).
Plus it's been hinted that the multiverse idea could be used in the future to connect the DC television shows with the DC Extended Universe of the movies, in which case we'd have different-looking versions of the Flash, Amanda Waller, Deadshot, Katana, Captain Boomerang, and possibly others. (Not to mention tween-aged Kal-El/Clark Kent -- assuming that Kara's Black Mercy vision of young Kal-El was based on seeing childhood photos of Clark rather than just a construct of her imagination.) So we can't assume DC/Warner Bros. would be constrained to follow the lookalike rule in every case.
Not that I want any reference to Smallville, of course. There are reasons I think it would be a bad idea; I just don't agree that that's one of them.
I forgot about the possibility of the movies being connected.
As for the '90s series Flash not being Grant Gustin, lots of shows have had older versions of characters played by the actor who plays the parent of the same sex, so they could just say he was older when he got his powers. I guess that would only work for Barry though.
The again I guess there have also been plenty of times where characters have changed actors between appearances and it's all been set in the same universe, like Bruce Banner, and James Rhodes in the MCU and Saavik in the Star Trek movies. So I guess that would be another point against it.
Even if that doesn't work against it, I still don't like the idea of connecting Smallville to Supergirl. I like Smallville a lot more than some people, but I still don't see any need to connect it to Supergirl. Like I said before, I'd rather see what the Supergirl/Arrowverse writers can come up with for Superman all on their own, without having to connect it to an earlier version.
As for the '90s series Flash not being Grant Gustin, lots of shows have had older versions of characters played by the actor who plays the parent of the same sex, so they could just say he was older when he got his powers. I guess that would only work for Barry though.
The again I guess there have also been plenty of times where characters have changed actors between appearances and it's all been set in the same universe, like Bruce Banner, and James Rhodes in the MCU and Saavik in the Star Trek movies. So I guess that would be another point against it.
Even if that doesn't work against it, I still don't like the idea of connecting Smallville to Supergirl. I like Smallville a lot more than some people, but I still don't see any need to connect it to Supergirl. Like I said before, I'd rather see what the Supergirl/Arrowverse writers can come up with for Superman all on their own, without having to connect it to an earlier version.
There's a simpler fix there: Barry's full name in the comics is Bartholomew Henry Allen, so maybe in the '90 show's universe, he went by Barry, but in the Arrowverse, he went by his middle name Henry and named his son Barry Jr. And whatever cosmic force causes parallel events to recur in different universes caused the father to get the Flash powers in one universe and the son to get them in the other.
Also Howard Stark (twice) and Fandral.
And Tora Ziyal and DaiMon Bok and Rene Picard and various others, plus the entire TOS cast in the new movies.
The most generous way I can express it is that Smallville had its own, very idiosyncratic take on the Superman mythos that served its own purposes but wouldn't be a good fit for another show, any more than Adam West's Batman would be a good fit as a backstory for Ben Affleck's Batman.
Yes. A new adaptation is an opportunity to be inventive. That's preferable to copying what's already been done.
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