I didn’t see another topic here. It’s the latest spinoff of Arrow/Flash (and anyone who has watched those shows this season couldn’t avoid the tie-in).
It’s not a great show, but it’s a lot of fun, even moreso than the Flash.
Highlights so far:
-Leonard Snart being his Snartiest
-They weren’t picked because they’re heroes, they were picked because they were irrelevant to the timeline
-Rory is Time [del]Lord[/del] Master
-Victor Garber meeting his younger pot-smoking self (seriously, I must be getting old because since when do they open display marijuana usage in a primetime network show)
-Heatwave isn’t a total idiot
Lowlights:
-Hawkguy is super dull and now he’s dead. But presumably he’ll come back
-Vandal Savage is also a pretty dull. In a cast of crazy characters, you really need a standout villain. This guy is not that. And there’s no tension because you know they won’t kill him. Now, will he stay the villain forever, or will they eventually stop him only to discover they’ve made the future even worse?
It’s cheesy as hell, but my ten-year-old self would have loved it. They’ve bitten off a HUGE amount of material with the dozen or so main characters all needing air time, and it remains to be seen if they’ll manage to keep all the balls in the air, but the pilot was pretty fun. Killing off one of them was probably the smartest thing they could have done, frankly, with the cast being so overstuffed.
It’s fun. I have been enjoying it. I especially enjoyed the pilot as I just blindly went into it with out having any idea what it was. So it was a pleasant surprise seeing all the side characters appear on screen from the other shows that I enjoy.
I’m enjoying the hell out of this first class dairy product, but the casting for Vandal Savage is killing me. Vandal Savage is supposed to be a literal caveman. I don’t mind too much that they moved his origin story up by about six thousand years, but did they have to change him into this sniveling little Eurotrash stalker?
I like that Rip Hunter was lying through his teeth when he called the motley band that he assembled “legends”. They’re really the B-team, the second stringers, the people that history wouldn’t notice their absence. Then, after Rip admitted the truth to them, on their first real mission out, they proceed to demonstrate exactly why they’re not the Justice League by making things even worse than before.
Best dialogue: Stein: So, obviously, we wouldn’t want my former self tempted by a sexy assassin from the future. Sarah: Awww, you think I’m sex– Stein: Do not finish that sentence.
I am enjoying this. I agree with the above, it is now nice that they aren’t particularly good at being heroes, basically “stumbling towards destiny,” but it we have to watch petty squabbling, and them getting their butts kicked each week, it’s going to get old fast.
It’s interesting in that the heroes aren’t always that competent. They don’t really have solid plans and frequently run into complications.
Snart and Heat Wave like that they can “legally” commit crimes, but don’t really care about saving the future. White Canary has to fulfill a killing lust and isn’t really concerned with how she does it. The Hawk people have a personal vendetta against Savage which Rip hopes to use to his advantage, but so far it’s not working so well for them. They do have safety nets in that they’ll eventually be reincarnated, but they don’t really learn from the experience. Atom is hindered by his shrinking power in that he loses significance to the others. Dr. Stein has too many flaws to be an effective mentor and Firestorm is reluctant to take part in anything.
Rip Hunter is hoping they can do something productive, snarks at them for screwing up, and then drives the time ship to a different temporal location to pre-emptively fix things. I agree that Savage is kind of cheesy and over-the-top, but it’s kid of funny that they constantly get their asses kicked by such a wanker. I’m not sure if a show about super-losers is going to last, but I’ll stick with them in the meantime.
It’s a silly show, still finding its feet, but I’m enjoying it. I was kinda glad Hawkman was killed off, though I don’t know how long that will last. It is fun seeing Rory Williams become a Time Lord himself.
The stuff about destiny is funny. The whole idea is that they can change the future and become legends and save the world from Vandal Savage and that destiny isn’t fixed. But Hawkman keeps (or kept) going on and on about how him and Hawkgirl are destined to be together. And then there was the poem that’s about how they’ll love each other forever. So I don’t know if that’s supposed to show that he’s annoying, or if it’s just weird writing.
The fight scenes have been pretty good. Some of the CGI with the Atom flying around isn’t perfect, but overall I’m impressed.
Rip Hunter convincing them all that they were legends at first, and then them being upset that he lied and they were actually unimportant was weird. Some of them have kept low profiles because they are criminals. But Professor Stein and Ray Palmer are arguably already pretty high profile. I’m not sure if Stein is a famous scientist or just prominent in the city and among nerds like Barry Allen and Cisco. But Ray Palmer is a young hot tech billionaire who apparently died in a mysterious explosion. That’s a story that will be remembered, although not as a hero as he would maybe like.
I agree on that being the best exchange. Sara Lance is my favorite character so far, although Snart is a close second.
There have only been two episodes so far. I agree that they need to start working together more, but it would seem wrong if they became a well-functioning team too quickly.
Kind of enjoying it, even though it’s really not very good. But there’s always hope it’ll improve.
I agree that the huge battle scene was impressive. Wonder how many we’ll see on a TV budget.
I don’t watch the other DC TV shows, so I’m not clear on which one’s Captain Cold and which one’s … uhh … Captain Hot? (I don’t remember the character being in the comics), but I totally love Wentworth Miller’s work, especially the way he talks.
It finally dawned on me during episode 3 that the show will always be set in the past. Interesting.
I’m also not clear on the revised Hawk mythology. Thanagar is out. OK, fine. So they’re always reincarnated, as in born a baby? And the one left alive has to try to locate them somehow among 7 billion other people and then, as broomstick said, wait for them to grow up? So how the hell did they end up being roughly the same age when we (i.e., I) met them? Just dumb luck?
Something in the most recent episode that bothered me — it’s probably just a screw-up, but I’m hoping there’s an in-universe explanation.
Rory slices Savage’s throat open. Savage says, basically, I will heal and then I will find you and kill you. Rory and the others go back to the ship, leaving Savage’s body there so it could heal.
Why didn’t they bring it with them and vaporize it? And if vaporizing isn’t a solution (as I assume it isn’t), at least they could keep re-killing him until they figure out a way to shoot him in the Sun or something. Leaving the body where it was made absolutely no sense.
Miller is Captain Cold; you might remember Heat Wave from the comics, where he was brainier and rocked an off-white costume. (Seriously, who does that?)
Why do you think this? Rip Hunter is from the year 2166. Even if he limits himself to his own past, there’s still 150 years of our future to work with.
In The Flash/Arrow crossover where Vandal Savage was introduced, they defeated the villain by turning him into a literal pile of smoking ash. He still came back. The stated in-universe explanation is that he can reincarnate from a single cell. They’d have to go back and clean up every drop of blood, every hair, every speck of dust shed from his skin.