Legend

Legend is a strange, fever dream of a movie. This was Tom Cruise’s starring role in between Risky Business and Top Gun and the fact that most people have never heard of it says a lot. I remember watching the beginning of this film on television when I was a teenager and thinking that it was a truly bizarre piece of filmmaking. Having never actually finished it back then, largely out of boredom, I wanted to give it another try as an adult. Many of the things I remember finding strange or unlikable about Legend before, like the slow pace and ethereal tone, are things I have developed an appreciation for as a more mature, adult viewer. That, combined with the purported improvements to the cohesiveness of the storytelling provided by Ridley Scott’s director’s cut, made me interested in revisiting this oft-forgotten fantasy epic.

Like with Blade Runner’s director’s cut, Ridley Scott taking back control of the final edit fixed many of the obvious weaknesses of the theatrical cut. Unlike with Blade Runner, it did not turn this flop into a bone fide cult classic. The film is still messy. The vast majority of the things I didn’t like about the movie as a teen I still don’t like about it now.

The pacing is still slow and the story is hard to get excited about. Tom Cruise plays a pretty-faced forest child who must save his lady love, played by Mia Sara, from evil incarnate, the living embodiment of darkness, played by Tim Curry. Along the way, he encounters a handful of similarly tropey fairy tale cliches, from the mysterious stranger who speaks in riddles to the swamp monster who is defeated with trickery. Playing to the conventions isn’t always a bad thing. Star Wars follows the structure of the hero’s journey pretty closely and it is one of the best science fiction movies ever. Legend, however, does little to elevate its material beyond the formula which makes it feel more like a paint-by-numbers project than a skillful homage.

The acting is all turned up to eleven (per Spinal Tap), which leads to some interesting, but not necessarily complimentary, results. Cruise takes the earnest but inexperienced adventurer, a la Luke in Star Wars, and plays it with a combination of wide eyed bewilderment and slack jawed confusion. Mia Sara takes the out of touch princess and exaggerates her into a kind of wispy airhead. Tim Curry dons the iconography of the literal devil and chews the scenery with every line of deep, villainous intent. I don’t even blame the actors. This style was so consistent across the entire cast that it surely must have been a directorial choice. However, I think it was a poor one. It takes the cliche nature of the fairy tale story and only makes it more apparent through the exaggeration.

The other, very undeniable directorial choice is the visual language of the film. Legend is shot in this very dream-like way. The story does not employ a dream or dreaming as a major plot element, but the dreamy aesthetic is utilized all the same. This is what I remembered from TV as its ethereal quality. There is heavy use of light diffusion that gives many of its scenes an almost glowing effect. There are constantly things floating in the air, seemingly in every scene, which contributes to the diffusion. This includes things like pollen, dust, snowflakes, bubbles, and even glitter. Speaking of glitter, there is glitter everywhere in this movie. There is glitter on props, mixed into the paint for sets, and even in the actor’s makeup. There is so much glitter. It’s all so… over the top and weird. Hence my opening description: it’s not just dreamlike, but a strange fever dream.

Crazily enough, I’m hesitant to say Legend is a bad movie. It’s certainly not a good movie. But it’s also not really a movie in my taste. In a word, this movie is extremely camp. For people who really like that, who will appreciate Mia Sara randomly breaking into song, Tom Cruise being pantless most of the movie, and the freight train’s worth of glitter that must have gone into making this thing, the antics of this movie are a blessing rather than a detraction. A less quotable, but better made, Rocky Horror Picture Show of sorts, where more than half the fun is how ridiculous and camp it all is. That isn’t really my thing, but if it’s yours, this movie might be worth a watch. Even if it isn’t very good.

Would Recommend: If you like camp fantasy.

Would Not Recommend: If you don’t like camp anything.