What if we didn't say "political", and used the term "issue-driven" instead?
Spoilers Arrow - Season 5
- Thread starter Commander Richard
- Start date
Politics and substance might bring me back to the show (and I'm not the only one to have left it; it's lost roughly a fifth of its viewers since S1). But I'm not holding my breath...
With so many of the GA comics dealing with social issues, it would be nice to see the show start dealing with some current issues.
I'm glad to hear they'll be getting rid of the flashbacks, they've really been starting to feel unnecessary and forced the last couple seasons.
I'm glad to hear they'll be getting rid of the flashbacks, they've really been starting to feel unnecessary and forced the last couple seasons.
Agreed.
It will be interesting to see what show is like without flashbacks. It would mean more screen time in the present. Hopefully for time for character moments.
^ They concept is good it just wasn't done very well.
We could have gotten more of his intense island training, survival and Kung Fu-style nuggets of wisdom that changed him as a person instead of what we actually got.
We could have gotten more of his intense island training, survival and Kung Fu-style nuggets of wisdom that changed him as a person instead of what we actually got.
Except the problem there is that when he got off the island, he wasn't wise -- he was actually at his lowest ebb morally, driven to avenge his father and save his city but seeing murder as the way to do it. The show in the present has been about his journey from vigilante to hero, and the wisdom he's gained along the way (at least in theory, though they kind of backpedaled on that last season). The challenge with the final year of flashbacks is that they have to show his past self on a downward trajectory to where he was at the start of the series, without undermining the portrayal of Oliver's (presumably, more or less) upward progress in the present. Maybe the key is to embrace the contrast, but it's still going to be structurally weird, since the whole flashback arc is basically designed to end at the beginning.
A downward trajectory would undoubtedly have been a part of what I suggested. A little wisdom learned, a little anger surfacing, maybe even due to an incident, and in the end he leaves the island with some formidable skills and a new resolve but still half cocked.
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The flashbacks were and could have continued to be the most interesting aspect of the show. Oliver's time with Argus in Hong Kong could have been great, showing his training with military hardware and learning different languages. How it became about Oliver sitting in an apartment for most of the time, baffles me. Season 4's start with Oliver beginning to form his vigilante persona was great, then it nose-dived quickly into the whole magic/island stuff that didn't seem to develop Oliver at all. I'm hoping the Russia flashbacks redeem it, but we'll see.
I'm somewhere between these two opinions. Ending the flashbacks altogether might have been a bit much, but they could certainly have been much reduced, and with bigger time/narrative jumps from one to the next. As in, we could have gotten more varied flashbacks of him doing mysterious/badass stuff with various people, without fully learning exactly how he got from some scrape to another.
Budget limitations? Anyway, it served as an origin story for Katana, and background for Oliver's friend in the League of Assassins, so it had a purpose.
That seemed to be driven more by plot mechanics than character development -- the need to establish Oliver's knowledge of magic, and to set up his motivation for going to Russia in season 5's flashbacks. So it was a bit lacking in emotional depth. There was an attempt to show Oliver's growing darkness, but it got kind of lost in all the plot stuff.
Will Traval cast as Christopher Chance aka the Human Target - http://tvline.com/2016/08/18/arrow-human-target-season-5-wil-traval-cast/
That's interesting. The short-lived 1992 Human Target series -- i.e. the one that actually used the comic's premise rather than just its title and main character name -- was from the producers of the 1990 The Flash, and we know the makers of these shows are big fans of that series. So I wonder if we'll get any sort of homage to the '92 Rick Springfield version of Chance.
The character will wish he had the Trickster's girl.
Does his business card read Have Gun Wil Traval?
EDIT: I'm thinking the better joke (such as it is) might be that it reads Wil Traval Will Travel
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I was a big fan of the Mark Valley series, so I would have loved to have seen them bring him back, but Traval was good in Jessica Jones, so I'm sure he'll be good here too.
Is Christopher Chance a part of the DCU in the comics? I know he's from a DC comic, but that doesn't have to mean he's part of the DCU.
Is Christopher Chance a part of the DCU in the comics? I know he's from a DC comic, but that doesn't have to mean he's part of the DCU.