{"id":20815,"date":"2016-05-26T21:31:05","date_gmt":"2016-05-27T01:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=20815"},"modified":"2016-08-22T23:46:48","modified_gmt":"2016-08-23T03:46:48","slug":"five-ways-to-fix-arrow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2016\/05\/26\/five-ways-to-fix-arrow\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Ways to Fix “Arrow”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Arrow-season4\"<\/a>Well, \u201cArrow\u201d season four has come and gone and let\u2019s face it: The season finale stunk on ice. Even \u201cThe Flash\u201d season finale, which didn\u2019t progress our characters very much, was still so much better than \u201cArrow\u2019s\u201d finale which, from beginning to end, was a sloppy, silly, stupid, plot hole filled mess. Once upon a time, \u201cArrow\u201d was the big gun in the CW action universe, but now it\u2019s lagging behind. The goofy \u201cLegends of Tomorrow\u201d is assembling the mythical \u201cJustice Society of America,\u201d while \u201cSupergirl\u201d is set to join her DC super pals on the CW Network very soon.<\/p>\n

If \u201cArrow\u201d doesn\u2019t pick up its game, it\u2019s going to be the show that\u2019s wading in tepid water, while the other action series\u2019 are aiming for bigger ambitions and outside the box storytelling. Here are five ways \u201cArrow\u201d can be fixed to get back to when it was an entertaining crime thriller about a vigilante seeking redemption.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

5. <\/strong>Out with the Old Villains, In with some New Ones<\/strong>
\nEnough with Malcolm Merlyn, and all the other creaky and old villains of the past, it\u2019s boring. Malcolm had his time in the spotlight, was head of \u201cThe League of Assassins\u201d for a while, and is now just a one handed nuisance constantly switching teams to accommodate the storyline for that season. Plus he keeps consistently insisting that he is looking out for Thea and wants what\u2019s best for her, but is still making her life a living hell. Malcolm keeps breaking in to the Arrow headquarters, gives an antagonistic monologue, and pisses some people off only to make a morally ambiguous decision by the end of the season.<\/p>\n

Seriously, it\u2019s enough. It\u2019s time for \u201cArrow\u201d to either re-invent some long gestating villains from DC\u2019s universe, or begin inventing villains that can make Arrow\u2019s life a living hell. And enough world domination and mass destruction, Arrow is not that kind of hero. He\u2019s a street level vigilante, so let\u2019s bring back a more down to Earth villain.<\/p>\n

4. <\/strong>Stop Building up Villains for Nothing
\n<\/strong>Every time the series builds up a new villain, they do nothing but knock them down in the cheesiest and anti-climactic matter. It\u2019s bad enough DC has hobbled the show by limiting what kind of villains they can use, but the show keeps building up these massive monsters, only to have them die in the lamest manner. The last villain Damian Darhk was a tough bastard who is ultimately defeated by Oliver\u2019s hope and being stabbed in the gut at point blank range. I haven\u2019t been intimidated by a villain since Slade stood in the center of Oliver\u2019s mansion.<\/p>\n

3. <\/strong>Improve the Choreography!
\n<\/strong>Right now the show\u2019s choreography is waned and it\u2019s literally nothing but a lot of running, shooting, running, shooting, running, dodging, shooting, and rolling around. Occasionally Oliver, Thea, or Diggle will get in to a hand to hand battle with one of the baddies or their thugs, but there is an obvious avoidance of eliciting martial arts sequences, to the point where we didn\u2019t even see the much anticipated fight between Diggle and his evil brother. At least in the early seasons, \u201cArrow\u201d strived to deliver the goods with sweeping fights and combat. Now it\u2019s almost nothing.<\/p>\n

2. <\/strong>Less Felicity, Please
\n<\/strong>This is supposed to be \u201cArrow\u201d about Oliver Queen. Oliver\u2019s only surviving relative is Thea Queen, a young warrior brought back from the dead thanks to the Lazarus Pit who is now Arrow\u2019s sidekick and even she doesn\u2019t get as much screen time as Felicity. Felicity went from the adorably geeky sidekick to Oliver Queen, to a massive deus ex machina and plot device who is given almost as much screen time as the titular hero.<\/p>\n

Rather than seeing Oliver and his team trying to take down Damian, we\u2019re instead reduced to seeing Felicity deal with her own problems, which includes her divorced parents bickering with each other. Felicity was charming when she had limited screen time, but now she\u2019s been given way too much importance. In the finale when she assured Oliver she was sticking by him, I was more disappointed than hopeful.<\/p>\n

1. Stop the Damn Flashbacks
\n<\/strong>Even the producers have admitted the flashbacks suck, make no sense, and drive the momentum of the show down. And they have no intention of stopping them any time soon. And they don\u2019t care that fans of the show are annoyed about that fact, either. This season\u2019s series of flashbacks had almost no parallels to the central premise, and was so boring. I didn\u2019t care about the cave expedition, Oliver\u2019s tangling with an African warlord, and his adventure with a Latin slave who become hungry with power, blah blah blah.<\/p>\n

The flashbacks bring the show\u2019s momentum to a painfully screeching halt, and at this point is nothing but padding to keep the show\u2019s seasons going as long as possible. How many silly adventures did Oliver go through during the years he was away from Central City, anyway? The writers don\u2019t seem interested in changing the formula, which is a shame. When the show is exciting it can really be an engrossing crime thriller. The flashbacks are a big chink in the show\u2019s strong armor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, \u201cArrow\u201d season four has come and gone and let\u2019s face it: The season finale stunk on ice. Even \u201cThe Flash\u201d season finale, which didn\u2019t progress our characters very much, was still so much better than \u201cArrow\u2019s\u201d finale which, from beginning to end, was a sloppy, silly, stupid, plot hole filled mess. Once upon a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,17],"tags":[58,64,71,240,268,631,906,1087],"class_list":["post-20815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-list-junkies","category-tv-tomb","tag-action","tag-adaptation","tag-adventure","tag-crime","tag-dc-comics","tag-martial-arts","tag-science-fiction","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20815"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22099,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20815\/revisions\/22099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}