Season 1 Green Arrow is a good character for adapting the superheroic "without super-powers", but it is not clear why it was necessary to also mundanely adapt super-characters, for example, make the Gang of Flash Royal ordinary robbers in hockey masks. Still, if Smallville was saturated with fantasy and ability from and to, then Arrow is a curious alternative for contrast. True, mostly here go the way of the nightmarish Nolan "Batman: Beginning", in fact, the entire main storyline copying from there, however, the series came out surprisingly watchable.
Fan service begins with the first series. Desstroke's mask on the island, little sister's name is Speedy, best friend's name is Marilyn and all that. Then the plot quickly rushes to collect the hero of his colleagues, signify a love triangle and constantly introduce elements of a large conspiracy. Although the concept remains a simple “villain of the week”, each time arranging a small brawl with a new antagonist. After spending 5 years on the island of rich Lovelace Oliver Queen decides to become a superhero archer to clean the city of major criminals, all this accompanied by flashbacks about motivation and training, so it looks very cheerful.
But many characters wander from series to series. Here it is especially pleasant to note China White, who became in the series even more comic than, in fact, in the comic book. A successful adaptation of Deadshot (much better than in Smallville), a chic pseudo-Desstroke and a great Slade himself, although never wearing a mask, as many as three appearances of a chic Huntress, several episodes with Count Vertigo adapted for a psycho-drug dealer, and even the appearance of Roy Harper - Arsenal or Red Arrow (Speedy's nickname is already booked by Thea). Well, among the one-time participations can be noted, for example, Firefly - a firefighter-killer or Konstantin Dragon. Sometimes there are sudden short surprises, like Brutal’s killer in the prologue of one of the series.
The line on the island quickly becomes not just a series of necessary flashbacks, telling us either about Oliver’s training, or about some related moments of the past with the present, but a dense second storyline, where there is also the main villain – Fayers. The main villain of the main storyline is the Dark Archer, the father of his best friend, brilliantly played by Barrowman, is able to steal any series with his appearance, both in a suit and in an everyday jacket. “Arrow” generally rests mainly on the villains, and not on the central characters.
With the main characters cope with something. Half of the series Oliver with his partner-Diggle regularly change places in the dialogues “well, I told you so!”, changing manias and obsessions on certain characters, the love triangle for the 23rd series is lined up with dotted, often quite stupid and also some kind of similar scenes. It seems that the writers of one series clearly did not watch the previous ones, repeating themselves, suddenly directing the relationship in the wrong direction and generally spoiling the rudiments of the plot with very poor and mediocre development. Brother and sister relations are conditionally developed only in the first series, the topic of the best friend is not disclosed at all, relations with parents are issued superficially. But at the same time, part of the series still turns into a nightmare soap, from which the eyes pinch.
The truth of excesses with melodramaticity often saves a great action. After “Smallville” in which in 1 super-blow solved absolutely all the problems, where there was really no protracted fights and muzzle, where except for the finale of season 8 with Doomsday, even blood and murders were not really shown, “Arrow” gives just incredible chips. The series is incredibly cruel, full of visually demonstrative violence and blood, which for the youth channel, where the censorship “Vampire Diaries” and “Supernatural” are completely going, looks simply incredible development and a step forward. The action in the "Arrow" is very much and most often it is healthy shot. Assaults of mansions, shootouts from bows, jumps and spectacular chases, hand-to-hand long fights that do not end with a couple of clear blows. In this regard, "Arrow" is really gorgeous and cool!
But for 23 series truly absolutely masterpiece series incredibly few. For the most part, the series adheres to a solid “good” mark. Often without enthusiasm, but with pleasure you look at each story, and how in parallel the overall mosaic is assembled into a single picture. However, the final series turns out to be so bad and controversial that it threatens to kill a number of pleasant and good impressions.
Even with the total number of fan-service authors do not have the courage to pull a really cool movie comic. They introduce Dodger without the slightest connection to the League of Shadows, do not tell directly where the Dark Archer studied, do not present Laurel’s mother as a “retired superheroine”, no first Black Canary. But constantly in dialogue one way or another refer to the fictional hometowns of a number of other superheroes. Another big mistake was to celebrate the 18th anniversary of Thea, now instead of the schoolgirl of a teenage girl, we have a young girl looking for work, and after all, there was the best character of the series, constantly throwing away a bunch of trademark teenage chips, and now everything will go into vitality and seriousness.
What usually in the series would take a season or two, here deftly fits in a couple of episodes. Not to mention this general speed drive. It may lose some aspects of the transformation and development of events and heroes, but this haste strikes directly with the movement of the plot and series, and most often the series only benefits.
Almost always a fairly well-chosen cast and well-played characters, excellent action and not boring scripts make Arrow a wonderful and interesting series. Here, of course, there are their worst series, and their worst villains, and I don’t know why invented especially for the series fat-bags-rich, but the pros pretty outweigh. At least outweighed until the most recent series of the season. Let’s see what happens next.
7 out of 10
Original
