Posted in: CW, Movies, Opinion, TV, TV, Warner Bros | Tagged: arrowverse, opinion, supergirl, television, The Flash

The Flash: See What Happens When You Disrespect The Arrowverse?

With the box office for The Flash looking to be running at half-speed, maybe it was a blessing in disguise that the Arrowverse was left out.

Look, we've made our feelings known on how the Arrwoverse is currently being and should be handled on more occasions than we can count at this point. Would it have been nice for DC Studios co-heads James Gunn & Peter Safran to publically acknowledge an appreciation for the importance of it as The CW's Grant Gustin & Candice Patton-starring The Flash was ending its run? Absolutely – and it stinks of DC Studios going down the same path Marvel did with its self-inflicted public relations wound when it came to how they handled the Netflix-Marvel series (Daredevil, Jessica Jones, etc.), as well as ABC's Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.). But it's the Andy Muschietti-directed, Ezra Miller-starring The Flash that came to feel more and more like a "F**k you!" to the shared universe of shows spanning a decade-plus.

When word first got out that The Flash was going to be one that would offer looks into other areas of the multiverse, we all knew what that meant. Yup… fan-servicing appearances – and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. We're suckers for a good crossover and some "shared universe" shenanigans – so "game on"! Of course, folks just assumed that Gustin would appear in some manner, considering Gustin and Miller had crossed over previously in the Arrow chapter, "Crisis on Infinite Earths: Part Four." But beyond that, if you were going to have a sequence where we see important aspects of the DCU lore across alternate multiverse realities – how do you not have Gustin appear?

We first learned that Gustin wouldn't be appearing back in April from the actor himself (ironically, Gustin claims that it was the first time anyone had asked him the question on the record) – but we kinda wrote that off as an "Andrew Garfield" possibility (deny, deny, deny!). That same month, Muschietti argued that the list of possible cameos "was huge" and that they had "played with the idea of including DC characters from TV," but apparently, there wasn't enough space for them to make the cut. No spoilers – but when you get a chance to see who did make the cut, you're going to find that line from Muschietti to be condescendingly hysterical. And as Muschietti and others continued to promote the film, we learned more & more about how they had a huge list of options from DC's entertainment history to choose from and how they pretty much had a chance to use whatever they wanted. For us, that translates further into "We chose not to include the Arrowverse in the film."

And that brings us to the film's seemingly disappointing holiday weekend box office numbers (we won't know the final number until probably Tuesday – maybe late Monday night). The reportedly $200M+ film has had a three-day box office at around $60M – not exactly the $70M-$75M that the studio had been eyeing. Yes, there's definitely much more time left in the weekend, so the final number should improve – or will it? We're already beginning to see the "think pieces" out there on why the film's already proving to be a disappointment and the reasons why – so we'll just offer this into the mix. When you have a fanbase as passionate as the Arrowverse fans are, you don't alienate them. You don't make them feel like second-class citizens. You don't make television shows feel lesser than films (especially when DC's suck-to-not-suck ratio when it comes to films is pretty lousy). You don't make people who've spent their time & money on DC stuff over the years feel like they're not a part of the new DCU.

SPECIAL NOTE: Oh, and two more things to keep in mind? First, looking back on the decisions that were made for the cameos, we're also pissed on behalf of Supergirl star Melissa Benoist for her not being included. Second, for the sake of making life much easier for the actor, Teddy Sears (The Flash series) wants it known for the record that he is not in any of those scenes (again, no spoilers).

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