We haven’t talked about the CW’s new superhero show Arrow on this blog, which is a crime I plan to rectify right now. We’ll be talking more in the coming weeks, but I figure we should kick off with a solid review.
Arrow is a great show. Oh…well, I should probably say more than that.
Arrow is an adaptation of the DC superhero Green Arrow. The last new superhero TV show was NBC’s The Cape…and we all know how that turned out. I admit to being a little skeptical of Arrow when they first announced it as a spin-off from Smallville. Frankly, I never cared for Green Arrow in Smallville. He was just Batman with arrows. Thankfully, they rebooted the whole concept for the new show, and in the right direction.
In case you haven’t seen it, Arrow tells the story of Oliver Queen, a billionaire’s son whose ship crashes and leaves him on a desert island. After being trapped for five years on the island, Queen returns to Starling City with new survival skills and a hunger for justice. Determined to bring down a list of powerful people corrupting the city, Queen dons the identity of a vigilante armed with a quiver of arrows.
The series has Christopher Nolan’s “realism” type of esthetic. Arrow doesn’t wear his Robin Hood outfit from the comics. He wears a hooded jacket, which earns him the nickname “The Hood.” He doesn’t use Green Arrow’s trick arrows (most famous being an arrow with a boxing glove on the end), either. Just regular arrows to spear his enemies to the wall. Arrow‘s hero is brutal and uncompromising, and Stephen Amell plays the role with a suitably haunted appearance. Much like Christian Bale’s smiles as Bruce Wayne never reach the eyes, Amell’s Queen is a man who is never far from the horrors of what he’s seen.
I like how the show has set up numerous storylines to drive the show. The mystery of what happened to Queen on the island unfolds in Lost-type flashbacks chronicling his life on the island. His old girlfriend isn’t too happy about the fact that she last saw Queen cheating on her. His sister can’t understand why Queen keeps running off in the middle of the night. A pair of detectives are hot on the Hood’s trail, and can’t help noticing how Queen seems to be tangled up in the mystery. Arrow’s Rogues Gallery is also making an appearance with China White, the Royal Flush Gang, and Deadshot. Even the Huntress has popped up as a mobster’s daughter determined to avenge her fiancee’s murder.
Really, there’s a lot to like about this show. My only complaint is that all the different characters and storylines can be a bit confusing, and I’m not really sure where it’s all going. Also, I kind of miss the costumes and trick arrows. I hope the show loosens up a bit and starts to have more fun with the concept, but I’m also liking how grounded Arrow is in a gritty reality. The best part is that the show is a hit, which means this is an arrow that will be sticking around for a while.
My Rating:
 |
| Above Average |
What do you think of CW’s Arrow?
[Image Source: Huffington Post]
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<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="38825 ">6 Comments
wow great .nice designing style i love all the pic which u share. thanks for post
wow great .nice designing style i love all the pic which u share. thanks for post
I've only caught one episode – will catch the whole season on NetFlix. (I've become lazy – I never watch regular TV anymore. I watch shows one season at a time on NetFlix or occasionally one at a time on Hulu.) Will wait to pass judgement once I've seen several episodes.
I might watch it at some point. I liked the first couple seasons of Smallville and then it started to get really stupid so I quit watching before the Green Arrow showed up. Too bad they don't have the trick arrows, those are cool. Though I have to wonder how he'd fit a boxing glove arrow into the quiver with a bunch of other arrows. I wonder though why they changed his city from Star City to Starling City?
I absolutely love this show and I can’t wait for more of an incredible freshman season! I absolutely love this show and I am going to tell all of my coworkers at DISH about how amazing this episode was. I have recorded every episode with DISH’s Hopper so that I can re-watch each one of them whenever I’d like, and I don’t have to worry about deleting anything to make room for them because the hard drive is so big. I can’t wait for the show to return in January and hopefully it keeps up the pace this show has set so far!
I'm not sure why they changed it to Starling City. Maybe they felt Star City wasn't realistic enough