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CW Orders Flash-Arrow Spinoff DC’s Legends of Tomorrow
Kyle’s Take
It’s official, The CW produce and air The Flash-Arrow spinoff that’s been setting the rumor mill ablaze. You didn’t have too much in the way of facts prior to now because The CW was on the fence about the series – who are they kidding, we knew they were going forward with the series – but now that CW has confirmed the series and named it Legends of Tomorrow, they’ve leaked plenty of information about the upcoming series.
The tentative tagline for the show reads When heroes alone are not enough, the world needs legends. The tagline reveals that we won’t just have heroes in this new team; some villains will grace this team. The title, Legends of Tomorrow, hints at a time-travel, but we now know that our time-jumping hero will be Rip Hunter, played by Arthur Darvill. Hunter has seen the future and will try to prevent something big from happening but he’ll need the help of The Legends to stand a chance of defeating this unstoppable threat.
And here’s our team of Legends:
Arthur Darvill as Rip Hunter
Rip Hunter isn’t this time traveler’s real name because as Rip says, “As a time traveler, I can’t let anyone know what my own past is. What’s to stop my enemies from suffocating me in my crib? Or doing the same to my father?”
We may not know what Rip’s real name is but with the help of his Time-Sphere, he’s had a lot of time traveling exploits. We also know that Rip’s part of the Carter family and that Booster Gold is his father. Don’t get any ideas, dastardly villains, or our next Legend will shrink you down to size.
Brandon Routh as Atom
Starling City isn’t big enough for Atom and the Arrow, so Ray Palmer’s taking his talents to South—actually, I don’t know where this show will be set. If we assume that Starling is in Wisconsin (check out our DC Comics Cities Map for more details), Ray should be headed south and my best guess is that the Legends of Tomorrow could have some scenes in Pittsburgh, PA.
Rip Hunter has spent some of his formative years in the Steel City and so did the next member of The Legends.
Victor Garber and Robbie Amell as Firestorm
Two heads are better than one or so this nuclear man on fire would have you believe. Well, Firestorm’s two heads do come in handy and we get some great dialogue that’s more of a monologue. Would that make it a monialogue?
Anyway, Firestorm may be the most overpowered member on The Legends. Here’s a quick breakdown of the powers he’s had over the years:
Density Control: He can manipulate the density of solids, liquids, and gases—from elements as light as hydrogen to ones as heavy as uranium (you know, because he’s a nuclear man).
Eidetic Memory: Anyone tied to the Firestorm Matrix can access the memories of anyone else (human or otherwise) who has ever been fused to the Matrix, and they can do so with moment to moment clarity. Thanks, but I’m good with not having the memory of another man’s birth.
Energy Absorption: Whether it’s solar, nuclear, petroleum, or even life-force, Firestorm and sap energy from just about any source. How does he stay so thin?
Energy Projection: Nuclear blasts, plain and simple.
Enhanced Vision: Anything you can see, Superman, I can see, too—only I have Thermal Vision.
Flight: Yeah, we know he can fly.
Molecular Reconstruction: How else could he reform his body after he implodes in a ball of nuclear fire?
Phasing: Wow, you couldn’t let Shadowcat (Kitty Pryde) from the Marvel Universe have one cool thing about her. You just had to be able to pass through solid objects, too.
Psychic Link: Eat your heart out, Grodd.
Regeneration: That’s another neat trick. He can already reconstruct his molecules, so why not?
Self-Sustenance: Firestorm can survive in space and doesn’t have to eat.
Superhuman Durability: He can survive bullets and stab wounds.
Superhuman Strength: But can he challenge Supes to an arm wrestling match?
Fortunately, The Flash weakened Firestorm or else The Legends would be playing cheerleader and we’d have no use for one of the next members on our list.
Wentworth Miller as Captain Cold and Dominic Purcell as Heat Wave
Why have one Rogue when you can get two? Miller and Purcell reprise their roles as Captain Cold and Heat Wave in The Legends. I’m not entirely sure why the team needs Heat Wave but the more the merrier. And there may be another addition to The Legends that might make some Arrow merrier.
Caity Lotz as Black Canary?
All we know is that Caity Lotz will be in The Legends. We don’t know if she’s only in flashbacks, portrays a different character, or if she returns as an alternate reality Sarah Lance/Black Canary or if she’s Sarah post-Lazarus Pit. We’ll have to see how The Legends plays her character but we do know the identity of the other female member of the team.
Ciara Renee as Hawkgirl
Hawkgirl was the new hero I most wanted to see in The Legends but this may not be the hard but clean nosed heroine from the mid-80’s to 2011. This Hawkgirl’s alter ego is Kendra Saunders and she might share the New 52’s Hawkgirl origin as a reformed treasure hunter/grave robber. Either way, I can’t wait to see Hawkgirl get some air time and she’s by no means the most mysterious member of The Legends.
Franz Drameh as Jay Jackson
First thing’s first: there is no Jay Jackson in the DC Universe.
He could be a new character or his name could be used as subterfuge for the true identity of the character Drameh’s portraying. This wouldn’t be the first time that DC has introduced a new character in a TV series (Harley Quinn, anyone?) but it also wouldn’t be the first time that DC changed a character’s alter ego name so that fans would keep guessing who the character was over the course of a summer.
Action Jackson – please don’t let that be his character name if he’s a new character – could be anything from Karate Kid, to a reimagining of Kid Flash, to even Cyborg from The Titans. That last one might be interesting. TNT has a Titans TV show planned for later this year or next year but they don’t have Cyborg in the line-up. The CW could be changing Cyborg’s alter ego name (from Victor Stone) to Jay Jackson so that TNT could use Stone as Cyborg in a future season of Titans. It wouldn’t be the first time for that either but I don’t know what the CW has planned. All I know is that I’m intrigued by The Legends’ large cast.
iZombie versus Pushing Daisies
iZombie is essentially Pushing Daisies—with a splash of zombie—for a younger demographic. I didn’t include this comparison in my review of iZombie’s pilot (if you want to read my review, here’s a link) because I didn’t want to marry the two shows to each other. I loved Pushing Daisies, so I’m leery to compare it to iZombie. But there are some lessons iZombie can learn from Pushing Daises.
We’ll get to these lessons in a bit, but first, let’s see how these two shows stack against each other.
By the numbers, iZombie resembles Pushing Daisies, but it doesn’t have the same whimsy. The zombie motif adds a dark streak. iZombie could overcome this by adding flare to the special effects and art direction. That’s not a knock on iZombie necessarily. The effects and art direction for Pushing Daisies was top-notch, Emmy worthy. But with its smaller budget, I’m not sure if iZombie can ever compete with Pushing Daisies in this regard, so they could make the subject matter even lighter and still, getting too light-hearted could be an issue.
Pushing Daisies balanced the goofy humor, mystery elements, and romance pretty well—the first season. It got a little too weird for its own good in season two and lost a lot of viewers. Likewise, iZombie’s pilot balanced its elements well. But will iZombie fall prey to the same weird just for weird’s sake? There are a couple of factors that might help.
iZombie grounds itself in police work more than Pushing Daisies ever did—that’s because Pushing Daisies was a fantasy—and you don’t have to explain a zombie as much as a magical pie maker, so that’s another obstacle averted. Then, you have a change in point of view. In Pushing Daisies, you gain distance from the dead because the pie maker brought people back to life: third person reanimated dead. In iZombie, Liv is a zombie and she experiences unliving first-hand: first person reanimated dead. I like the point of view shift. It helps to separate the two shows for me, gives a fresh perspective on the undead, and could keep the show afloat.
There’s plenty of room for both shows and for iZombie in the growing number of zombie media. We’ll have to watch tonight’s episode to find out whether or not iZombie’s elements fall out of balance and even later to see if it can match or beat Pushing Daisies’ number of twenty-two, total episodes. I’d love it if they brought back or rebooted Pushing Daisies.
Actor, Director and “Star Trek” Icon Leonard Nimoy Dies at Age 83
We don’t usually write tributes to those we lost on this page, but we don’t usually lose an acting icon either. Leonard Nimoy might’ve tried to separate himself from his most famous character in his 1975 autobiography I Am Not Spock, but that was illogical as the pointy-eared, emotionless, half-human Spock, and the progressive world without prejudice of Star Trek in which Spock inhabited, shaped Nimoy of as a person.
Nimoy—who passed away on February 27, 2015 at the age of 83 from the end-stage of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease—later wrote a follow-up autobiography I Am Spock that showed him embracing his iconic character. To many Sci-Fi fans he was Spock, and he was the only Star Trek original cast member J. J. Abrams insisted on returning in his Star Trek reboot. But Nimoy was so much more than Spock.
The Boston born Nimoy started as a child actor and worked steadily on television before and after Star Trek, appearing on disparate shows such as Sea Hunt, Gunsmoke, and Mission: Impossible. In the ‘80s, he established himself as a film director, overseeing two back-to-back Star Trek installments (The Search for Spock and The Voyage Home) before directing the 1987 hit, Three Men and a Baby.
Once Nimoy got comfortable behind a camera, he shifted to photography, snapping pictures that hung in galleries and collecting some of his works in the book The Full Body Project, which he collected photos he shot of nude plus-sized and obese women. He later said that he wanted people to accept their bodies and show the bodies that people lived in, not the body types that fashion magazines sell.
That kind of sentiment speaks to how Nimoy’s involvement in a socially conscious series like Star Trek shaped his worldview. Through most of his work, Nimoy endeavored to shape the world into a brighter future.
DC Comics Universe Cities
Arrow frequently relocates Starling City.
The first season placed Starling near Seattle because the series is filmed in Vancouver and the two cities have similar terrain. The second season flashed geographic coordinates that depicted Starling City’s airport in northern Wisconsin, somewhere north of Green Bay. Then during a Flash/Arrow crossover in the third season, they said that The Flash ran from Central City to Starling City and that Barry traveled 600 miles to do so. Even if Starling City exists in northern Wisconsin, Barry would still have had to travel more than 600 miles, so there may be a third location for Starling City. But the comics place Green Arrow in Star City and that’s in northern California.
As far as the Golden Age Flash’s home of Keystone City is concerned, it’s located across the Missouri River (in Kansas) and serves as a twin city for Central City, MO. I didn’t include it on the map because that would’ve looked crowded.
Metropolis used to be located near New York City but it got moved to Illinois. Many believe that it’s located in Chicago, and that may be, but DC Comics made a public announcement that the physical Metropolis is the official home of Superman. Perhaps I should’ve put a second Superman logo in northern Illinois to muddy up things further.
At any rate, let’s see how these locations compare in terms of population.
I guess Smallville’s population is no more than a drop in the bucket when compared with Metropolis. Ba-dum-bump.
Note: Gotham City’s population refers to post-No-Man’s Land arc.
Worker Placement Board Game Timeline Quiz
Spider-Man Joins the Marvel Cinematic Universe
Marvel fans around the world rejoice. The Spider-Man embargo in Marvel movies has ended. You might just see him in an upcoming Avengers movie and more as Spider-Man joins the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).
With this new deal the new Spider-Man will appear in a Marvel film from Marvel’s Cinematic Universe. Sony Pictures will then release the next installment of its $4 billion Spider-Man franchise on July 28, 2017 in a film that will be co-produced by Kevin Feige and his team at Marvel, and May Pascal who launched Sony’s Spider-Man franchise 13 years ago. Sony and Marvel will collaborate on a new creative direction for the web slinger. Sony will continue to finance, distribute and own the Spider-Man films. They’ll also have final say with creative control of the character. We’ll have to see what this news will hold, but things are headed in the right direction.
This announcement follows a decade of speculation of will they or won’t they add Spider-Man to the MCU. Today, it’s official. Spidey’s back, but what does that mean for movie goers?
1) Sorry, Andrew Garfield is out as Spidey.
2) Future Spidey–the ones beyond the Sinister Six, perhaps–should get pushed six-ten months into the future. We told you that last week’s graphic was subject to change.
But, hey. We can finally see Spidey on the big screen with Cap, Iron Man, Hulk, and Thor, so we can wade through a short transition period. Welcome back, Spidey.
Here’s a video depicting the legalize that has kept Spidey from Marvel for over a decade.
Upcoming Super Movies
We found the following picture of upcoming comic book movies and decided to post it.
Original source is Comics Alliance
This pic doesn’t have all the geeky goods–it only covers upcoming comic book based movies–and all the dates can change from now and when the movies get released, but let’s do some quick takes for the films that have closer release dates.
Avengers: Age of Ultron
2015, the year of Marvel movies, kicks things off right with the anticipated sequel to 2012’s Avengers. The gang returns with some additions: Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Warmachine (making his Avengers film debut), Vision, and the titular character Ultron.
Hopefully, Age of Ultron won’t follow the story arc of the abysmal comic of the same name. It doesn’t appear that it will. I’m cool with changing Ultron’s creator from Pym to Stark–Marvel hasn’t introduced Pym yet–but I’m not sure how Ultron ties into the growing Infinity War. I trust Marvel’s creative team, and I don’t plan to leave the theater until after the tail end of the credits roll.
Check out the extended trailer:
Ant-Man
We get introduced to Hank Pym a couple of months after Age of Ultron when he gets his own movie Ant-Man. Michael Douglas plays Pym, but he’s not the one jumping around in tights. Paul Rudd fills Pym’s thief turned protegé Scott Lang, and Lang’s the one riding a flying ant.
To the best of our knowledge, this movie follows the comic. Lang is the second man to don the Ant-Man mantle. He was a thief, who mended his ways after his daughter becomes ill, and Jim will love the fact that Hayley Atwell–a.k.a Hotwell–might find her way on the screen as Agent Carter.
Here’s the trailer. Enjoy.
Fantastic Four
Fox comes out with their attempt to hold onto the Fantastic Four franchise–so long as they keep making movies, Marvel can’t get the rights. But the Fantastic Four reboot has gained a lot of buzz. This shows that people want to see a good Fantastic Four movie.
It remains to be seen if this will be a good FF movie. I hope it is. I’m alright with recasting Johnny as an African-American. So long as the cast has chemistry, I don’t care if Johnny and Sue are twin brother and sister or if one of them is adopted. But Dr. Doom as an IT specialist? What? Tell me that’s an April Fool’s joke in February. I can’t see Doom saying, “Do as I command, Richards, or I won’t give you tech support.”
Check out the Fantastic Four trailer:
Deadpool
Not much is known about this film yet except that Ryan Reynolds will reprise his role as Wade Wilson/Deadpool. Thank goodness. I think I join most fans by saying that I liked him more as Deadpool than as Green Lantern. We don’t have a trailer yet, but the internet leaked a test video of the movie some time ago.
Here’s that leaked movie-test video:
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice
Batman and Superman have no reason to fight each other–unless we’re talking mind control for one of them. Sure, they’re opposite sides of a coin, but they’re part of the same coin. So I hope the title misleads us, but they’ll have to show at least one scene of the two of them fighting. I’d be down for a bout similar to Thor and Iron Man’s in Avengers.
Thankfully, we’ll see Wonder Woman in this film. You can’t have a not-so-subtle reference to the Justice League in your title without having at least one other member of the JL. I know that the idea of this film turns Jim’s stomach, but I’ll withhold judgment. For now.
Sadly, there isn’t an official or even a trusted unofficial video for Dawn of Justice…yet.
Captain America: Civil War
We get another Cap movie? Score. The movie’s based on the Civil War storyline? Meh.
If you don’t know the Civil War storyline, look no further than The Incredibles. The government institutes a super-power registry with which to monitor superheroes. That doesn’t sound so bad, but Cap is anti-registry, while Stark’s pro-registry. On what alternate universe is Stark pro-registry? He defies the government from confiscating his suits of armor in the second Iron Man movie. Again, I trust the Marvel team, and Captain America: Winter Soldier was arguably the best superhero movie of all time.
Still too soon for a Captain America: Civil War trailer, and the announcement video from Marvel’s media day doesn’t want to load into this post. Sorry for the inconvenience.
X-Men: Apocalypse
Who was that young, thin, blue-skinned dude at the end of X-Men: Days of Future Past? That’d be Apocalypse in ancient Egypt, and he’s getting his own movie treatment in spring 2016.
Fox plans to bring back the core cast from Days of Future Past and add Apocalypse (obviously) and Channing Tatum as Gambit. We’ll have to see about Tatum. We’ll also see Jean Grey, Cyclops, and Storm recast as well as the return of Rose Byrne as MacTaggert (X-Men: First Class). Not much is known about the script, yet. And there’s no word as to whether or not Nightcrawler will make another appearance. Director Bryan Singer has said he wants to include him.
Just in case you missed it, here’s the closing credits scene in Days of Future Past:
Suicide Squad
Incarcerated anti-heroes with explosive devices attached to their spinal cords go on “suicide” missions.
We know the cast–check our previous JK Casting Couch post–and we know that The Joker factors into the script. Again, I’ll withhold judgment, but I can’t see The Joker as either a member of the Suicide Squad or as the Suicide Squad’s foil. I will say that the Suicide Squad is my most anticipated DC Comics movie in the next year and a half.
Sorry. We’ll have to wait for a trailer for this movie, too.
Beyond the summer of 2016
We’ll stop here for now. The more we travel beyond the summer of 2016, the less we know about the projects, but we’ve got a lot to look forward to in the coming months.
JK Casting Couch: Marvel’s Defenders
Marvel’s Defenders is a group of individuals – usually labeled as outsiders – that happen to team up together to fight a common foe. This “non-team” often battles mystic and supernatural enemies, which makes sense given that Doctor Strange started the group and the first incarnation featured the Hulk and Namor.
In 2013, Marvel began development on a set of Defenders series for an online streaming video company, and Netflix quickly bought the rights. Starting in the 2015 we’ll see individual series for each of these characters, culminating in a Defenders mini-series. Some roles have been cast. Others have yet to have their actors revealed. JK Casting Couch will give you the info on these characters and the actors who’ll play them or at least give you some rumors of actors who could play them.
Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones
What do you do when you crush on both Peter Parker and Johnny Storm in high school, and then get superpowers through a freak accident? Fight crime of course. Jessica Jones does just that for a while as a superhero, but no amount of name changes or powers prepared her for the big time. Now she fights crime as a super-powered private eye.
Krysten Ritter has been confirmed as Jessica Jones, and she’s shown her ability to switch from comedy to drama. She played the tragic Jane Margolis on AMC’s Breaking Bad and the titular character Chloe in Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23. With Jones, Ritter should have plenty of opportunities to explore a deep, troubled character.
Unknown as Iron Fist
A nine-year-old Daniel Rand (aka Iron Fist) loses his mother and father on an expedition to the mystical city of K’un-L’un. A team of archers happen upon Rand and take him to Yu-Ti, the ruler of K’un-L’un. Under Yu-Ti’s tutelage Rand learns martial arts and becomes the heroic Iron Fist.
There’s no official word on who will play Iron Fist, and there have been several actors rumored or suggested for the role: Jensen Ackles (Supernatural), Garrett Hedlund (Tron: Legacy), Justin Hartley (Smallville’s Green Arrow), Mike Vogel (Angel from X-Men: The Last Stand), and Liam Hemsworth (The Hunger Games).
I’m sure any one of these actors could bring life to the role, but Hemsworth is the most intriguing from this list of names. His brother is already Thor, and it’d be nice to see the two of them share screen time.
But personally, I would prefer a complete or virtual unknown, and if certain conditions are met, I’d love to see an Asian-American cast in this role. The only problem with an Asian-American as Iron Fist is that Asians are type-cast as either the martial artist or the sexy nerd. Take Lucy Liu for example. She gets close to escaping these stereotypes but she tends to get bounced back and forth from one of these two clichés.
The best case scenario for an Asian-American actor playing Iron Fist is the hope of a love story (or some other deeper story thread) within an action show, similar to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Iron Fist has a wealth of such stories, but we’ll have to see if the focus is on telling a great story or mindless action. My gut tells me a great story given the two creative parties involved.
Mike Colter as Luke Cage
Born and raised on the streets of Harlem, Carl Lucas runs with a bad crowd. He gets framed for drug possession and goes to prison. After some jailbreak attempts, Lucas gets transferred to a max-security prison, where a research scientist turns Lucas into a guinea pig by dosing him with a new Super-Soldier serum. Lucas escapes and becomes Luke Cage: Hero for Hire.
Mike Colter is a veteran actor who brings credibility to the role. He’s been in Oscar darlings like Million Dollar Baby and Zero Dark Thirty, but Cage isn’t his first foray into comic books. He had a role in 2012’s Men in Black 3 as the Colonel. Colter certainly looks the part, too. I have a hard time hearing him deliver the line, “Sweet Christmas.”
Charlie Cox as Daredevil
Matt Murdock gets blinded by a radioactive substance at a young age. He may not have his sight, but his other senses get blown to epic proportions. If that weren’t enough, gangsters off Matt’s father Jack Murdock because Jack won’t throw a prize-fight. Furious, Matt Murdock throws on a yellow and dark red costume, which later became an all red costume, and battles crime as Daredevil.
Charlie Cox may not have as many acting credits as the other confirmed roles, but his stint as Owen Sleater on HBO’s Boardwalk Empire catapults him into Daredevil’s jumpsuit. My only concern is that he’s an English actor and has either played in period pieces or with an English or Irish accent in most of his roles. There will come a time where Daredevil/Matt Murdock will yell and that’s when your natural accent can poke through your vocal armor.
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