Katniss Everdeen + Hawkeye + Batman: A Review of Arrow: Because I have to do something with this blog...

In 1949, DC comics developed a Batman ripoff called the Green Arrow. Oliver Queen was a millionaire playboy with no superpowers who decides to take up crime fighting after a devastating accident. Basically he was what would have happened if Batman was obsessed with Robin Hood instead of Zorro (and bats). In 1969 Neal Adams decided the character was a poor man’s Batman substitute so he decided to change him. He took away Green Arrow’s fortune, gave him a goatee, and made him into an outspoken advocate for the poor as well as left wing politics in general. This made Green Arrow actually interesting, if not a bit preachy. But he still used trick arrows and refused to kill. In 1987 DC comics published Longbow hunters which saw an even darker Green Arrow. In this series Oliver murdered a group of people who kidnapped Black Canary. After this Green Arrow was the gritty street hero. Other DC heroes didn’t show up, Ollie stopped wearing a robin hood hat, and he killed people with his arrows. After this DC did the normal things that comic writers do. They killed Green Arrow and didn’t resurrect him until 2000 in which they brought him back in the weirdest way they could. The real problem was that someone let Kevin Smith write Green Arrow (a mistake DC keeps making despite the bad results). Basically it is discovered that Ollie is in Heaven and he likes being there so he sends back a soulless version of himself (I didn’t make that up) who doesn’t remember any events that happened after 1987 because Kevin Smith didn’t like that era. After that DC gave him back his fortune ('cause continuity sucks) and retconed pretty much everything they could from the last 20 years.


So I'm going to stop talking about mainstream comics since they make me sad, and instead fast forward to today. In 2012 there were three major hits; The Avengers, Hunger Games, and The Dark Knight Rises. None of these were surprising. The Avengers and Hunger Games both had non-superpowered superheroes who really like bows. And Dark Knight Rises had Batman. Not to mention that both TDKR and Avengers had really popular millionaire superheroes. Add to that the breakout character Green Arrow on CW’s Smallville and it becomes pretty clear why they made this show. But to prove that they are not Smallville they deliberately got things wrong. First of all Oliver Queen now has black hair (I know thats a petty complaint but I really do wonder if CW has some rule that all their leads have to look the same. I haven’t seen that many of their shows but, judging by commercials and posters, their lead actors could all be the same guy.) Also Green Arrow is just the Arrow. Why? I don’t know. But they even call him that in the show. I wonder if this is going to catch on and if we are now going to get the Bat, the Lantern, and Super. And finally Star City is now Starling City. Why? I don’t think they even know.

Clearly they are marketing this show based on its writing. Yes. 

Arrow starts with Ollie stranded on an island and shooting an arrow into some wood which cause them to explode. I wonder if he somehow had gasoline on the island. A boat rescues him and brings him back to society. This is all we see of the island but throughout the episode we do see flashbacks to him before his boat crashed. I can only assume that we will see flashbacks to the island throughout the first season. We then cut to a news station announcing Ollie's return to civilization. This is when we realize that this Oliver Queen is as much like Nolan’s Bruce Wayne as they could make him. He’s dark and brooding and seems almost psychotic sometimes. He doesn’t talk or show any emotion until he sees his sister at which point he tells her that she was with him the whole time he was on the island. Maybe that’s meant to be sweet but it really comes across as creepy. 

I mostly just included this as proof that he actually wears clothes in the show, despite what the above picture wants you to think. Holy long Caption, Batman!

He then meets all his other old friends including his old girlfriend Dinah Laurel Lance, who goes by her middle name so that it can be shocking at the end when she says her full name. Also she is now a lawyer and working to take down the corruption in Starling City. As far as I could tell this was just so that she would be as much like Rachel Dawes as possible. Anyway, she doesn’t like Ollie because he cheated on her with her sister.

Shortly after all of Ollie’s fun reunions he is kidnapped along with his old friend Tommy Merlyn (who interestingly enough shares a name with a Green Arrow villain). The kidnappers, who are clearly Marvel fans since they are all wearing red skull masks, ask Ollie if his father told him about them. Ollie says “Yeah, he told me to kill you” and then kills them just to prove that he is a darker edgier kind of hero. I’m fine with Ollie killing if he has to but this show so far hasn’t given me much evidence that he isn’t some kind of psychopath who likes killing people. Merlyn clearly sees this but doesn’t tell anyone and Ollie tells everyone that some guy dressed as Robin Hood saved him.

Then we are told in a voiceover that he didn’t lie; there was a man dressed in a green hood and he will come again. Suddenly he creates a superhero identity and goes out doing vigilante stuff. This aspect of the episode felt really rushed to me, and I wish they could have spent more time on it. Also, oddly enough, he saves the day using computer skills rather than a bow and arrow. I can only assume that he was taught computer skills when he was on that deserted island. The episode then ends with three cliffhanger game changing moments because one is too traditional. And then it closes off with a shot of the island he was trapped on, showing us that that earlier Lost reference was meant as foreshadowing and that we will see flashbacks to this island throughout the season.  I’m guessing he will meet Ras Al Ghul there and be trained to fight corruption.

My problem with this show is how much of a Batman wannabe it was. Its as though the writers said “You think the original Green Arrow was a Batman ripoff...” and then proceeded to prove us wrong. That being said it does keep a lot of stuff from the Green Arrow comics and is a decent adaptation. It has that classic CW soapy melodrama to it but it also has a guy shooting criminals with a bow. But not nearly enough of it. Hopefully later episodes would make this more about Green Arrow and less about the Queens, the Lances, and rich people partying. My other complaint is that Oliver Queen is kind of like a psychopath in it. He’s really actually quite scary and doesn’t really seem all that much like the Green Arrow that I’m familiar with. I did like the idea of the voice overs, but they just didn't work somehow. They felt added on and lazy, like they couldn't think of another way to give us this information. Overall it was a mediocre pilot. But it was much better than any other pilot I’ve watched this year (which shows kind of how bad they all were). So its not terrible but it hasn’t really convinced me that its anything more than Batman with a bow.