Featurette for Arrow TV Series Tries To Avoid Comic Connections
Superheroes are big business in entertainment, even more so after the spectacular success of The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises this year. It’s not that surprising that we’d see a comic book character adapted into a TV series, which is what the CW is doing with Arrow, a live-action take of Green Arrow. But just as comics are becoming more accepted in the mainstream, Arrow seems to be doing its best to distance itself from its origins, as shown in this three-minute featurette.
For starters, the name of the show is “Arrow,” not “Green Arrow.” Maybe they’re worried about confusing audiences who were recently introduced to Green Lantern thanks to the 2011 film, but besides being a strangely simple name for the series, it’s confusing to those who are familiar with the property. When I saw the first posters on my drive home from work, I did a doubletake, noticing that “Arrow” was written in green, which would indicate that the marketers knew full well what character they were selling, but being stumped as to why they weren’t writing out the word “Green” as well. It feels like they’re making a cheap imitation of the character.
Then in this featurette, the producers and actors take great care stressing that Arrow neé Oliver Queen is not — I repeat not — a “superhero,” he’s just a “hero.” Everything is “real,” as if that makes a story inherently better. Call me crazy, but I think the time is right for superheroes. In a down economy, escapism sells, and audiences seemingly had no problem digesting a movie full of fantastical Marvel superheroes in May. And even if they did, they were definitely sold on the final Dark Knight film, which more realistic but still more fantastical than Arrow is trying to be.
It just seems like the producers of Arrow are laboring under the false belief that comics aren’t cool and the only way audiences will accept a superhero is if it’s ultra-realistic. Some realism is fine — both the Dark Knight films and Marvel films use it effectively to varying degrees (minus Thor) — but don’t try to hide where the character came from, especially if they supposedly want to bring other DC characters into later episodes. The moment you bring in any character with any unusual powers (i.e. about 95% of DC’s notable characters), it’s going to throw your attempts at realism out the window.
Source: Topless Robot