Four words...
Strong characters...weak story
SPOILERS WARNING!!! If you haven't seen the DC Legends of Tomorrow pilot parts 1 and 2, you might want to stop reading.
Ok. Thanks to the CW shows The Flash and Arrow we have a cast of interesting character interpretation for this time traveling super team show. I say interpretations because all of the heroes in the Legends show aren't original, but versions of comic book characters. Unfortunately for the show, it suffers from having so many cool characters that it can't seem to get out of its own way.
The show's premise, time traveling to stop the evil Vandal Savage. Ever since the tv show The Voyagers or the Back to the Future movies, I didn't mind time travel as a backdrop/plot device for a story. Its been done before and it will be done again. Unfortunately the CW has done time travel with The Flash so much that its getting a little old. In fact several members of the team faced Vandal Savage in the series prequel episodes of The Flash and Arrow and were saved due to The Flash traveling back in time. DC Legends of Tomorrow time "expert", Rip Hunter, talks about the ramifications and problems with corrupting the time line...case in point As our team of heroes travels back to the 1970s, Professor Stein almost misses meeting his wife for the first time and thus erasing their marriage. Also a piece of the Atom's suit falls into the hands of Vandal Savage which could've provided him with 2016 tech if he managed to reverse engineer it. Then Rip Hunter proceeds to help his heroes kill Vandal Savage's troopers in an all out but utterly pointless battle at the episode's climax. While admittedly fun to watch, I wonder what effect on the time line their deaths will have...oh its okay though I guess because they're evil. Is the team going to have to have Atom sit out on missions due to how easily his technology fell into the wrong hands and nearly corrupted time? Still, for as easily as they got it back, maybe that's something that will happen every episode.
They figure out a way to kill Vandal Savage, but they don't succeed because Hawkman isn't the one who has to deal the final blow, its Hawkgirl who must do it. Information that while the Hawks didn't know seemed to be clear to Rip Hunter who chose not to tell them until after Hawkman was killed.
Vandal Savage is immortal, but when did he develop the super powers that all the campy slasher film villains have? The disappear without a trace power.
The battle at the climax wasn't the only seemingly pointless battle for our team within both parts of the pilot.
What's even more interesting is that our team fails at every turn. Vandal Savage is one step ahead of them and if that's not enough, our heroes just can't stop messing up. These are the folks who are going to save the world?
Still the show is visually stunning and stimulating to every superhero loving bone I have. I'm really surprised that I found so much fault in the show actually. If I found merit in the Fox Fantastic Four remake it says a lot about DC's Legend of Tomorrow that I had any issues with it.
What did you think of DC Legends of Tomorrow?
No comments:
Post a Comment