|
Stoked for the premiere, very curious to see how the balance the crazy amount of characters they had by the end of last year. Especially hoping Roy isn't shipped off to "perpetual C-plot cutting room floor" island like the back half of last year.
|
#
¿
Oct 6, 2014 08:40
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 17:58 |
|
|
I've actually enjoyed when superhero comics have done the "Bruce Wayne is poor, for now" riff. No Man's Land was a solid two years of great Batman stories all based on the need to strip all of Batman's gadgets and resources away. Knowing Arrow though, the "Team Arrow is poor" stuff will last MAYBE three episodes before the major arcs start to kick in.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 8, 2014 02:07
|
|
|
Chuck had their main character working at a generic Best Buy (despite a harvard degree and demonstrated genius-level intellect) by justifying it as a job he could easily leave at any time to go kick rear end. Flexibility in your schedule is essential if you're getting constant "I need you Felicity" texts from Team Arrow.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 8, 2014 07:17
|
|
|
poo poo, yeah. That's what I get for writing five beers in. But yes, Stanford. Should've remembered that, particular given that the episode where he visits the campus is an early series highlight.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 8, 2014 10:19
|
|
|
Yeah, lots of unresolved questions - I can't even say how they've handled her death since that's so clearly going to be next week's episode. I really don't want to start saying that Sara was "fridged", since I think she's existed as an important of the show's universe, but oof. My one issue with the flash pilot is the total lack of strongly written women (the pilot features CW Love Interest, Dead Mother, and Frigid Bitch Co-Worker), but I told myself "But hey, Arrow learned its listen! They've got Caity!" Hah. No.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 9, 2014 07:20
|
|
|
I'm certain we're in store for a long story about why Sara was back in Star City, and how she fled/left/was granted leave from Nanda Parbat. I don't like her getting gutted just as much as the next fan, but I have faith that they've got a very long plan in place to justify her death. Also, Thea totally did it. Also also, a friend reminded me that I totally did the "no wait man, it'll totally make sense!" shuffle when they killed off Shado last year.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 9, 2014 10:38
|
|
|
In terms of motivations, Oliver hasn't really been affected by losing Moira - his character arc is largely unchanged. But you couldn't send Thea out to train with BARROWMAN without eliminating Moira. Of all the thread the show is promising in season 3, I'm looking forward to Thea getting her own slice of the action.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 10, 2014 05:07
|
|
|
I loving hate lazurus pits. There's a big difference between "man punches stronger" and "instantly reverse any death". That these "get out of jail free cards" of a plot device were given to a Batman villain, of all people, still baffles me. I'm not ruling them out. I just think they're cheap, lazy, and a horrid precedent for Arrow to go to.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 10, 2014 11:27
|
|
|
Honestly, watch another four of five. Episode 9 was the midseason finale and was where Arrow went from "nice fun show" to "looking forward to to it every week"
|
|
#
¿
Oct 11, 2014 04:27
|
|
|
Detective Lance (that will always be his name, even if he's the goddamn Mayor) not knowing about Sara is a way to primp for drama down the line, but I bought the emotions behind it. Luarel can't tell her Dad not because it'll kill him, but because then the death becomes permanent. I bought into Laurel's emotional journey, fully. Brandon Routh is crazy charming - his ability to play a self-aware dick gave me nice nostalgic memories of Chuck. If you're at all a fan of Arrow's blend of action, drama, and the occasional laugh, you'd probably dig Chuck. The motorcycle joust scene was derpy and cheesy as hell, but I greatly enjoyed his brief banter with Oliver and Laurel. I know this is straight up nitpicking, but I really hate the cliched "I fired a gun but it was empty!" device. Anyone who has ever fired a weapon can tell you that a pistol weighs differently with a full clip. As a policeman's daughter who has wielded a gun before, Laurel should've known better. The conversation between Laurel and Oliver in that moment is actually really strong, and I like that Laurel wasn't talked out of pressing the trigger. But the lack of logic threw me out of the scene. Honestly, I'm just biding my time until next week. I've always been more invested in Thea's story than the average Arrow fan or goon on this board, and I'm really hoping they play into the grayer areas of morality. Oliver basically left Thea to her own devices for two straight years, and flat out abandoned her when Moira died. Thea's grievances are FAR more impactful than Slade's whole "He's crazy, just go with it" schtick. This sounds way more negative than I planned, so I'll close by complimenting the writers for stronger dialogue. Oliver's "I don't want to die down here" is a strong, strong moment.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 16, 2014 11:11
|
|
|
IIRC, when Sara first came back she had several scenes with Detective Lance about how she was a killer and did bad things and he went "No, honey, you're my daughter." Also, smart move on the arrow cast for bringing Tommy back in flashback to remind us that a) Caity Lotz can come back in flashback land! and b) Arrow does keep some characters dead.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 16, 2014 15:23
|
|
|
At first I was disappointed that Oliver and Merlyn didn't confront each other, but that would've completely removed Thea's agency by having two dudes fight over her. Also liked how they had Roy's talk with Thea contrast Oliver's. Arrow is at its best when it reminds us that Oliver is really, really lovely at being a human being.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 23, 2014 10:45
|
|
|
Roy desperately needs his own plot. At this point he's practically another action figure to use in fight scenes and a bit player in Thea's story. I admire the show's ability to bumrush through plot points, but I'd love to see how Oliver trained Roy after the mirakuru wore off and they saved the city from Slade. I'd also like to see Roy dealing with the fact he killed a dude, but I'm not sure if the show remembers that.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 24, 2014 09:38
|
|
|
Roy was fairly underwritten in the latter part of season 2. Remember him waking up and just frankensteining around for forty minutes? Him waking up in the finale and being able to hold his own (almost entirely untrained, since Ollie only gave him training when he was Mirakuru'd) in the goddamn melee against Deathstroke's army is rushed and unbelievable. Roy's story got shunted aside for large chunks of season 2, something the writers have admitted in several interviews. They had a TON of story to tell last year, and I'm just hoping Roy doesn't draw the short straw again.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 24, 2014 18:47
|
|
|
It should be mentioned that Marvel having a unified movie franchise started as a happy accident. Large chunks of Iron Man were improvised on the fly; avengers was nothing more than a "wouldn't it be crazy if" dream on some executive's drunken napkin scribbles. It was only after Iron Man did so well that Marvel moved to set up their own movie studio and consolidate as many of the rights as possible. Because of Whedon's fantastic Avengers script, people kinda forget that the first marvel movies hang together very, very loosely. By contrast, DC should have the benefit of going second and refining the notion of how to create a branching franchise. But every sign has shown them to be rushing through it, with a huge amount of corporate oversight or putting the wrong people in charge. I can understand why someone thought Zac Snyder would be a good Superman director, but trying to build an entire GRIMDARK universe is awful. Part of the genius of Marvel's movies is that they're structurally formulaic while tonally diverse. The dramatic beats are practically identical, but each director is allowed to spin their own craziness into the style. To bring it back to Arrow, I'm very excited to see how much they ping pong between Oliver and Barry Allen. Crossovers feel like they're dime a dozen, but very few serialised shows have successful spin offs. Most people reach for Buffy and Angel as a reference point, and that was over a decade ago (and hampered by the relatively few crossovers),
|
|
#
¿
Oct 25, 2014 22:00
|
|
|
Dennis Farina voiced Wildcat on Justice League Unlimited - its in an episode that stars Green Arrow and Black Canary. It is also fantastic in every drat way.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 26, 2014 21:29
|
|
|
I enjoy Katrina Law as Nyssa, but I never really enjoy the episodes she's a major part of. I'm not even sure why this felt so odd, but it did. It might have something to do with how many stories this year are dependant on long-term payoffs. I'm still not sure what the hell Hong Kong promises to tell us (outside of some very vague 'I did bad things with Waller' musings). Thea holding secrets from Oliver is a nice change of pace, but is all about setting up the moment when they finally come relatively clean to each other. Laurel turning vigilante isn't something I outright hate, but it too demands a longer patient hand than we saw last year. And of course, Sara's murder is the clearest example of this delayed gratification storytelling model they're using this year. That's not to say the show is suddenly playing a longer game - just that the longer running elements seem to be playing a much stronger role this year.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 30, 2014 08:17
|
|
|
Wow, the thread managed to rehash the old "Why doesn't Batman just kill the Joker" arguments again. Hooray. Oliver's nowhere near a breaking point where he'd even think about breaking his vows not to kill. He took down Slade MF'ing Wilson without having to kill - he's riding high. Not least because Oliver has turned off any sort of emotion he has about Sara's death, and we're heading towards him finally feeling the ramifications of her death sometime soon.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 30, 2014 16:15
|
|
|
Hat tip to Xealot for a nuanced post about the fan reaction to Laurel. There's a pretty nasty sexist tinge to a lot of the rhetoric thrown against her. She's a problematic character because she's given the worst lines - seriously, who the gently caress wrote "the darkness inside me"? But a lot of the backlash against her crosses a line I'm not comfortable crossing.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 31, 2014 20:13
|
|
|
So... which famous DC scientist is Felicity's father? Because boy, those foreshadowing signs were in full effect tonight.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 6, 2014 06:26
|
|
|
I've been seeing weird parallels between Chuck and Arrow for a while, and they ramped them up earlier this season with Brandon Routh joining the show. But tonight we also had Zork references (a touchstone for Chuck) and the foreshadowing of a brilliant but absent father. If only Scott Bakula wasn't on NCIS:Paychecks!
|
|
#
¿
Nov 6, 2014 09:46
|
|
|
Brandon Routh on Chuck is basically amoral James Bond.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 7, 2014 06:49
|
|
|
There's a really fun Young Justice episode where Black Canary is the instructor for the team's hand to hand combat training. If you want to nerd out there's a whole slew of "DC universe great martial artists" that shift position depending on which writer wants to hold up his childhood's favorite character. Power levels are dumb. I'm happy that Arrow has done such a good job with Oliver's own journey - how they've built up his gradual skills both in the flashbacks and the current timeline. And even Roy, who has more or less been a fighter on the show for over a year, hasn't been portrayed as anything other than a competent fighter who can take out some mooks. Except for the season two finale, where a powerless and recently woken-up-from-coma Roy somehow holds his own against the Mirakuru hordes.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 13, 2014 00:28
|
|
|
Yeah, I liked the episode as a whole but really hope the "Oliver is a gigantic twat" story is intentional. Odd that Ted or Laurel or Diggle or Roy didn't remind Oliver that he murdered a small batallion of people in his first year back in Starling.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 13, 2014 06:54
|
|
|
Why is everyone treating the writer's words as gospel? They've lived through their teeth quite often, such is the stupidity of having to give a billion interviews every month.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2014 00:58
|
|
|
This show is very much obsessed with its own history; its own of my favorite things about the creative team. So I have to assume that someone is going to throw Oliver's murdering back in his face. But it hasn't happened yet, and I'm wondering if it ever will. A perfect time would've been Oliver comforting Roy a few episodes ago. Oliver: It wasn't you. It was the mirakuru. Roy: But it was me. My anger. My hands. Oliver: And my hands killed a lot of people when I got back from the island. No serum. And I'll carry that with me for a long time. *Oliver puts a hand on Roy's shoulder Oliver: Roy, there's redemption for all of us. *End Scene*
|
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2014 07:03
|
|
|
I actually wrote a half-finished Arrow spec script after the first season was over, and it was a pretty kickass writing exercise. The show is so wonderfully structured and gives plenty of opportunity for banter, but you also HAVE to have those "I'm explaining things i've already explained to you" bad writing dialogue bits that are also part of the show. Also, nice shoutout to Young Justice. I never got around to the second season, though I heard great things.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2014 11:02
|
|
|
Hong Kong is also a surreal blend of Chinese, Hong Kong, and expat cultures. Sleeping Dogs, kinda a Hong Kong GTA, is a surprisingly nuanced take on the city. There's a lot of people who will rapidfire switch between cantonese and english, peppering their language with slang from both. I'm always impressed by how the Arrow team stretches their budget, but the Hong Kong set is basically a Vancouver street market with a few lanterns thrown in and a yellow filter applied.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2014 03:27
|
|
|
To be fair, Arrow at least pretends to cover up Vancouver. I love The Flash, but the show's creators basically went "Right, Central City... so it looks a LOT like Vancouver, agreed?"
|
|
#
¿
Nov 23, 2014 12:58
|
|
|
Either I suck at browsing the interwebs, or The CW has done a really good job of going after spoilers. Even with the crossover already being aired at a special event, virtually no details from that screening have popped up.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 27, 2014 02:55
|
|
|
I'm not surprised that footage didn't leak - that stuff is locked up tight and monitored VERY securely during the screening. But a bunch of impassioned Arrow and Flash fans, and not a single one gabs to a friend on the tumblrverse? Even with them signing NDAs, that is impressive.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 27, 2014 11:10
|
|
|
I'm listening to Stephen Amell's appearance on Aisha Tyler's podcast, and one tidbit he mentions is that season two's budget was HALF of what they had for season one. That's crazytown impressive, given what they pulled off last year.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 3, 2014 00:11
|
|
|
Yeah, its interesting to me as story structure nerd they basically opted for two stand alone stories that link together in smaller ways. It also means I have next to no idea what's on deck for tonight's episode, which is pretty drat great.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 3, 2014 21:01
|
|
|
Last night, I and a few others were really thrown off at the terrible Iris stuff. This was exponentially stronger. Captain Boomerang wasn't a metahuman, but he also felt like a bigger threat than the usual Arrow villain of the week. The torture stuff actually brought us back to who Oliver was in the first season - a much more fruitful path than ignoring the fact that Oliver is a murderer a billion times over. The story also found room for Diggle to get some needed screentime and emotional depth. That's a hell of a lot more impactful than "Barry's a dick, guys." Plus, the show called out Oliver for being emotionally stunted.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 4, 2014 06:39
|
|
|
Waller's team planted the bomb and let it go off in order to teach Oliver a lesson. She's playing a very long game - what's a few dead Hong Kong kids next to forging someone of Oliver's talent? I don't necessarily think she has any illusions about turning Oliver into her own agent - but she recognizes his innate talent and probably wants her hooks into someone like that. Amanda Waller, in nearly every incarnation, is the ultimate exemplar of "Ends Justify the Means"
|
|
#
¿
Dec 4, 2014 20:19
|
|
|
I really want Waller to scare the poo poo out of Barry. He needs it. And what's the point of having a sprawling shadowy spy organization if they're not going to try and control a dude who runs super fast?
|
|
#
¿
Dec 4, 2014 21:22
|
|
|
Someone else has already pointed this out, but Oliver is already well-trained by the time he left the island. Two years of training by Yao Fei and his daughter, plus Slade "motherfuckin Deathstroke" Wilson? Waller doesn't want him as just another trainable agent. Her agenda reaches far beyond that - to the point where I think she planned and WANTED Oliver Queen to don the hood and start murdering criminals in Starling.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 4, 2014 23:09
|
|
|
I don't necessarily know if we'll get to lazarus pits, but I've long suspected that the arrow writers are blowing smoke about the whole "Arrow won't have superpowers" song and dance they keep doing in interviews. You don't go and introduce Mirakuru and then immediately put it and that fantastical world back in the box. Also, a friend linked to a hideous io9 piece about how awful the Arrow crossover was, with the usual "Waller's actions don't make sense!" malarkey. Seriously guys, she planted or at least fully knew how to disarm the bomb the whole time. That's kinda her schtick. It's also "shadowy espionage training manual bullshit 101", if you've ever watched even the slightest of spy shows.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 6, 2014 10:29
|
|
|
Rhas Al Ghul being behind Sara's murder is just so drat obvious. I'm hoping Thea killed her solely because it would give Willa Holland something to do. Outside of the Corto Maltese episode, she's had literally nothing to do. They started something with the idea of her and Oliver sharing a flat, and then ignored it. I feel like the show is struggling to tell meaningful stories these past few episodes, and there's all these juicy veins to tell stories that are being ignored.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2014 23:21
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 17:58 |
|
|
Oh man, old rear end in a top hat Bruce Wayne is my favorite Bruce Wayne. Batman Beyond is so incredibly dark, it doesn't get nearly enough love. And I agree that having Maseo play a key role in the current day stuff is the only way they salvage the flashbacks this year.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 15, 2014 21:49
|
|