Several sources, including The Hollywood Reporter, have announced that Grant Gustin of Glee will play Barry Allen in upcoming episodes of Arrow, on the CW network. Barry will be non-powered at first and will later have his origin story portrayed in what amounts to a pilot for a spinoff series. More to come on this one – what are your thoughts? Here’s the link to that story:
Speed Force
Tracking the Flash – the Fastest Man Alive
When I showed the 3 potentials to my girlfriend, we both agreed this guy was the worst (because he looks like he’s twelve) and we also both agreed that it was who CW would pick.
They seriously don’t know how to cast beyond “who do guys/girls think is cute?” (See Amanda Waller. A total babe that is woefully miscast as The Wall)
He had better bust out his acting chops, because if he messes up the Flash I’m gonna flip out
The Flash is a speed character so I don’t need some buff cut guy that’s gonna take off his shirt every five minutes (I’m looking at you Amell), but this kid doesn’t have to jaw to pull off a full face mask and if you tried to tell me he’s got a doctorate in forensics I’d laugh pretty hard.
Wait….That guy is supposed to be cute? All I can see are a pair of parasitic eyebrows about to do a mating dance on a kid’s face. If that’s youth’s idea of cute then I’m glad I’m old.
Went back to the original mug shot of this guy and came to the conclusion that he could have been a good Impulse/Bart Allen (what with all that wild brown hair.) Maybe the show’s producers were confused by the last name?
I would imagine he’s supposed to be, since it’s CW casting.
I’m straight, but even if I was gay this dude wouldn’t be my idea of attractive… You know, because then I’d also be a pederast…
Although he looks nothing like Barry in his other roles, let us all be thankful it wasn’t Doogie Howser.
And I am gay and I can’t see what his appeal might be.
personally preferred the other options.. I wonder if he’ll dye his hair blonde ?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Qy4EIvvVj4]
Feeling old…
Haaaa, great clip to use 😀
Heh….my fave JLU humor scene. (Okay, the ‘wash your hands’ one was really good too. Please note that I’m usually not into ‘bathroom humor’.)
I want Iris to show up in this Arrow episode and declare that this kid is *not* Barry. Then the *real* Barry shows up and apologizes for being late.
Read the interview…much more troubling than the casting:
QUOTE:
“Part of the fun for the audience … is to see how we view our Arrow take on the Flash legacy,” Kreisberg said. “Some of it will feel very familiar to DC Comics, some of it hopefully will feel different, fresh and exciting. The same way we approached Arrow is the same way we’re approaching Barry.”
/QUOTE
No Kreisberg, hopefully it won’t feel different, fresh and exciting…because more often than not, Hollywood’s idea of different, fresh and exciting seems to be “Write a character WE think is cool, slap an established name with 70 years of history on it, try to sell it to said name’s fans.”
That’s how we ended up with Iron Man 3…which was a script for some nano-tech movie with Iron Man characters in it. That’s how you get a Batman whose actions are motivated mostly by his LOVE (for the unnecessary character, Rachel Daws) rather than by his obsessive vendetta against crime. That’s how you get a Spider-Man with organic webbing whose uncle was murdered by Sandman. That’s how you get a Firefly who is an angry firefighter, a Royal Flush gang who rob banks for “family fun” and “The Count”, Vertigo-drug dealer.
Sometimes these guys think they have these great, trendy, fresh ideas, but rather than creating a new character inspired by one of the characters we love, they take the character we love and mutilate them beyond recognition. The new viewers, who aren’t familiar with Flash characters aren’t going to be turned-off by learning about them. Likewise, us life-long Flash fans aren’t going to be turned off by seeing our favorite characters done right. You WILL lose me as a viewer though if my buddy the Mirror Master turns out to be just a perversion who shares the name of the character I originally became a fan of.
I see where you’re going with an awful lot of this (though I personally loved Iron Man 3, they just needed to be clearer that Killian is the Mandarin).
Other than that, yeah… Firefly was one of the worst re-do’s in Arrow, I get where they were going with Royal Flush but needed to go further and Vertigo was… Maybe it was the hammy acting more than anything else, but wow he was a joke…
If Flash villains get hosed like that, I’m gonna be CRAZY upset… Making Mirror Master intensely vain but scarred so he breaks mirrors and that’s why they call him Mirror Master and he stabs people with broken mirrors? I should stop… Because that’s probably what they are gonna do >.<
I know the show teased the impending debut of a “mysterious” character named Lisa as a possible love interest, which given the impending debut of Barry makes one wonder if Lisa’s surname will be Snart. But I’ve never watched Arrow, so maybe that idea is way off-base.
(Got so upset I forgot to comment on this too.)
Yep, also got an ‘image’ of a TV Mirror Master who is a costumed Fonzie always carrying around a mirror and comb. Captain Cold will probably be a sailor with hypochondria and the sniffles, the Weather Wizard one of those local TV station weathermen with a Gandalf hat on, The Twister addicted to/having a vendetta against playing….you guessed it, and Pied Piper as a scarred plumber.
I’m probably being optimistic. 🙁
Couldn’t be any worse than how they adapted some of the villains in the old ’90s show.
I like him and look forward to his take on Barry.
I’m okay with this.
For the love of all that is Holy why! Is it so hard to cast someone who is Blonde haired and Blue eyed as Barry! Why have they never managed to do this… that other guy was perfect!
This! Also…
“… is to see how we view our Arrow take on the Flash legacy,”
I totally read that at first as “Arrow taking down the…”
And damn it all to heck in a handbasket…
Why, why why can’t we get a Barry who is Barry and not a conglomeration by committee? They did this in the TV show and I never did see that guy as Barry. They mixed up Wally in JLU….and took away any chance to see Barry Allen in flashback or a future Bart Allen. Now they are doing the same thing with this ‘Flash in the idiot box’. We might have had the (admittedly remote) possibility of seeing a separate Wally and Bart one day if the series took off, but now?
Well the general audience who doesn’t know the differences between the Flashes have a sort of pre-concieved expectation of what Flash should be like. Usually in the media, the Flashes personalities melt together to create an amalgam version.
Hopefully because they are going with talent over looks. Besides, there is always something called hair coloring.
Yep. Sarah Michelle Gellar isn’t naturally blonde. Nor Emma Stone. Heck, neither is Madonna.
To be fair, Emma Stone is a natural blonde. She just happens to color it red for a good number of her roles.
Huh. I had no idea. Everything I’d seen her in from Drive onward, until Spider Man, she had red hair, so I thought that was her natural hair color.
I agree, that blonde guy they had in the running visually speaking was absolutely perfect to me.
Such a bad casting
For those complaining about age, remember that Barry Allen was 24 when he got his powers and became The Flash.
The CW has a target audience in mind when casting shows and comic book fans aren’t a part of it. This guy doesn’t look like a terrible choice, though I’ve never seen Glee. I’m most upset they didn’t cast a blond guy as Barry, but Hollywood hates having two blond guys on a show at once.
I already know that CW (and DC) could care less about what comics fans think, but you’d think DC/Warner would *want* to keep things as much alike as feasible so as to draw people into the other media. So now these young kids (or whomever Arrow’s target audience is) are going to see this ‘Barry’. Those that don’t like him will stay away from the books/animated DVDs. Those that do like him will check out the books/animated DVDs and go “*that* ain’t Barry Allen! Who’s this blond clown? Where’s my brunette Flash?!” …and end up watching the 90’s show. -_-;;
I highly doubt these “young kids” are going to care all that much about difference in hair color. If anything “young kids” are not going to care at all about the secret identity, and just want to see Flash in costume give a good sockeroo to the bad guy. And when he’s in costume, hair color is not important.
I’m going by when I was a ‘young kid’ (child, teen, 20’s) and you bet hair color meant a lot. I absolutely hated it when Sherlock Holmes was played by a blond man and Watson was an all-out idiot. Despised that Chekov was replaced by some alien dude in Star Trek: Animated Series. Heck, the changing of actors in Bewitched.
Oh well…maybe I was just a strange kid, but I hate this kind of stuff and always did.
Kreisberg’s ‘our Arrow take on the Flash legacy’ comment makes me nervous- like they can only view him as an extension of the Arrow universe. The Flash legacy is rich & exciting enough on its own, it doesn’t need an uber-gritty post-modern take. And does anyone else find it funny that Barry’s interacting in such a way with Ollie, when in the comics they never had that close a friendship, besides being teammates. It was either Barry & Hal or Hal & Ollie partnered up, never really Barry & Ollie despite the latter’s friendship with Barry’s best bud. But, anyway, gonna reserve my opinion until I see the episodes themselves. Then I can get opinionated. 😛
The same thing happened on Smallville, really, though that was mainly because they couldn’t use Batman on the show.
You’re absolutely right- Clark & Ollie were very chummy in Smallville, whereas in the comics they really weren’t that close- I always felt that Supes thought Ollie was too opinionated, & Ollie looked at Supes like an idealistic boyscout or flag-waving politician. Like I always felt that Barry might’ve thought Ollie was a bad influence on Hal. But, I guess the characters have to have an introduction to the tv audience somehow. If they can make this guy believable as a forensic scientist it’ll be acceptable. I guess I’d feel more comfortable if the guy was a lil’ older, my age & not the same age as my kid sister(I’m almost 30 by the way). Hard to imagine a 22 year old as such a skilled CSI, which Barry hasbeen & always should be. If he can appear & act more mature in his role as Barry, but still have the good-natured joviality of his personality, it could work. The age bothers me more than hair color, definitely. But, we’ll just wait & see how he turns out.
For my part, I think this should be very interesting. I’m one of that small group who exists who’s had the chance to watch Grant in other roles (go check him out, honestly) but also adores the comics and I do think he’d have probably be a better Wally than a Barry (although let’s face it, they’ve basically mushed Wally INTO Barry in the comics now as well as all the other media formats, and that’s why I’m worried we’ll never get Wally back – he was my Flash, the one I grew up with, and I miss him), but at the same time, I have the confidence that he can pull it off. This is the chance for a really big break for him and for the Flash family – come on, Grant! You can pull it off! Show them what an apprentice forensic scientist can do! Own it!
Welp. Here’s to Adam Brody being Wally.
Interview with Grant Gustin regarding the Flash casting:
http://www.eonline.com/news/461361/the-flash-speaks-arrow-s-grant-gustin-teases-spandex-super-suit-wants-character-to-time-travel
I’d feel more confident if he had read more than just the Johns stuff…& I know that racy pretty-boy Gustin as Flash pic was fan-art, but it made me wanna puke- for all things holy I never wanna see that live-action- even my eyeballs would puke. You just don’t wanna see your life-long heroes like that- especially if they’re not a pretty-boy character. I hope Gustin gets more Flash material to draw upon besides Johns’ stuff. He should really be looking at Manapul & Buccellato’s stuff as inspiration for this show(I would hope that the show would have a similar feel to those comics)- & somebody give him some Silver Age & Bronze Age stuff, for Infantino’s sake!
Drifting off-topic here, but it occurs to me that the Arrow posters and fan art like this are a great demonstration of why “but guys are idealized too!” responses that cite Superman’s and Wolverine’s muscles in response to complaints about women in comics being oversexualized don’t actually represent a fair comparison. If the men in comics were mostly presented like this, the argument might hold a little more water. (Obligatory Shortpacked link.)
Yeah, now that you mention it, it does look similar to the Hawkeye Initiative stuff.