Legends of Tomorrow's Phil Klemmer On the Unique Way The Writers Break Story
Last season on DC's Legends of Tomorrow, the crew of the Waverider did their best to steer clear [...]
Last season on DC's Legends of Tomorrow, the crew of the Waverider did their best to steer clear of their younger selves, major historical figures, and basically anybody whose knowledge of time travel could change the world.
This season, they kidnapped Einstein and attacked one of Reagan's advisers in the White House. Y'know. Using super-powers and everything.
That's quite a jump, and while it might put a strain on people thinking very hard about the mechanics of the Legends' time travels, the end result has been a show that's felt more light, more fun...and yes, more silly.
"We were very happy with season 1 and the way it resolved but by the time we got there it had gone so deep into mythology and some pretty hardcore sci-fi stuff," Klemmer explained during an interview with ComicBook.com. "We had the Vanishing Point and the Oculus and the Time Masters getting exploded and Vandal Savage and killing him in three times. We just never wanted it to become a head-scratcher and sometimes just by streamlining and trying to remind yourself, 'What do we like? What makes us laugh?' Our characters aren't silly; they aren't incompetent. But they are funny and they are fallible if not prone to f--king up. There's a lot of time travel shows out now if you haven't noticed and there's a temptation to treat history with reverence. Our characters aren't good at sincerity; they're not good at being reverent."
"We just wanted to unleash them on these marquee moments in history and have them rub elbows with George Washington or General Grant or a T-Rex," he added (not explaining how they might rub elbows that are that small and that high up). "We want to make history fun, you know? Looking back on it, pages of history get sort of dry and brittle but when the Legends come into town, you're able to find the absurdity in horrible moments. We have episodes that are literally the most tragic moments in history and we have horrible, horrible things happening, but our Legends bring humanity to it. We're not making fun of the history, but we're trying to enjoy the ride. We knew we wanted to do that even before we started the season. That was the raison d'etre of bringing these Legends back together. That's why we put a historian on the team; that's why we had Nate join the team, that's why we picked up a member of the JSA with Amaya. We knew we wanted this to be, as opposed to the more serialized season one, the more poppy 'What's the time period of the week? Who's the person we get to meet?' The way we look at the show is like when they asked you in school 'who would you like to have lunch with, out of anybody in history?' That's how we break episodes on this show."
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DC's Legends of Tomorrow moves to Tuesday nights at 9 p.m. ET/PT when new episodes resume later this month. "Raiders of the Lost Art" debuts on January 24.
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