What a fascinating snapshot in movie history. I had never heard of Legend until VERY recently, but it catches people at all sorts of ascending/descending in their careers like Ridley Scott, Tom Cruise, Mia Sara, David Bennett, and Tim Curry. The reason I know that is a bit of research I may or may not have been doing at the boring spots in this film. Thankfully Scott fills this thing with enough either beauty or Grimm fairy tale weirdness that those lull moments don’t last too long.
In a fantasy world lived beautiful Princess Lili (Mia Sara), lover of nature and the forest. She leaves her castle frequently to meet with Jack O’ the Green (Tom Cruise), a forest hermit who teaches her the ways of nature and creatures like unicorns. One day, the Lord of Darkness (Tim Curry) decrees the world must have eternal darkness and sends his goblin minion Blix (Alice Playten) to kill the unicorns to remove all the light from the world. Jack and Lili temporarily stop eternal darkness, but not before a cold winter descends, separating the two and sending Jack on a quest to save the Princess.
At this point in his career, Ridley Scott’s last two movies were Alien and Blade Runner. You know, two of the greatest films ever made. Legend doesn’t hold a candle to either of those, but I’ll say this: it looks pretty great. All the sets are incredible: the early springtime sets feel like wandering through a blissful dream in the most magical place on Earth with allergy ridden dandelions peacefully sprinkling about. Winter is sufficiently dark and scary, sucking the life out of that paradise and inserting fear. As Jack, Lili & co march towards the Lord of Darkness’s castle, the sets and costumes really become more elaborate and complex, filled with trinkets and creatures of all kinds that will equally awe and creep out kids. Scott culminates all of this work by bringing out maybe the best Satan costume I’ve ever seen? Tim Curry spent hours in makeup and had to wear excessive weight on his head to pull it off, but dang if the Rocky Horror god doesn’t pull off the devil with aplomb.
It’s not just Curry either. Every actor here really commits to Legend’s pretty weak script. We’re at the pre-Top Gun point in Tom Cruise’s career where he was working with great directors and trying stuff. His Jack might be the most ill conceived part in Legend, but Tom Cruise’s intensity at least makes the character weird and compelling instead of the movie’s poison pill. Mia Sara channels that Sloane energy that will make here the real girl of everyone’s dreams 2 years later, looking wide eyed and beautiful, and sneakily sexy as the Lord of Darkness temps her. David Bennet of The Tin Drum finds the Grimm sweet spot of being a character the audience cannot decide is good or bad, and supporting characters Billy Barty, Cork Hubbert, and Alice Playten has story arcs and costumes that are even more interesting than the leads. All these committed performances elevate a clearly producer chopped apart story to get the movie to 90 minutes that doesn’t really work into making Legend a movie destined for midnight showings and a nice Tim Curry double feature with Rocky Horror.
You can probably blame The Neverending Story coming out the year before for Legend rushing to the big screen and misfiring. No matter though, because the movie is weirdly influential. I imagine Ridley Scott’s brother Tony came to set one day, and met Tom Cruise, taking him to Miramar. And John Hughes saw Mia Sara and thought, “that’d be my high school dream girl.” And Tommy Lee Wallace saw Tim Curry’s incredible Lord of Darkness, and was like, found my Pennywise for my mini series. So without this weird mid 80s fantasy movie, some of pop cultures best characters would never have existed. So thank you Ridley Scott, for choosing to follow up Blade Runner with, um, this!