The Black Canary movie is one among the many upcoming DCEU projects to be released on the HBO Max app, and it provides an intriguing opportunity. The version of the Blonde Badass from the Birds of Prey film was not the character’s first live-action appearance, and luckily, it might end up being the best. There’s much of a different opinion, however, for Arrow’s version of Black Canary.
The film can prove to be a huge improvement over the Arrowverse version of Black Canary by not being an underrated minor character with an ambiguous legacy and identity. These issues and more are rooted in how tangled the Arrow was with portraying the story of Black Canary, leading to the creation of multiple versions of the character that didn’t really connect to the one from the comics. Here’s a way how the movie can fix all of that.
Avoiding Love Triangles
Among the major consequences of being a CW series was that Arrow was equally a teen-centered daily soap opera as much as it was a superhero/crime show. Thus, the significant characters were many times involved in typically corny love triangles, and Black Canary wasn’t an exception. Dinah “Laurel” Lance was initially chosen by both Oliver Queen and Tommy Merlyn, with the comeback of her sibling Sarah complexing the romance even more.
This implied that for the initial two seasons especially, Laurel was merely an object who had to compete for than a proper character, setting aside the strong and skilled fighter from the comics. Also when she eventually became the Black Canary and fought besides Oliver, she never felt like she was on equal footing and was taken to be just another side character.
Keeping Black Canary in the focus of the narrative and avoiding soap opera-esque love triangles at all would do wonders of not repeating these mistakes. However, there should be the element of romance, of course, but this could be planned better from the Arrowverse version by making Oliver and Dinah each other’s only true love. Thus, the movie could prove to give justice to the Arrow version of Black Canary.
