"The Flash" series has landed on Netflix. It's D.C.'s newest foray into turning comics into television shows. First there was "Smallville". I have to admit, I was a fan. Then came along "Arrow." And now there Arrow. While Smallville may be a show far away in the rear view mirror, Arrow and Flash are running presently and concurrently. There's quite a bit of cross over between the two shows.
I will be frank with you. I've always been a Green Arrow fan. One of the first comics I read as a kid was a stand alone where Green Arrow and Green Lantern team up to beat the ills of drugs. It was one of those "special" issues. It was gritty, it was real, and it had quite an impact on my young self.
Since then, I've come to love the Oliver Queen/Green Arrow character in his many different iterations. From robin-hood like character with a juvenile sense of humor to an extreme environmental terrorist, he's a great character to unravel and understand. I think my favorite depiction was in Frank Miller's "Dark Knight Strikes Back" as a one-armed, underground self-proclaimed freedom fighter.
That being said, the show "Arrow" is awful. It's a turd of a show. The guy playing Oliver Queen can't act and the writing is dreadful. Furthermore, all the interpersonal drama between Oliver Queen and his mother, his step-father, and his sister all seem forced, contrived, and excessive. All of the drama is supposed to humanize Oliver Queen and make us like him more, but there's simply too much of it. Everyone is supposed to be having all of these personal breakthroughs and strengthening of relationships all the time. It comes off as very... soap-operay. On the other hand, as a fitness and martial arts fan, I love things like this:
"The Flash" is a much better show. Nothing seems quite nearly as contrived as in Arrow. I was worried that when the first episode introduced a love triangle that it would play a central role in the show's overall story. It seems pretty downplayed so far, even though I'm only halfway through season 1. The writing is pretty good, not great, and the premise is simplistic enough that it provides a pretty framework in which they can build decent stories. The premise is just like Smallville: an event caused metahumans to exist and every week one of them crawls out of the woodwork. In Smallville it was the meteor shower that brought Superman to earth and in Flash it's a supercollider explosion.
I liked the premise of Arrow involving a vast conspiracy of corrupt one percenters and the Green Arrow on a quest to bring them down. But the conspiracy unraveling mixed with the story-telling element of constant flashbacks just made it all too far convoluted. Plus I think they were trying to appeal to far too many demographics by making his sister a teenager in the throws of rebellion. It was an entirely unnecessary plot point and it made me hate the show even more. So that's just my two cents. Hope you enjoyed that. Also, here's a great workout based on the Green Arrow:
No comments:
Post a Comment