X-Men: The (fan fic) Series

Review: Arrow (1S01)

CW’s Arrow

I’ll admit that I know a little more than diddley squat about Green Arrow. As seen with my fan fic being Marvel based, I’m not much into DC (except to say that Batman: TAS is the second best cartoon of all time). But seeing that I enjoyed at least the first few seasons of Smallville, there are some actors in here that I enjoy, and a tv series based on a comic book is right up my alley, I thought I’d give it a go.

I was told that Green Arrow was basically Batman… with arrows… and not as afraid to hurt and/or kill people… and that’s pretty much what we got here. This really is Batman Begins for the small screen, with arrows, right down to the “thought you were dead” billionaire disappearance only to come back wicked strong fighter and Lone Ranger-esque “I’m really just a playboy, honest”.

Anyway, I’m going to skip over that part because I just don’t have the background to know where they went away from the comics and where they held true. I take this as a good thing as it’s a perspective I’m attempting to write for in my Series.

So all that leaves is… everything else.

The Bad:
The voice over work. Not sure if it’s the actor or the direction or the dialogue itself but it just doesn’t have any punch to it at all. Might as well be reading the phone book and while yes, there are some people I’d happily listen to read the phone book, but this guy ain’t one of them.
Queen looks like a poor man’s Chris O’Donnell.

The Good:
The episode is accessible. As I said, I don’t know much about Green Arrow but I’m not lost, scratching my head, or annoyed that I might be missing the joke.

The Ugly:
It’s so much like Batman Begins and is so overly gritty that I’m ‘so over this’ like last decade. I was hoping for a slightly more light-hearted approach ala Smallville, not this uber-realistic stuff that is the trend. Granted, I could be asking for something that simply isn’t in the comics so what can I say?

The show does come on before Supernatural which I have an on-again off-again love/hate relationship with so I’ll stick out a few more episodes, see what I think once it finds all it’s legs… but until then, giving this series a middle of the road mark, it can go either way.

Oh, and the piece de la resistance? Seeing an advertisement for a local archery shop during the commercial… I’ve never ever seen an ad for this place ever… 😉

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