“DC’s Legends of Tomorrow” stole the audience’s attention with their split two-hour premiere on Jan. 21 and Jan. 28.
By the year 2166, the immortal Vandal Savage (played by Casper Crump) has lain waste to the DC universe. Rip Hunter (played by Arthur Darville), time travels back to 2016 to gather his own make-shift team in order to stop the destruction in the future.
With his heartbreaking backstory and stolen time machine, Rip Hunter is the DC’s Doctor without the fez.
However, to depart from Hunter’s blatant parallel of an origin story, his make-shift team was just that: makeshift.
Hunter’s decision to travel back in time to collect left over characters from “Arrow” and “The Flash” created more conflict between the team than with Savage. While using characters already established in their respected series theoretically allowed the real plot to begin, the tag team duo that blew things up, the two anti-heroic thieves, the resurrected assassin, and the 4,000-year-old couple in dire need of couple’s therapy, distracted from the main plot.
From disrupting a character’s death to meeting a character’s past self, the two-hour special was littered with questionable plot devices that ignored and violated the eye catching feature of the show: time travel.
Now, that’s not to say “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow” didn’t have good directing and playful banter.
In some cases, the bitter tension and reservations characters had for each other caused clever banter.
Despite the unneeded attention to their bad teamwork, the fight scenes exhibited intricacy and clearly took advantage of individual character’s fighting styles. By panning over the large fight scenes, it created a kaleidoscope of action.
Perhaps it wasn’t enough to save the generous two-hour event, but the clever banter and other areas of writing foreshadowed development for future episodes.
Despite the rocky beginning, CW struck again by increasing its DC franchise.
By incorporating popular secondary characters from CW’s other DC adaptions with the intriguing concept of time travel, “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow” left viewers wanting more.
[star rating=”3.5″]
