DC's Legends of Tomorrow: The Complete Fifth Season - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

DC's Legends of Tomorrow: The Complete Fifth Season



Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:

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Movie
Last, but not least, for the Arrowverse shows, we get the laid back weed smoking little brother to the more serious shows. Yeah, I know, it’s not a perfect analogy considering the first 2 seasons, but DC’s Legends of Tomorrow tends to play things off the cuff and just have fun with the concept of superheroes. Past the first couple of seasons it has taken to winking and nodding at the audience, and just playing around with being time travelers. Even though they’ve surpassed every other show in terms of being “Team whatever” in sheer quantity of characters, it has forgone the much of the teen angst that plagues the other Arrowverse shows, and instead just…..well...has fun with it. Recent seasons have been much more fun than the shaky first couple of seasons, and I’ve come to the point where out of all the Arrowverse shows, I ENJOY this one the most (even though it technically isn’t the best of the universe).

Welp, after the mess ups from last season (seriously, Legends of Tomorrow is nothing if the crew doesn’t seriously mess SOMETHING in the timeline up as their fixing their past mistakes in every season), Captain Lance (Caity Lotz) and the crew is recovering from one of their own being wiped from the timelines COMPLETELY. The time bureau has been shut down permanently, and outside of helping Oliver Queen and the other superheroes in fighting off the Monitor in the Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover, they’re back to jumping through time, singing dancing and bumbling their way through fixing more temporal issues. This time Astra (goody, she’s still messing things up) has unleashed a bevy of infamous villain souls on the world, and it’s up to the Legends to get them back where they belong.

Naturally the show spins off into the several sub plots, with John Constantine (Matt Ryan, who’s right at home here after his own show was canceled) trying to undue his mistake that put Astra in the underworld to begin with. Unfortunately for him that means teaming up with an alternate version of Zari (this whole plot point of Zari was one of the shows bungles for sure. She was such an epic character last season, to be replaced by an alternate universe “social influence” air head variant that was just grating) to get hold of the Loom, a gigantic destiny loom that could be used to bring back people from the dead. To make it even MORE complicated, it’s revealed that one of the Legends is actually the goddess Clotho, who ran the loom for millenia, and just so happens to be the shapeshifter Charlie (who took the visual form of Amaya so that actress Maisie Richardson-Sellers could continue to be on the show), and her goddess sisters are actually coming for the loom as well. Except they don’t have as noble intentions, and are more concerned with re-writing the world with their vision than raising a few dead friends from purgatory.

Despite starting on a high note with the first episode being the Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover (one of the best crossovers the Arrowverse has ever seen), the show suffers a bit from all of the world “blending/conjoining” that went on with that little adventure. Some characters are completely gone from history, and others are added or changed just a bit. It’s a bit of a strange vibe with characters not being themselves (so to speak) and hampers the show. The biggest of these problems is Zari (Tala Ashe) as she went from being an A-list character to a D list character in the blind of an eye. Instead of the strong and self reliant Zari that we got to know last year, we have a whiny social media influence that is more of an airhead than anything. They added in a brother/sister dynamic to the show, but that particular story line was a bit boring and bland, and I would have MUCH preferred to have more with Constantine (who absolutely steals the show). Steel and The Atom are reduced mostly to bit comedic characters, while Constantine gobbles up the scenery (and the Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover even nets a HILARIOUS cameo by Lucifer Morningstar from Lucifer to verbally jab with John just a tad). The show ends on a rather high note for the legends, buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut also finishes off the last few seconds with another big time “uh-oh” that will overlap into the next season (this time it’s just a single character gone missing).




Rating:

Not Rated by the MPAA




Video:

The tradition continues with Legends giving us a stellar Blu-ray presentation, spread across 3 discs for the 15 episodes (and the 4th disc being the same Crisis on Infinite Earths disc that is found in all of the Arrowverse season boxsets this year) and the results are typically satisfying. DC's Legends of Tomorrow benefits from not being drowned in shadows like the other shows tend to be, and instead gets a lot more bright and cheery daylight sequences to really bolster the enjoyment. Colors are bright and shiny, and I think that the CGI for the show has actually improved over the years. Clarity is just as sharp as previous years, showing off great detail except for some of the dreamier looking past timeline shots (such as the French party, it has a slightly intentional gauzy look to it). Blacks are deep and inky, and I really didn't notice any banding this time. Typical great quality for the high rollers of the WB Blu-ray sets.







Audio:

As with all of the Arrowverse shows in recent years, all of the non English language tracks are not included, leaving us with the main 5.1 DTS-HD MA track. As usual, it sports the same high quality action sound, with great vocals, lots of bass, and plenty of surround usage. The waverider makes for some of the heavier and more bassy moments, but there's plenty of action in the show to add some booms and roars (my favorite episode being where they went to 1990s Hong Kong and duke it out with full on John Woo slow motion effects). Surrounds are always active with SOMETHING happening, and the dialog is never imbalanced with the action. Simply put, stellar sound mixing (as usual) and an all around great mix.






Extras:

• Deleted Scenes
• DC's Legends of Tomorrow Season 5 Post Production Theater (featurette)
• Gag Reel
• Crisis on Infinite Earths Disc
-- Crisis Past and Present: Kevin Conroy Bat Legend
-- Crisis on Infinite Earths: The Architects Return
-- Crisis Past and Present – Superman vs. Superman
-- Characters in Crisis: Pariah
-- Crisis Management
-- Character in Crisis: The Anti-Monitor

Final Score: ​

I really like DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. They don’t try to be anything but goofy fun, and have laid down the aspirations of being a super serious part of the Arrowverse years ago. Mick Rory sadly hasn’t been able to live up to the one liners from season 1 (losing Captain Cold was a huge blow to his dynamic, as he and Cap Cold fed off each sooooo well), but the addition of Constantine REALLY boosted the show where it counted. Without him it can get a bit TOO campy, and why not add a little mysticism to the show instead of stodgy sci-fi time traveling. Anyways, this season suffers a bit with some character changes, but still manages to be a fun bit of escapism while still being within the over arching Arrowverse. Cheesy, fun, and just plain goofy, season 5 continues being a great watch.



Technical Specifications:

Starring: Brandon Routh, Katy Lotz, Franz Drameh, Nick Zano, Maisie Richardson-Sellers, Dominic Purcell,
Created by: Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim, Phil Klemmer
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 AVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH, Italian
Studio: Warner Brothers
Rated: NR
Runtime: 636 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: Own on Blu-ray and DVD 09/22/2020

Recommendation: Fun Watch

 

[tripplej]

Thanks for the review. Never caught this one.. Still on the fence on this one thou..