Tuesday 1 January 2013

Arrow (Also I complain about Smallville)


Has somebody placed some kind of curse on some of DC's superheroes names that causes them to not be spoken aloud? I've watched a few live action DC adaptations recently, such as the Dark Knight Trilogy, Smallville, Green Lantern and now Arrow and they all seem very shy about reminding you what the superheroes names are with a few exceptions like Batman and the Green Lantern probably out of fear of sounding ridiculous.

Nevermind. Arrow is a TV series made by the same company that brought us Smallville, and it's crap. It's adapted from DC's Green Arrow stories, it's about a rich businessman named Oliver Queen, who becomes a costumed vigilante who wields a bow and arrow after being forced to learn archery when stranded on a desert island.

I had a love/hate relationship with Smallville, because for every excellent thing about Smallville (1) that made me love it, there was an equally bad thing that made it a chore to watch (2). Arrow has far less of the former. 

(1) Excellent parts in question being the characters of Lex Luthor, Lionel Luthor, Lois Lane and Oliver Queen. The wonderfully tragic storyline of the episode 'Commencement', the excellent dynamics between the Justice Society in series 9. And some of the interpretations of the DC mythos, like the short lived appearance of Booster Gold. Amongst other examples.

(2) Awful parts in question being the decision to make the least likeable character the most powerful character on the planet, outstripping Superman himself and then never using the powers for anything ever again making her look an even worse person for being so lazy after claiming she would do good. Also everything about the finale.

So, it's a reboot of sorts of Smallville's Universe centred around the character of Oliver Queen, AKA, the Green Arrow. Except it strips away the superpowers and general comic book-y aspects, like the titles character's bloody name, and sticks to the purely none-powered characters and depowers the ones that DID have powers. And if you're thinking that sounds influenced by Christopher Nolan's interpretation of Batman you'd be right, from the 'trying-to-be-similar sounding' narration (One of the lines is "In order to protect my city I must because someone else, I must become....SOMETHING ELSE.") to the fact that Oliver Queen builds a secret base that looks suspiciously like the Batcave (Fun fact, in the original Green Arrow comics, he had 'The Arrowcave', which is what I hope the writers of Arrow were referring to.) it makes this series look like it has no originality to speak of, but that's not actually strictly true.

Credit where credit is due I suppose, one thing they get right about adapting it Nolan style is that they understand that if they're making it real then they have to strip away the characters who were unreal, and add new characters they serve new purposes to the plot that the original material lacked. So, gone are whatever supporting characters the Green Arrow had, and bring on the new characters, like Oliver Queen's bodyguard, who is the only likeable character, Oliver Queen's suspiciously alive mother (Who was dead in the comics from the first issue.) and a new sister, though the sister doesn't count because they seem to be implying that she's the adapted counterpart of Green Arrow's sidekick 'Speedy' in the comics by calling her that as a sarcastic nickname.

Speaking of sarcastic nicknames, that's a problem I had with Smallville too. It's ok writers, if you want to make some new material for existing sets of characters, that's perfectly fine, but don't treat the source material as a sarcastic suggestion by referencing it in the form of funny nicknames because it gives the impression that you're laughing at the very thought of such silly comic book nonsense, whilst adapting said silly comic book nonsense and acting as if your version is more dignified.

Back to Arrow though. Besides all that backstory nonsense, I still don't like it all that much. Like I said earlier, I like some ideas for new material, one example being Oliver Queen's different motivation and characterisation, and the duel story mechanic they use, in which each episode will alternate between two stories, one story in the present day when he's back home and becoming a vigilante, and a story in the past back when he was on a dessert island. We slowly learn the circumstances behind his disappearance, his return and his transformation from rich nobhead to rich nobhead with a bow.

It's all for naught though, because I think the writing is shockingly generic, they say their generic badass phrases, their generic sarcastic comebacks, they have their generic plots within interesting ideas, and none of it engages me because I feel like I've seen it all before. Oliver Queen himself is a generic anti-hero, he says gruff things in his gruff voice and then kills people, which doesn't make him likable it makes me agree with one of the antagonists, who's a police officer that believes Arrow is a serial killer, which he clearly is because he goes after specific individuals rather than fights crime, and murders a lot of people he knows to be innocent but lets lots of his victims live for some reason.

I'd recommend this series to people who don't mind the generic, which covers a relatively wide audience. I suppose it's not awful, it just could've been so much better, and I think my problem is that I was never expecting it to be better at any point.

No comments:

Post a Comment