The (Green) Arrow (2012) – review – 46%

The (Green) Arrow – review – 46%

               It happens to seem like we have been surrounded by some very weird individuals with the savior complex who wear tight suits. Nobody has really noticed when or how exactly did this happen, but we all feel it in the air.

               This one specific article is about the Arrow series which has been airing on CW television and is mostly being shot in Vancouver.

(Click the highlighted writting below to see more.)

               Once upon a time, the very lucky pair of Robert and Moria Qeen have been blessed with a son, Oliver. Since they have been billionaires since the time immemorial, Oliver grew up to be a spolied brat with an unfortunate addiction to wrong decisions.

               One of these led him to having, let’s put it mildly, a sexual intercourse with the sister of his girlfriend. Later, he even decided to take this sister on a boat trip his father was organizing. The father did not object, of course.

               Anyway, the boat sank after two minutes of the series and Oliver found himself on a life raft with his father and another nameless sailor, no trace of the girlfriend’s sister.

               Since the raft just floated for days and the water supply was slowly running out, Robert Queen, Oliver’s father, decided to shoot the nameless sailor and then himself, so his son would have a higher chance of survival. His last cryptic words to his son were these:

               „I am not man you thought I was. I failed you. Right my wrongs – save our city.“

               So, Oliver had lived in exile for 5 years and when he finally returned, he starts showing off all the mad skillz he somehow learned on the island. His arsenal includes parkour, kickass archery, hand to hand combat with like twenty opponents and many more useful things a superhero could utilise.

               Oliver decided to uphold the promise he made to his father – to fulfill his dying wish. Practically speaking, at first, this mostly involved killing, mutilating or blackmailing his father’s friends he knows from the dead father’s diary.

               Basically, the whole first season is about this diary and the devilish plan that’s lurking behind it. It is an old-fashioned vendetta, which is completely uninteresting, and the fact that he continues to pretend that he’s saving the city, does not help one bit.

               Since he came back from a deserted island, he also needed to refresh his sexual life. In like thirty episodes he’s already got laid with almost every woman in the series, who happens not to be his sister or mother, and, if for some reason he has not yet had time to sleep with someone, they would at least be in love with him to increase their chances in the future.

               (Maybe the authors are just trying to say that all women are horny golddiggers just waiting for an opportunity to spread their legs for a billionaire, I don’t really know...)

               In any case, the episodes go on and, despite the fact that the actors clearly are trying, the characters are so uninteresting that nothing really happens. Ever.

               As an addition to the circus acrobatics, excessive amounts of sparkles, way too many fistfights and every other cliché which just needs to be in a superhero series, Oliver is also dealing with his every day family life... for example the rich bitch mother, who happens to be a part of an evil secret society, the sister who has a thing for bad guys, the bestie who will surely never realize who Oliver is and go all out drama because of it, some kind of a femme fatale who has no personality and lets both Oliver and the Arrow manipulate her to do their bidding... we have everything.

               Basically, the Arrow is just another egocentric sociopath with a huge amount of daddy issues and a big ass savior complex. Just our kind of a guy!

               The watchers are welcome to notice many other beautiful patterns like everybody returning from the dead! People from Oliver’s past, the people from the would-be abandoned island, some people the Arrow has killed, and by killed I mean like with headshots... love never dies, nor do the characters.

               Perhaps, that is a reason why Oliver decided to stop being a killer in the beginning of the second season. He might have realised that it is useless and the people would just come back from the dead anyway, so he decided not the waste the energy.

               Poor guy Oliver would still find himself in deep shit, though. It would seem that not even the guys who somehow survived and did not have to come back from the dead are not a closed chapter. They would be sent to a local prison called the Iron Heights and then they would escape and come to bother the poor guy Oliver and us watchers all over again.

               Perhaps because there is never enough clichés, the Arrow’s first nemesis appears to be another archer. A perfect copy of our Arrow, really. A guy in black leather, hiding under a hood and lowering his voice... a clone. No one would really want to suprise a watcher, right? People could get a heart attack or whatever.

               Of course, the Arrow wins. It’s a close one, but he always does. He even manages to kill the other archer... only if he would stay dead, right? Of course he comes back after a few episodes. Nobody stays dead, right? People with this savior Jesus-like complex are just trying so hard to copy Jesus‘ moves.

               In the second series, his enemy is called Deathstroke. A well-known supervillain who is Arrow’s most hated enemy and, so it would happen to be, he also lacks an eye, because the Arrow has killed him with a shot precisely to the eye. Except he did not stay dead. Not really.

               Surprising, ain’t it?

               Our hero is played by Stephen Amell who is percieved as a very handsome and sexy guy with muscles everywhere and scars on all of them, but he still is a very weak painkiller to all the fails this series has on its account. Even though his acting is somewhat decent, and that’s kinda hard to judge when he is mostly wearing a mask or lying on naked girl and whe is not, he mostly has to give a poker face, I was not impressed by the hero’s exploits and officially, it is not Amell’s fault.

               I wanted to say which actress is impersonating his better half, but I can’t. Katie Cassidy, Emily Bet Rickards, Caity Lotz... all of them are doing their parts, but, even though they are doing what they can, none of them can change the script they have been given. Not one of these girls can really mean what Lois Lane means to Superman or what Mary Jane means to Spider-Man, which in the end leaves us with many empty characters, one damaged superhero-wannabe and a lot of repetitive stuff going all around us.

               Even though I love superheroes and comic books, I am not impressed.      The Arrow is cheap lie for fanboys and anybody who considers it a quality thing clearly has not seen any of the real quality, yet.

               Final score – 46% - slightly below average for two reasons:

1)      The (Green) Arrow hero has appeared on a CW series once before – in Smallville. He has been an important character in Smallville for four whole seaons. The creators had enough material to learn and be able to avoid such amateurs mistakes.

2)      With a cast like this, with a team like this, but mainly with a budget like this, we should have got far more. The fact, that the Arrow has such great prepositions, just adds insult to injury.