Spoilers Crisis on Infinite Earths Discussion (CW Event Spoiler Thread)

It's got nothing to do with genre, with or without capital letters. It's a matter of basic storytelling. The issue would be the same regardless of genre: If someone was imprisoned, then someone must have imprisoned them, and the story didn't tell us who. And if a story leaves something unexplained, then a viewer is entitled to be curious.

 

I disagree. They are addressing (among many things) how government has abused and used its citizens for experimentation as in real world cases over the decades (Tuskegee and CIA experiments too numerous to detail here), military occupation of cities (which was common in the late 1960s/early 70s until the Federal government aided in militarizing local law enforcement with military grade weapons and vehicles, etc.). That's real history about a nation that is no stranger to corruption and abusing its citizens. Black Lightning is playing it more realistically (aside from the fantasy element) than any superhero series this century.

But more to the point (a re-post from the Black Lightning thread):

Areas can be quarantined if a mass disease outbreak happens--its a matter of public safety which takes priority over the right to move about at will.

From HHS.gov:

The ASA being an effective organization tied to the federal government would have no trouble creating a false outbreak scare and immediately act on it--which is the case in Freeland.

The govermnent can do whatever they want under the claim of public safety, health, natonal security. That is and always has been business as usual in the United States.

Governments clamp down on the spread of misinformation (under the guise of panic, public health/safety) as much as possible, while simultaneously spread said misinformation when it suits their agendas.

Its getting it right if one actually studies and or/experienced American history.

Black Lightning had its own reality. That should always take priority over other things dumped into its production.

 

False. Stunt casting and cameos is not a studio officially making any sort of statement about joined fictional universes. No one in charge of the DECEU has acknowledged what you're saying at all. This is the equivalent of the E.T. species appearing as part of the galactic senate in The Phantom Menace--stunt cameos, as Universal/Amblin did not officially or legally merge their property with LFL/Fox. Didn't happen.Moreover, in the case of Batman '66, WB does not outright own that series, as its still tied to Fox (now a part of Disney) and the estate of William Dozier. Unless there is official acknowledgement from those parties of some permanent arrangement where its characters and situations can be used in CW-DC productions, this is, again, nothing more than stunt casting/cameos.

I will...yawn.

 

Well...

But that would be rewriting the history of the character and series; Tobias' identity and his observations are firmly built on real world culture & history. Every main character on the show also makes those references--that was one of the significant points in creating the series: to have black characters' reflect real cultural/political/social history in their struggles against those who do not understand them, or in Odell & Tobias' case, uses their knowledge of culture to exploit citizens.

There is nothing "extreme" about recognizing high quality. Just as the majority of my ratings for Batwoman have either been B's with I believe one A. I am not obligated to give inferior productions high marks if they did not earn it. That's the kind of thinking that has some upset that Captain America: The Winter Soldier could be so consistently graded high, while Age of Ultron is not. There is no across-the-board "balance" to the qualities of every entry in a franchise.

Shhh! Don't question obvious things like that. He should have been killed, but...

Another situation where the comic could not be matched.

No disagreement there.

...and that would only happen if the Black Lightning writers handles that--apart from the writers of the other shows.

Lynn is currently a drug addict and her loyalties to her family (and more manipulation by Tobias) are still in question. That cannot be wiped away anytime soon.

That would make the characters on other shows appear utterly clueless; unlike local law enforcement or a mayor, the CW characters are superheroes and have the means to travel everywhere (and do so), and should know more / experience more about the country they live in. They certainly have broad opinions on everything from immigration to sexual identity, yet in a nation with its life blood and foundation being racist tyranny in the physical, ideological, institututional and legal sense, no one outside of Black Lightning has ever taken a serious, deep dive about that history and still raging problem.

That is why the other shows might as well be characters from some other company.

No one "glossed over" anything. I pointed out the specifics that the plot/tone and direct story impact of The Winter Soldier (which JD referred to) has no bearing on or shared tone with GOTG, just as GOTG has no direct connection to / bearing on the entire Cap storyline across three films concerning Hydra/SHIELD/Bucky/the Accords, etc.

Showing up in a battle scene together (Infinity War) does not mean their stories and tone are blended or would even work together, because frankly, they do not..

It made Jefferson look like he was just shoved into the crossover...which he was, as he only cried out about his family (presumed dead) one time, and did not demand more answers (which the Jefferson of his own show would do) then he was either silent, or shows up to grin like he was going to ComicCon for a cosplay gathering.

The preview of the next episode of Black Lightning would say the opposite, since he's barely telling Gambi about an alternate reality. He would wait until the end of the entire ASA/Markovian conflict (which threatens the lives of everyone on that show) to just blurt out, "oh, yeah...there's an alternate universe."

Again, that is why the other shows might as well be characters from some other company. There was no consistency or basic understanding of Jefferson at all, save for his first reaction, whiuch was merely piggybacking off of his thinking his family was killed. After that, Jefferson in costume only, mouthing crap that did not sound like the character during any of the three seasons his show.

 

None of that would work for SARS, which has something like a 98 percent recovery rate, and there is no chance there would be a communication black out like this. They literally turned Freeland into a police state, and that would NEVER work in the real world. The press would never just take people's word for it, and there would never be a 100 percent outbreak which means that healthy people would not be allowed to communicate with anyone. Absolutely impossible in the real world.

In fairness, in times of war, you have to compartmentalize. You turn off your grief like a switch and do what you have to do. Jefferson was able to channel his grief into siphoning off the energy. He didn't have time to think about it before Earth 1 disappeared.

 

I've been slow to coming around to there even being a new multiverse because I wasn't paying attention. Then I figured if no one on Earth Prime knows about extra dimensional travel, but they know Nash Wells, then either he lied about where he's from, and why he looks like a Wells, or Nash is the Wells of Earth Prime.

 

During the SARS outbreak of 2003, 774 people out of 8,098 infected died. If it was concentrated in one town or city, taking into account that there is no standardization of immunity/strong health management (especially in an economically struggling city like Freeland) there are higher chances of the average person to be exposed to the coronavirus. If local hospitals report that there's an outbreak of that magnitude, then you can bet your last dollar that my earlier HHS.gov quote would go into effect.

Its never that easy, and I have the veterans in my family, as friends and staff to know its not that easy. Jefferson's ultimate priority--he core of his heart is his family (followed by his community), and if he's told they were just wiped off the face of the earth, he's not going to "pull up his boot straps" like some fake-ass John Wayne movie and march on. He is going to be as ripped apart with grief and anger as he's been presented on his own series when his family is in danger.

The crossover screwed his character over.

 

^ As a fellow Black Lightning fan (one of the few things we can agree on), I concur Jefferson wasn't written as distinctively or convincingly as on his own show, but he had his moments. I particularly liked the bit in one of the episodes before the break when Barry accurately identifies the Dylan Thomas quote, and Jefferson responds with a pleased, "Well, all right, Flash" -- the educator in him coming out.

 

I wonder what the next crossover will be? With Superman getting his own show I imagine he will become the new leader of the ArrowVerse so it could be Darkseid or Brainiac.

 

I am thinking a real Earth 3, for the big crossover... I know they kinda did it with Earth X, and maybe they can with both Earth X and 3 teamingnup... also would be a good way get get Stephen Amell back (his evil character didnt die, right?).

For a low impact crossover, I am hoping Flash and Black Lightning.

 

I'm not sure about that, from a real world perpsective I could see leaving Barry, Sarah, and Kara as the leaders of the their heroes since they're the ones who has been around the longest.

But none of that matters when we're talking about whether or not they are or should be part of a shared universe. There are plenty of examples out there of shared universes have a huge variety of tones and styles, so I really don't see why this is such an issue.

Wow, that is really creepy. Was the Black Lighting mask used by a body double or something.

The characters appearing in the crossover IS an official annoucement that they are in the same multiverse. This stuff is all produced by DC and the WB and both companies are aware of what is going on and allowed these characters to appear in the show. It's not like they went around and snuck all of the people onto the set, and grabbed the clips they used at the end off the internet. If WB or DC didn't intend for these different shows and movies to be part of the same multiverse they wouldn't have allowed them to appear on the crossover.
No, most of them will probably not interact, but that doesn't change the fact that as of now, all of the shows and movies we see as part of the crossover are now part of the Arrowverse's multiverse.
Personally, I'm hoping that we might see crossovers between Earth Prime and Earths 9 and 21 aka Titans and Doom Patrol, but I know that's unlike.

Which once again, has no impact on the fact that these things all take place in one universe.

 

Yeah. It’s common practice with stunt doubles these days, due to HD cameras etc.

 

I’m afraid he did die. Oliver killed him.

 

From a real-world perspective, I assume the leaders of the Justice League will be the lead characters of the shows. Heck, of the founding seven Leaguers, the only one who isn't the lead character of a current or upcoming CW show is J'onn.

Although Part 5 definitely seemed, both in the climactic fight and in the Oliver memorial scene, to be positioning Sara as the successor to Oliver's leadership role, with Barry and Kara completing the Trinity. Which is logical; she's the longest-standing veteran among the remaining Arrowverse leads, and she's the captain of a timeship, which is a degree of leadership unmatched by any of the other Leaguers except J'onn, who led the DEO (and maybe Jefferson, who used to be a high school principal).

You're taking that too literally. A "multiverse" isn't a thing that really exists outside of stories, it's just a plot device used within certain stories. Yes, for the purposes of Crisis, all other DC screen productions are part of the Arrow-multiverse. But that in no way requires any other DC production to agree with that, because it's all just pretend for the sake of telling stories, and different storytellers can pretend different things. The 2003 CG-animated Spider-Man TV series on MTV was written as a direct sequel to the first Sam Raimi Spidey film, but the Raimi sequels totally ignored it (for one thing, it killed off Curt Connors in its first episode). Much as Superman Returns ignored every movie after Superman II, Terminator: Dark Fate ignored every movie after T2, Dallas ignored an entire season of itself, etc. Fiction is not binding. What one story says can be freely ignored by later stories, even those purporting to be in the same reality.

So it would be unrealistic to expect any other DC production to acknowledge the storytelling conceits of the Arrowverse, even in cases where the actors actually appeared in Crisis. There are countless examples of the same actor appearing as the same character in mutually incompatible continuities -- just off the top of my head, Don Adams reprised Maxwell Smart in at least two, probably three contradictory sequels to Get Smart (the feature film The Nude Bomb, the TV-movie revival, and the short-lived sequel sitcom). So, for instance, there'd be absolutely nothing to prevent Ezra Miller's Barry from saying in the Flashpoint movie that he's never met another incarnation of himself and got the idea for the name "Flash" in a totally different way than we saw here. It's all just pretend, after all. What the TV show pretended won't necessarily be what any other story pretends.

Of course they would. There have been countless examples throughout film and TV history of characters appearing on a different show or film without any implication that they shared a universe. Spock showing up on Carol Burnett. Lurch and Colonel Klink popping out of windows on Batman. The Penguin appearing in turn on The Monkees. Kevin McCarthy reprising his Invasion of the Body Snatchers character for a gag scene in the 1978 remake and again in Looney Tunes: Back in Action. Mulder & Scully appearing on The Simpsons. Detective Munch appearing everywhere.

Crossovers like that are about publicity, not continuity. Movie and TV studio execs couldn't care less whether two stories are consistent with each other, as long as people watch them. Ezra Miller showing up in Crisis is basically a product placement for the Flash movie. If it gets people to buy tickets, it's done its job.

There are no "facts" in fiction. There is only the premise of a given story. Crisis pretended that all those other universes were part of the multiverse. That served the needs of that particular story, because they needed to show a larger multiverse than just the CW shows and it made it more engaging if the universes were familiar. That doesn't mean they'll honor it in later stories. Heck, they said in Crisis on Earth-X that there were only 53 Earths, but they threw that "fact" out the window before very long at all.


Now, I do get where you're coming from. It would be fun if at least some other DC productions decided to pick up on the concept the Arrowverse has established and play more with the idea of a shared universe. Heck, I'd love to see Constantine show up in a Lucifer episode and get an explanation of Lucifer's "I owe you for Maze." But it'll only happen if the creators of a given show or movie decide they want to use the idea. It's not like it's some law that will be perpetually binding on all future productions. Even the Arrowverse isn't rigidly bound by its past continuity (53 Earths...), so why should anything else be?

 

You forget to whom you speak.

 

The multiverse died.

There's a new Multiverse.

Everything we saw in the old multiverse didn't copy and paste over to the new Multiverse, but similar trends probably did occur, which is why earth prime looks a lot like earth 38 and earth 1.

 

So who's doing a five hour back to back rewatch?

 

Archive Footage.

From before the Paragons murder this mutiverses heroes...

Kara and Lex had to have been dating.



Actually... How Alex said that "Lex Luthor is the greatest" UM... Did they put Alex back in the closet?

 

That is awesome.

The best part to me is Cress Williams cracking the fuck up over it.

 

What porn parody is that from?

Whut????????