VOD (3)
Seasons(8) / Episodes(170)
Plots(1)
After a violent shipwreck, billionaire playboy Oliver Queen was missing and presumed dead for five years before being discovered alive on a remote island in the Pacific. When he returns home to Starling City, his devoted mother Moira, much-beloved sister Thea, and best friend Tommy welcome him home, but they sense Oliver has been changed by his ordeal on the island. While Oliver hides the truth about the man he's become, he desperately wants to make amends for the actions he took as the boy he was. Most particularly, he seeks reconciliation with his former girlfriend, Laurel Lance. As Oliver reconnects with those closest to him, he secretly creates the persona of Arrow - a vigilante – to right the wrongs of his family, fight the ills of society, and restore Starling City to its former glory. By day, Oliver plays the role of a wealthy, carefree and careless philanderer he used to be - flanked by his devoted chauffeur/bodyguard, John Diggle - while carefully concealing the secret identity he turns to under cover of darkness. However, Laurel's father, Detective Quentin Lance, is determined to arrest the vigilante operating in his city. Meanwhile, Oliver's own mother, Moira, knows much more about the deadly shipwreck than she has let on – and is more ruthless than he could ever imagine. (official distributor synopsis)
(more)Reviews (4)
Good for kids, they won't think much about the pervasive dumbness of the whole concept.....
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At the best and (to begin with) less frequent moments, like Nolan’s Batman. At the worst and (to begin with) more frequent moments, like Days of Our Lives. Yes, it’s very lumpy and for every plus there are at least two minuses. The rather dark mood, where nothing is black and white, is just right. In fact, where there’s no talking, just action, it can’t be faulted. But as soon as anybody is meant to act and, god forbid, open their mouth, then... What can I say, just awful and it’s a result of the casting where the main criterium was teen heart throb looks more than anything else. But I liked the absence of any super-powers in combination with an uncompromising approach where Arrow appears here as a positive hero, but in shape of a killer and blackmailer who, in support of “his truth", without hesitation destroys property and kills on a scale that would only occur to real villains in their wildest dreams about ruling the world. In any case, it has considerable potential (see episode five for proof), he just doesn't know how to sell it and most of the time doesn’t try. While all it needs is not to play so hard on the soap-opera relationship string and immediately it would have much more than “hard to watch guilty pleasure". EDIT SOME TIME LATER: It was a mistake to write off the series on the basis of half of the first season, because (unfortunately not until) at the end of the first and then during the second season, Arrow completely made up for the initial disappointment. OK, it still has the problems that most of the production from CW suffers from (especially occasional unnecessary trip-ups by turning toward telenovela maladies), but the pluses gradually overcome the minuses which (if they didn’t disappear completely), in comparison to the beginning, moved from the column “unbearable" to the column “annoying in places, but patience pays off". Especially because, apart from exceptions like Laurel, the creators found a way to work with the main characters. And, like the “villain episodes" sometimes didn’t work, the main episodes that umbrella a particular season work wonderfully; their motivations are understandable, not black and white and always have a perfect balance between charisma and respect. S1 3/5: It takes a long time to find its feet in terms of style and quality. It seems like they are shots into the darkness, never hitting the target. But when at last it finds its feet (in the final episodes), it’s well worth it. And it’s incredible that even the very poor screenwriting at the beginning gradually improves so much that it’s often surprising just how clever and bold it can be (not only) for this genre (before the occasional lapse of logic occurs, forcing you to hold your head in your hands in disbelief). In any case, the season as a whole is a promise of “how good it could be someday" than something that could stand alone. S2 4/5: The creators probably read the viewers’ criticisms and took them to heart, because otherwise it’s hard to believe this great leap forward in terms of quality with regard to everything in the last season that was so criticized. All the annoying bits are relegated to the sidelines or completely removed and especially the episodes developing on the main storyline are pure genre pleasure. Too bad the compulsory season quota is in excess of twenty episodes and so there are several filler-style “villain of the week" episodes which are so interchangeable and routine that it’s a disgrace and all the flashbacks are still from nowhere, going nowhere. But as soon as Arrow and Deathstroke’s fateful vendetta storyline takes over, you find yourself nodding your head in appreciation when you see that Arrow has matured to a stage when he is no longer simply attempting to emulate his role model from a position of a B-movie level, would-be stand-in as he was in the beginning, but that he is now on an equal footing with his role model in many respects. And that’s is quite an achievement for this underfinanced series from a channel specializing in products aimed at American teenagers, isn’t it? | S1: 3/5 | S2: 4/5 |
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I never found Smallville cool enough to pay attention to it, but in retrospect, it's not bad to compare the various DC characters in this series version. Because Arrow continues in that vein, and in place of the promised Amazon, its spin-off becomes The Flash. Beyond all expectations, the series got a full 8 seasons and a whole bunch of former Spartacus actors came on board, so it actually became a kind of acceptable popcorn viewing.
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If there is a series which has really surprised me recently, it's definitely Arrow. Since the release of Nolan's Batman Begins, these comic book characters have been given a completely different vibe. The dense, grim atmosphere is simply part of it. What to say about this series? Although not all the episodes of the first season have been aired yet, I would already like to comment on it. Some of the actors aren't entirely convincing and are still settling into their roles, but I believe that, over time, the series will improve in this regard. The story is kind of a mixture of Lost and Batman, but hopefully it won’t turn into a farce as in the first case or become a replica of the latter (well, if it was as good as Batman, I would be okay with that, but that would smack of sci-fi, because what's better than Batman?). However, if there is a contemporary series that I expect to be spectacular, it’s this one. I hope Arrow won’t let me down. So far, it looks more than promising. S01: 7/10. S02: 6/10. PS: Unfortunately, I didn’t finish it, the decent-looking comic book series turned into total crap.
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