Arrow Season 5: 7 Ups And 4 Downs From 'New Recruits'
2. Lazy Double Work
We all know how TV and movie fight scenes usually work. For the most part, a team of stunt performers step in front of the camera when things get a little bloody and brutal. That’s perfectly fine, and using performers who are well-versed in various fighting techniques and acrobatics only adds further to the action that we see on screen.
In New Recruits, however, the stunt double work was plain lazy at one particular point.
As Oliver does battle with Tobias Church, all of a sudden things look a little strange. As in, yes, for the whole fight we get to see a guy who clearly isn’t Chad L. Coleman fighting the Green Arrow. The fact that Coleman had a stunt double for this scene is expected, but the laziness here is in the camera work and direction.
Usually, one would expect cunning angles and shooting techniques to be utilized in order to hide the fact that it wasn’t Chad L. Coleman fighting Stephen Amell’s Emerald Archer. Instead, some random stunt fella was in plain view for a good chunk of time, so much so that you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Green Arrow was fighting someone other than Tobias Church such was the amount of screen time the stunt performer was given.