Ever since Marvel has created The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) DC has been trying to create their own. Only recently has DC been doing it in film and the results have been mixed to say the least. However they have excelled with their Television department with the enormous success of Arrow and The Flash. The makers of those shows decided it’s time to attempt a team-up show in the vein of the Marvel’s Avengers or more so Guardians of the Galaxy. DC’s Legends of Tomorrow is the resulting product.
The story involves Rip Hunter (Arthur Darvill) who is a time lord who has went rogue from his order after the immortal dictator Vandal Savage (Casper Crump) killed his wife and son in a dystopian future of London. He creates a team of superheros and villains to fight Savage and they go on adventures through time and space to try to defeat him. The characters consist of supporting characters who were all introduced on either Arrow or The Flash such Brandon Routh (Ray Palmer / Atom), Caity Lotz (Sara Lance / White Canary), Victor Garber (Martin Stein / Firestorm), Franz Drameh (Jefferson Jackson / Firestorm) etc.
The show owes a lot to Dr. Who which is down to the fact the main leader of this motley crew is a time lord and Arthur Darvill was even one of the Eleventh Doctor’s companions, he even wears a similar coat to the Dr. in DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. However comparisons aside it has a sense of fun which none of DC’s recent cinematic attempt do and the excellent ensemble cast helps proceedings. The cast and filmmakers involved certainly are having a blast especially with the fact due to the nature of the show they get to play around with different periods of times.
The show’s highpoint is the 8th episode “Night of the Hawks”which is directed by the cult filmmaker Joe Dante who gets to indulge in all of his obsessions. The team travels back to a small Oregon town in the 1950s and he gets to add his normal social commentary which here deals with racism and suppressed sexuality. Sara Lance gets off with one of the other nurses who is suppressing her own lesbian desires in the conformist ’50s. His obsession with ’50s monster movies is also fully on show with clips being shown on TVs in the background to the “Werehawk” monsters Savage is creating. It’s a really tour de force of television and given his track records of merging politics, horror movies and humour he is a great fit for the series and hopefully he signs up for some more.
DC’s Legends of Tomorrow is a blast of a comic book show which is a little more adult oriented than some Superhero stuff it deals with drugs, sex, politics, racism and contains bad language and is relatively violent. Excellent ensemble casting and the Joe Dante helmed episode is a serious highlight for fans of cinema. The show is certainly flawed it’s littered with plenty of plot holes and the amount of characters at times make the show a little overcrowded for its own good. The biggest flaw is any watcher of time travel films will know meeting yourself in the past will be a disaster which isn’t the case here for some odd reason.
The Blu-Ray looks great and sounds great and has a range of special features. The features include a 18 minute Comic-Con Panel from 2015 which goes a little into the back story of how the show came about. Two featurettes one on the different time periods depicted on the show and the other on the character Jonah Hex who appears later in the series. It’s rounded off with a tour of the waverider set and a gag reel.
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