7.9 | / 10 |
Users | 3.2 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
After defeating his most formidable foe to date, Oliver Queen (aka The Arrow) left Star City with the hopes of beginning a new life. But will Oliver ever truly be able to leave behind his past as The Arrow, and, if so, what becomes of the team he has worked so hard to assemble? Will military vet John Diggle, Oliver's sister Thea Queen, and lawyer-turned-vigilante Laurel Lance continue Oliver's fight without him?
Starring: Stephen Amell, Katie Cassidy, David Ramsey (I), Willa Holland, Susanna ThompsonAction | 100% |
Comic book | 99% |
Adventure | 77% |
Sci-Fi | 74% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Crime | Insignificant |
Mystery | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Japanese: Dolby Digital 5.1
French: Dolby Digital 2.0
Portuguese: Dolby Digital 2.0
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0
English SDH, French, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Four-disc set (4 BDs)
UV digital copy
Region free
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
When did superheroes come replete with a requirement that their existences were exercises in angst? The original conception of Superman, arguably the first
character to become a global superhero phenomenon, certainly had a bittersweet subtext, what with little Kal-El being orphaned and all, not to
mention having to grow up on a planet that wasn’t his native Krypton, but let’s face it—the comic book version never really exploited the sadder
aspects of the tale, instead (probably rightly) focusing on the, well, heroic exploits of the newly rechristened Clark Kent’s alter ego. Batman of course was a different
entity
altogether, and in fact it might be in the original formulation of this now iconic Caped Crusader that the elements of existential agony first started
getting a prominent featured position in the unfolding story arcs through the years. That said, for Baby Boomers who grew up with a
different Batman, there was absolutely
no subtext whatsoever, and indeed the television series tended to emphasize comic (no pun intended) and manic presentational aspects.
That’s probably one reason why for some (older) viewers the Tim Burton and, later, Christopher Nolan takes on the character and story had such an intriguingly menacing perspective. But angst is all the rage
nowadays,
as evidenced by the latest (and perhaps last) pairing of these two epochal superheroes, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and it probably goes without saying that
anxieties of one sort or another tend to play into any number of other superhero franchises, including everything from the X-Men Trilogy and subsequent follow ups to Thor to the Spider-Man Trilogy (not to mention The Amazing Spider-Man). The so-called Marvel Universe often has seemed to be more at home with the
psychological
underpinnings of its characters, at least historically speaking, but while DC characters perhaps tended to float more comfortably at a surface
level,
shows like Arrow have attempted to invest more or less straight ahead superhero theatrics with what is ostensibly a more “realistic”
underpinning, at least in terms of how the focal character goes about living his day to day life. One of the things that probably benefits
Arrow is that the Green Arrow was never one of DC’s marquee characters, and in fact kind of shunted along on the sidelines of other,
better
known, characters for much of its early comic book existence. That has left the show’s creators a kind of free hand to retool the backstory and
ongoing dramas surrounding Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) and his emergence as a cowled (instead of caped) crusader. Not to put too fine a
point on
it, but there is angst aplenty in this version of the Green Arrow tale.
Our reviews of the series' previous seasons can be accessed by clicking on the following links:
Arrow: The Complete First Season Blu-
ray
review
Arrow: The Complete Second Season
Blu-
ray review
Arrow: The Complete Third Season Blu-
ray
review
Arrow: The Complete Fourth Season is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Warner Brothers Home Video with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This fourth season continues with several trends, both good and occasionally bad, that I mentioned in our Arrow: The Complete Third Season Blu-ray review. In decent lighting conditions and when grading isn't an issue, the palette looks nicely natural and is often quite vividly saturated. Detail and fine detail also tend to be excellent in these sequences. The show's flashbacks to "island time" this year are a bit more aggressively color graded (see screenshots 5 and 6), and detail is probably minimally depleted as a result, at least at times. The tendency to bathe many scenes in a sickly green-yellow hue also tends to affect fine detail levels at times. The many dark sequences, including both interior shots of the team's operational headquarters as well as outright nighttime shots, often suffer from less than stellar shadow detail, and there are often noticeable dustings of noise (see screenshots 14-18 for some examples). Finally, occasionally CGI elements can look less than convincing. All of this said, generally speaking the series continues to look very good and often excellent.
Arrow: The Complete Fourth Season continues the series' winning ways with sound design and audio presentation on Blu-ray with a great sounding DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix. Every episode features at least one (and often more than one) action sequence, and those generally feature booming LFE and excellent sound effects which often include nice panning effects and discrete placement of individual effects. The show can be bombastic at times, offering pretty noisy sequences that can sound hyperbolic, but dialogue is generally very well prioritized. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range extremely wide on this problem free track.
Disc One
- 1. Green Arrow (1080p; 00:27)
- 4. Beyond Redemption (1080p; 1:14)
- 5. Haunted (1080p; 3:19)
- 10. Blood Debts (1080p; 1:26)
- 13. Sins of the Father (1080p; 00:52)
- 14. Code of Silence (1080p; 1:35)
- 15. Taken (1080p; 00:45)
- 19. Canary Cry (1080p; 7:23)
- 21. Monument Point (1080p; 00:34)
- 23. Schism (1080p; 1:12)
Well, gosh, how do you think threatened nuclear annihilation plays out in the climax to this season, at least when one considers the show is about to begin its fifth season? That none too surprising denouement aside, Arrow suffers from a certain predictability this season which this very example probably makes pretty clear. The show continues to mine a kind of cheeky humor which helps it glide past some overly melodramatic plot developments, and the action set pieces continue to be generally well staged and exciting to watch. Angst abounds, of course, but that seems to be unavoidable for superheroes these days. Technical merits are generally strong, the supplemental package well appointed, and Arrow: The Complete Fourth Season comes Recommended.
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