TV Series Review- Arrow Season 1

The first season of the Arrow television series feels like it struggled to really find it’s feet. Sometimes it felt like it had found it’s groove and was going to be a blast. Othertimes it felt like it was trying so hard to be a grim and dark Batman rip-off that it was quite painful to watch. Unfortunately, the latter moments well and truly outnumbered the former.

Arrow is the story of Oliver aka Green Arrow, a DC Comics superhero.  The main gimmick of this superhero is that he dresses in green and is armed with a bow and, of course, arrows. The arrows he shoots are green, thus giving him his name. If this set-up feels like this series should be a whole lot of swashbuckling fun, then you would be wrong. There is nothing like trying to make a green guy jumping around with bows and arrows as dark as possible outside of a couple of moments of self-awareness. They are scared of even giving him his superhero name the entire first season.

The first season follows Oliver in two stages of his life. He has spent 5 years “stranded” on an island with his only goal being to survive. The story picks up after he is rescued and he comes back to his city with a vague goal of saving the city. While he is parkouring around the city and shooting people quite dead with his arrows, which are green, we are also told the story of when he is on the island through flashbacks.

The best parts of this show are the fight scenes. They are well choreographed and have that feel of swashbuckling hero. The flashbacks while he is on the island are also good, except when they are dragging. Knowing that he is going to be trained on the island to acquire his skills after being a rich playboy (maybe even in montage form), it feels like they take forever to get around to him not whining about being on the island to whoever is around him.

The biggest problem with the first season is consistency, followed closely by trying to copy Batman. These two issues are connected. Examples of this throughout the series include giving him a tech genius who also serves as a morale compass (but it is a blonde girl, not Morgan Freeman), and the grumpy policeman who has to learn to trust Arrow. This goes against one of the positive parts of the series for me in giving him an ally, being an army veteran who is his senior, who was also meant to serve as his morale compass but who becomes kind-of redundant. There are also episodes where the morale is that he puts his mission above personal goals, but it is then reversed in the morale of the next episode where, apparently, he has to put personal goals above the mission. Other examples include a mass-murdering assassin suddenly not killing a main character because apparently he wasn’t paid for it (despite killing a bunch of police officers beforehand, but it is okay because they weren’t named characters).

However, by the end of Season 1, Arrow finally starts to get into its groove. It finally begins to try things outside of the Batman formula, the action scenes are solid and it has a decent twist to make both the current story and the flashbacks compelling.  It starts to introduce some more outlandish villains and seems to actually start having some fun. Despite this, however, there are still allot of problems that I haven’t even touched on (inconsistent characters, weak female damsel-in-distress characters, lack of consequences to actions) making it very hard to recommend.

One and a half out of five green waffles.

The Girl With All Gifts

The Girl With All Gifts opens just like the title. There's a girl. She seems pretty smart and may well be gifted. Her name is Melanie and she appears initially to be much like any other child. She goes to school, she has a favourite teacher and she enjoys stories. There's just one big difference. Melanie lives in an underground army base. Every morning she is muzzled and strapped into a wheelchair. Along with the other children that live at the base, they’re tested to see what information is retained and understood. Carey tantalisingly drip feeds information, keeping the real truth hidden for a considerable amount of time. You're drawn into the strange world that Melanie inhabits.

Melanie is presents as innocent and alone, struggling to understand the cold and hostile environment she regards as home. Carey controls the reveal skilfully, so when it's revealed, you're already completely sucked into the story and wholeheartedly cheering Melanie on.

Then the narrative switches gears, focusing on a variety of perspectives. Here the book loses its pace. The other character are fleshed out generic post apocalyptic archetypes. Have the grumpy soldier, a narrow minded doctor, the outsider who cares to much and the guy who will die first. Carey gives enough layers of complexity and meaning to these characters, but they’’re never as full realized as Melanie. I can't say I was invested in them enough for them to live. Except the grump soldier, I did grow to like him and his “I’m too old for this shit’’ approach to helpfulness.
 
The horror here is graphic in it descriptions, painting a world of sombre dread. The book builds ideas on violence, endurance and survive against all the odds to create a vividly post apocalyptic world. Eventually the books narrative and characterisation settles into a predictable pattern halfway in. With the inevitable demise of various characters. However by this point I was engaged enough to be continue reading. The book quests was fairly predictable, except the ending which Carey delivers with both pathos and a sense of detached irony. Carey presents you with hope but it comes at a price, challenging you to think about boundaries and the darker side of our instinct to survive.

3 and a half lonely post apocalyptic waffles out of 5

CAPTAIN AMERICA- THE WINTER SOLDIER

Look- You have probably already seen Captain America. You have probably already read all the reviews about it from a bunch of other sources. So, to add to all the other stuff that you know about The Winter Soldier, here is something awesome that you should watch.

“Captain America- F&*k Yeah.”

So The Winter Soldier completes the Avengers trinity of sequels, following on from Iron Man and Thor movies. In it, Liberty himself is in a moral quandary based on SHIELD’s new method of enforcing their laws based of pre-emptive strikes. There is the obligatory bad business-guy and also the return of fellow Avengers Nick Fury and Black Widow. And there is also the Falcon and the Winter Soldier, when the movie remembers he exists.

The Winter Soldier has plenty of action scenes. And it is a good thing that these are among some of the best action scenes I have seen this year. Taking a break from repulsor beams and lightning bolts, the action in Winter Soldier feels allot grittier and visceral as the good and bad guys engage in hand-to-hand fighting or shoot-outs. But amongst all this fighting, there is also a pretty good spy-style thriller filled with espionage and double crosses as Captain America and co. Try to figure out what is going on.

Captain America does feel like it tries to fit allot of things in. There is the corruption of SHIELD, an expositing 60’s style super-computer, Captain America returning to the world, Black Widow having more of a personality and some epic shield throwing scenes. However, it never feels too bloated as it does a good job balancing most things. 

Unfortunately, a couple of things do fall flat. Falcon feels very emotionless. It sometimes felt like watching a brick holding emoticon faces in front of it and switching them between scenes. The Winter Soldier also doesn’t feel like he has too much to do in his own movie. He has his big reveal of who he is, a scene showing him being brainwashed and that is it, instead being used more as a sequel hook.

Captain America- The Winter Soldier was an entertaining movie from start to finish. It has some awesome action scenes and is a very entertaining spy-thriller. It also refuses to end the movie on a giant reset button for the Marvel cinematic universe. So if you haven’t watched the video linked above, you should do that now. And if you can find a shield to throw, you should go throw a shield.

4.5 out of 5 Star-Spangled Waffles.

BOOK REVIEW- RAISING STEAM (Terry Pratchett, 2013)

Raising Steam is the latest book by Terry Pratchett in the Discworld series. The last book of Pratchett’s that I read (The Long War) was quite disappointing, and so I went into this book with some trepidation. I have always enjoyed the Discworld books and have read most, if not all, the previous books set in the Discworld universe. I am happy to report, that I found Raising Steam to be a good return to form for Pratchett, even with its flaws.

Raising Steam follows the story of what happens when steam engines, in the form of trains, are introduced to the Discworld universe. As is always the case, there are those who think it is a good idea and those that are opposed to it. In this case, this feels like it is mostly focused on the traditionalist dwarves and the progressive goblins. Along the way, there are various twists and turns sprinkled with Pratchett’s usual wit, sarcasm and societal observations.

Raising Steam focuses on the character of Moist Von Lipwig, former conman turned to the service of the state by Vetinari, a tyrant. Along the way, various other characters are introduced, with most returning from previous Discworld stories. Some of the problems from The Long War resurface during Raising Steam. It feels like Pratchett tries to focus on far too many characters at times without giving them proper development. The difference here is that Raising Steam has 30-odd previous books of character development to draw from. This means that even with a character only introduced briefly, their personality was already clear in my mind.

This brings us to another problem with Raising Steam- the preachiness. Sometimes it felt like Pratchett has become too big a fan of his own characters. This results in characters like Vetinari, Vimes and Moist feeling like they can’t put a foot wrong. The side-effects of these characters being almost infallible is that the villains are almost an afterthought, with their threat-level feeling minimal and their reasoning feeling almost comically bad. This is a shame as previous Discworld books have done such a good job of building up very believable villains and the reasoning behind what they did.

But even with these flaws, Raising Steam never fails to entertain. Pratchett’s usual wit is on display as he examines the nature of humans (or dwarves, or goblins, or whichever fantasy race he uses as a proxy). Even if at times it felt like there wasn’t much at stake due to poor writing of the villains and some hero-worship of his heroes, I still breezed through Pratchett’s latest book much faster than I have read any other books in a while.

4 out of 5 Steam-Cooked Waffles.