Someone stop
me if you’ve heard this one before, a British ‘Time Master’ from 2166 on a
crusade of preventing an evil immortal dictator blessed with immortality, walks
into a bar in Tibet and kidnaps a reborn assassin to aid his mission. I hope
this is new to you too, but wait this is only the first setup for television’s
first elaborately planned superhero show.
Over the past three and a half years we have seen comic book
television evolve on The CW from being frigid to initially embracing their
comic roots (Arrow season 1) to having critically acclaimed show like The Flash retell classic
storylines such as Flash Rebirth and Flashpoint Paradox. In this CW network
universe, they’ve established many characters’ comic fans might have thought
would never see the light outside DC Comics vault like the Atom, Captain
Boomerang, China White, Huntress, Firestorm, Weather Wizard and many more. Well,
after a few spinoff shows in this universe and an abundance of characters
laying around not in use because of current and future storylines, producer
Greg Berlanti created an original DC story incorporating time travel featuring
Rip Hunter assembling a misfit team of heroes and criminals on a journey
throughout time to alter the timeline in favor of stopping Vandal Savages rule
over the world.
In this series premier Rip Hunter comes from a ravaged London
in 2166 that appears to be a chaotic battlefield and as a last resort decides
to recruit eight humans/meta-humans with special skill sets in a Suicide Squad
manner sets to accomplish this’ task with. The team includes The White Canary/Sara Lance a
reincarnated assassin and former “League of Assassins” member, The Atom/Ray Palmer a thought to be
dead billionaire with an exosuit (think Ironman) that can also shrink, Firestorm/Jax and Prof. Stein, meta-humans
with the ability of to create bursts of flames, flight and matter transmutation,
the duo of thieves Captain Cold and Heatwave
also agree to join the team for their own personal gain and finally the couple Hawkman and Hawkgirl who have been
hunted down by savage for all of eternity in previous lives. Hunter’s main
pitch that got all the character to join was that completing this task of
taking down Savage distinguishes them as Legends
in the future.
Although an ensemble on screen for a short time of 42 minutes
you could see a fight for screen time but the writing was well done with the
main cast all given a fair share of excitement and dialogue. The writers were
also able to find balance with introducing a what could be complex concept of
time travel in a quick and simple manner for a general audience to get behind,
almost in a Dr. Who or Back to the Future effort.
Constant plot twists in the shows like Arrow and the Flash
are essential to keeping the audience involved so it’s no surprise Rip delivers
the first when after already escaping a near death encounter with the time
bounty hunter Chronos. Rip was not granted permission from the other Time
Masters to alter the time line and in fact these members assembled are not
remembered as Legends they’re all after thoughts in this golden era of
superheroes. This twist provides good sense of uncertainty of the character’s
actual fate moving forward in the series and good tension now among the
character traveling on the time machine.
In consequence to having so much time devoted to the main
protagonists the viewer is left with nothing more than about two and a half minutes’
maximum of screen time of the actual big-bad of the series just from the
opening montage. We’re often left with supporting characters instilling fear of
the dangers this man is capable of without seeing him bring any actual threats
into action for the viewer to see.
Final Verdict:
Overall Legends of Tomorrow is the honest middle ground of
elements from both Arrow and The Flash. Excellent blend of personalities among
the cast that a casual TV viewer should find entertaining without knowledge of
these characters’ comic backgrounds. The main villain must be fleshed out as
the story progresses but in conclusion this is an exciting sci-fi, action,
adventure that has done enough to earned a live tune in on The CW the next few
Thursdays.
Score: 8/10
Written by: Stephen Fowler
Twitter: @intjWallyWest
