LegenDs of tomorroW Season One
Arrow spin-off misses target
released 29 aUGUsT 2016 | 12 | Blu-ray/dVd Cast Victor Garber, Brandon routh, arthur darvill, Caity lotz
Legends Of Tomorrow is either the third or fourth Arrowverse show, depending on how far you’re willing to retcon Supergirl into the equation. It’s also the least successful. Seems you can have too much of a good thing.
This is the Arrowverse’s “team show”, mixing Justice League with Doctor Who – it even stars Arthur “Rory” Darvill in a Captain Jack costume, with a razor-sharp parting that can slice through time... Well, no – actually he commands a time ship, the Waverider, to do that. But the parting is awesome.
He collects together a ragtag team of B-list DC heroes and antiheroes – Firestorm, Hawkman, Hawkgirl, Captain Cold, Heatwave, the Atom, White Canary – all united in a reluctance ever to use their naff codenames. They nip back and forth in time, trying to prevent a stunningly awful immortal panto villain called Vandal Savage from creating a future apocalypse, in a series of stories that treat temporal logic with a contempt that would leave even Steven Moffat in tears.
There’s some impressive action, and seeing superheroes in the Wild West or World War II is undeniably fun. But the characters are painfully thin, despite valiant efforts from some of the cast. The humour often feels forced and the emotional beats – which The Flash and Arrow often create with a deft economy – fall flat. It feels like the fast, fun and palatably schmaltzy formula so cleverly employed in the other Arrowverse shows is stretched too thin across such a vast and constantly bickering cast.
Extras Around 50 minutes of stuff: the show’s 2015 Comic-Con panel; a behind-the-scenes featurette on Jonah Hex episode “The Magnificent Eight”; a tour of the Waverider set; a featurette on the different eras the show travels to; a gag reel. Dave Golder
The episode “Night Of The Hawk” – a ’50s B-movie homage – is directed by Joe “Gremlins” Dante.