The Show:
The CW’s DC Television Universe continued to expand this past year with the release of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, a superhero team-up show springing out of the worlds of Arrow and The Flash. After his family is murdered by immortal villain Vandal Savage (Casper Crump), ex-Time Master Rip Hunter (Arthur Darvill) “leads” the team of The Atom, Ray Palmer (Brandon Routh), White Canary, Sarah Lance (Caity Lotz), Firestorm, Dr. Martin Stein (Victor Garber) and Jax Jackson (Franz Drameh), Hawkgirl, Kendra Saunders (Ciara Renée) and Hawkman, Carter Hall (Falk Hentschel), along with Flash Rogues Captain Cold, Leonard Snart (Wentworth Miller) and Heatwave, Mick Rory (Dominic Purcell) on a time-travelling adventure like we’ve never seen on network television before.
I’ll be honest. I don’t like Arrow at all. Never did. And while I thought The Flash had a horrible start, the show turned it around by about the halfway point of the first season and hit most of its marks in Season Two (for the most part). Despite all this, I love Legends of Tomorrow. It takes the best elements of The Flash‘s approach to superheroics and turns it up to eleven. This show is big, dumb, loud fun.
With an emphasis on dumb and fun.
Every episode has a sense of childlike wonder about it that really shouldn’t work in this post-Breaking Bad TV world. And I know a lot of viewers just found it too silly to invest in, but the way Legends embraces the silly side of what they’re doing makes it all the more loveable.
This is the superhero show I wanted when I was ten. I just didn’t know it.
The first season is filled with twists and turns (not all of which make sense, but that’s part of the fun), with nearly every episode being a different genre of storytelling. We get spy stories set in a Russian gulag, a Wild West adventure, futuristic space battles, a giant robot fighting a giant Atom (beating Captain America: Civil War to the punch with its giant action), weird bird monsters in a Fifties town, and some classic Seventies disco action to boot.
While those are reason enough to love the goofy fun of Legends of Tomorrow, the thing that really won me over right from the start was the action.
This is a great mix of classic DC superheroes (and villains), and the special effects that bring them and their powers to life looks great week in and out. When you’re dealing with eight superheroes firing lasers, ice blasts, heat rays, and fireballs, while kicking ass on the ground (Canary) and in the air (Atom), then every big action set-piece ends up looking like a classic George Perez splash page from the comics.
It doesn’t get much better than that, in my opinion.
So if you’re looking for some calorie-free fun superheroics that, while silly, can still turn on a dime and give you an emotional wallop or two, all while playing in the largest sandbox on television, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow is definitely a show you should check out. It you want the gritty “realism” and cold nihilism that Warner Bros. is releasing into the world with their films, then stay far away. Hell, if you want the down-to-earth realistic grind of Marvel’s Netflix shows, you should also stand clear. This is a little sillier than the Marvel films, but captures a lot of their energy and heart.
Legends is all about pure idealistic heroics with a fantastic sense of fun, and even when they’re dealing with life, death, and impending universal disaster, they do it with a style and flair that both adults and children can enjoy together.
That’s not easy to pull off, folks.
The Extras:
DC’s Legends of Tomorrow: 2015 Comic Con Panel (18:49): Everyone wants to get into Hall H at the San Diego Comic Con, because that’s where all the biggest news breaks. Unfortunately, to get into Hall H usually means sleeping outside overnight in line and then camping out in your seat all day (with bathroom breaks) to watch stars, writers, and producers come out, answer softball questions, and then watch a clip or two of the newest TV shows or movies that the studios are promoting. It’s an exclusive right of passage for SDCC attendees and superfans, but to be quite honest, except for being one of the first people to see the premiere of a new trailer, the panels are fairly boring and the good stuff is usually posted online within a few days anyway.
When it comes to boring, the DC’s Legends of Tomorrow panel fills the bill. DC Comics vet Geoff Johns hosts the panel, which features most of the cast, along with Marc Guggenheim, Greg Berlanti, and Phil Klemmer, plus a couple of other producers who are mostly ignored. Because the panel was done before the show had actually shot much more than what it took to impress The CW (which gave the project a straight-to-series order), there’s not much information to be garnered by the panel at all. So we get a lot of “How do you think your character will react to being on the team” and “What do you love most about your character” questions.
All in all, this, like most SDCC panels, is a bit of a waste of time. We don’t even get to see any promos.
Jonah Hex: Hex Marks the Spot (6:59): This feature goes behind the scenes of Episode 11, “The Magnificent Eight,” while also providing some background on the character of Jonah Hex. The interview with Jonah Hex himself, Johnathon Schaech, that is included here provides some nice insight into how Schaech approached the character, and the sheer amount of detail that went into designing and dressing the set for this Wild West adventure is mind-boggling.
It’s a little strange, though, that in a show that features such a wide variety of DC Universe characters, that we would get an entire feature all about Jonah Hex. I wonder if that means he’ll be back to play a larger role in the new season?
Hmmmmm.
A Fantastic Voyage: Touring the Waverider Set (8:53): Then central interview for this feature is with Production Designer Ian D. Thomas (Dead Like Me, Almost Human, Fringe), who details the crazy amount of work that went into creating the team’s timeship, The Waverider. Basically, it is a huge interlocking set, allowing for long, uninterrupted shots as the characters move from one part of the ship to another.
Watching these features really helps to give the viewers newfound respect for what at times is an overly silly show. There’s a lot of love that goes into every single aspect of the show, which makes me feel a little more justified in my love for Legends. This ain’t some slapdash piece of crap. There’s love in every single aspect of this show.
History in the Making (13:04): Speaking of every single aspect of the show, this feature gives a blow-by-blow breakdown of what goes into making an episode of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. Each episode is finished in 17 days. That’s from start to finish, including breaking down the scripts, building sets, designing effects, everything. It’s hectic and stressful, but exciting. While there’s not a lot of real depth in this feature, there’s some nice insight and it’s extremely entertaining.
Gag Reel (7:00): Kind of a waste of time. Although it’s amusing to see how often the amazing-looking set simply breaks or falls apart in the actors’ hands.