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Five Thoughts on Arrow‘s “Star City 2040”

By | March 19th, 2019
Posted in Television | % Comments

My name isn’t Oliver or Emiko Queen, it’s Mike, and here are my thoughts on Arrow‘s “Star City 2040.” It’s time fly like an eagle and slip to the future as the Arrow siblings William and Mia climb the border wall between Star City and the Glades in search of the Mother who kept them apart all their lives. That’ll be an enjoyable family reunion.“Hey kiddo. Lost track of time.” She says as they rescue her from the clutches of an evil corporation.

1. Tracking Shots

James Bamford has established himself as one of Arrow key recurring hands as a director after doing stunt work for years. A look at his director credits on the series and you see a lot of excellent episodes with fantastic fight scenes. “Star City 2040,” might be his best work yet due in part to a script from Beth Schwartz & Oscar Balderrama, and whoever was his DP – I can never find who is running cameras on a given episode of these shows. Making television is a collaborative effort after all. “Star City 2040” has a solid script and it gives Bamford a chance to show different kinds of moments, and pepper in the requisite nice action too. Berlanti Prods is producing like 10 different show, how is this guy so tied to Arrow?

I had forgotten that Bamford was up for directing this, despite noting it in last week’s recap, but the very first shot of the episode gave it away. One of his signature long takes, except this time it isn’t meant to capture balletic action. The camera is more probing, exploring the space, as we here a woman give birth off screen. This opening shot is the source of Felicity’s paranoia, the lack of privacy and easy access, visually told to us in 60 seconds.

Things quickly transition into another pseudo-tracking shot/montage showing Mia grow up until we reach the titular 2040. If there is one thing the editors and producers of this show know how to do, it is match-cut. That sequence was more standard Bamford, but still just fun to watch. Mia was trained by Aunt Nyssa!

2. Representing a Difficult Relationship

What pushes Bamford over the edge in this episode is how he visually handles the core relationship this episode: Mia and Felicity Smoak. After their falling out midway through act 1, they are framed in ways that emphasize the distance between them. You can actually see this occurring as they argue over the legalities, or lack thereof, Felicity hacking again. Mother and daughter stand on the pretty much the same plane three or so feet apart, but as they argue and their relationship fray the cameras slowly push in and pushes the other out as normal shot reverse shot editing takes over. Notice how as Felicity speaks she is both shot from a slight low angle, emphasizing her size and making her appear right via size. For Mia it’s the reverse, she is shown from a slight high angle but the framing is much tighter on her and pushing Felicity out of the frame. Even when they are reunited, the two are consistently staged either with New New Team Arrow, or framed, in a way to emphasize the emotional distance between them by placing one of the two in the extreme foreground and the other in the background.

When they do find Felicity, she doesn’t go to her daughter first. She goes to William, and they get the nice tight medium to close up hug session. With a nice cutaway to Mia standing all by her lonesome.

Of course their reunion and eventual patching things up is a given and building all episode. It wouldn’t have worked nearly as well if Bamford and the cinematographer hadn’t kept them visually apart, and pushes this episode over the edge.

3. Still not Completely Sold on Star City 2040 as “The Future”™

This is likely a bit of a stretch, but I’m still not sold on this version of Star City 2040 as the official future of the DCWVerse. We have too much timey whimey incoming. How Roy reacted to getting hit though was a bit aggro. Roy isn’t the aggro type, he’s the type who dose unnecessary parkour. Which they’ve yet to have him do. If Rene can still be street smart and stupid, there’s now way Roy has outgrown parkour. Roy was really aggro for a time, when he had the Mirakuru in his system. He was beating the heck out of that guy without that much force. Maybe this version of Roy never really got it out of his system, hence the lone on Lian Yu lifestyle.

Continued below

4. Where is Ollie and Diggle?

Oliver Queen and his legacy looms over everything in this episode, but the man himself is missing like Luke Skywalker in Force Awakens. Where is he, or what happened to him. Going by the old “Star City 2046” episode, Deathstroke jr. shouldn’t running amok just yet. The show is treating him like he’s dead, which would make sense if he sacrifices himself in COIE. Arrow was surprisingly quick at leaning into aspects and ideas of symbolic legacy, so treating Ollie in this way makes sense.

We nearly seen all of Old Original Team Arrow, but John Diggle is still MIA. Now he is being represented by his son Connor Hawke, so his lack of presence is excused somewhat. But, c’mon it’s David Ramsey’s turn for good-bad old person makeup. There was talk of a “good” ARGUS, Nightwatch and if you look at the badge Hawke flashes you see half of Spartan’s helmet in the logo. So maybe that’s what he is up to, which doesn’t sound horribly broken and dysfunctional like everyone else.

5. The Helmets

Maybe it’s because I have COIE on the mind, but when those helmets were revealed I couldn’t help but be reminded of those Justifier helmets that emit and project the anti-life equation from “Final Crisis.” Now the helmets aren’t as metaphysical as the one from the Morrison opus, but they aren’t that far off. The surveillance implications are similarly disenfranchising.

Ending the episode on Felicity bringing the first version of the ARCHER program online was effective and chilling.


//TAGS | Arrow

Michael Mazzacane

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