As Malcolm Merlyn flies through the air, Arrow and the Flash shake hands and chase baddies side-by-side. The Arrowverse gang got a fan-made ‘60s-era reboot for their shared introduction — and it’s just as charming as you’d expect.
Batman and Robin began kicking hiney and defeating the Penguin in their cheese-tastic animated series in 1966, Batman. So Dave Jones, the creator behind several high-quality fan-made videos and photos, put his mind to a 1966-era Arrowverse opening number, “Arrow-66” in honor of the 50th anniversary of the show, and his own 50th birthday.
Jones’s blog post about the video says: “In the Earth-66 Multiverse, The Arrow TV show premiered in 1966 instead of Batman. With his super friends The Flash, Supergirl, and The Legends; Arrow fights crime in Star City against several nefarious foes and bases his operation in the Arrow Cave. Watch his crime-fighting adventures every Wednesday night same Arrow-Time, same Arrow-Channel!”
Composer Mike Schmidt backed up Jones’s project with some modernized Bat-tunes, and graphic designer and illustrator Jeff Tasca provided the new logo a drawn bow and arrow that looks quite a bit like Batman’s cape.
Arrow and Flash are joined by the Legends of Tomorrow and the flying, fantastic Supergirl. No doubt, they’ll need the help against the plethora of baddies the intro has Arrow and Flash going up against.
The intro shows us some of the Arrowverse's biggest foes: Prometheus, Deathstroke, Reverse-Flash, Gorilla Grodd, Vandal Savage, Ra’s al Ghul, and Bizzaro-Supergirl.
The goons on Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow would certainly be a little easier to take down in the ‘60s than they are today. No doubt, their KOs would be more of the bam-pow-bang variety rather than their modern blood, sweat, and sneer visages. There would be far more dramatic exclamations of pain, and Arrow would laugh heroically before jumping off a building.
A side-by-side comparison of the original Batman opening and the Arrow remake show how similar Jones and the gang were able to make their video. Flash takes the place of Robin and Supergirl steps in for Batgirl with the Legends acting as a supporting cast of sorts.
But just thinking about putting all those characters into the same show every week is a lot. While the CW’s crossover extravaganza a couple weeks ago was fun, the constant action and mixing of personalities would undoubtedly get a little draining over time.
The purity of mid-20th century cartoons is undeniable. But while the jolty, fuzzy animation and happy-go-lucky overarching message is charming, modern audiences wouldn’t be able to handle such a show. The intro is still fun to watch, though.
