82. Legend

Ridley Scott, 1985

Well, here it is, another of Scott’s three great movies before he decided to start making films about the real world. Unlike Alien or Blade Runner, though, Legend is not a science fiction tale, but a fairy tale. Starting from scratch, Scott crafts a fairy tale so convincing and full of wonderful images and wicked characters, that one would swear the story was told to little German children every night for decades. The story is a simple one of good versus evil. Tom Cruise is Jack, actually turning in a nice performance as a largely innocent and often bewildered sort of nature boy. Jack is in love with the beautiful Princess Lily. Lily is played by Mia Sara, who would later play Ferris Bueller’s girlfriend, in her first screen role. Like Cruise, Sara offers a performance full of innocence, also bringing a striking and pure beauty to the part. She is simply stunning here, an enchanting presence who would be easy to fall in love with. There is a striking scene in the second act in which Sara, in a magnificent black dress, dances by herself through a huge dining room. Here, her innocence combines with a sexuality that is made all the more potent by the fact that it is simply part of her character. She is being seduced by evil here, as I will explain in a moment, and this one small moment wonderfully reinforces the true and absolute innocence that is at the base of the character and at the base of the performance. We realize and appreciate what she is by glimpsing what she is not. Anyway, in hopes of winning Lily’s love, Jack shows her a pair of unicorns. Enter Darkness, the absolute personification of fantasy evil. He is a massive, red devil, with huge black horns, a truly menacing figure. Best of all, he is played by Tim Curry. Curry, I believe, is one of the great under appreciated film villains. Curry brings a palpable menace to the character, making him also a silver tongued seducer, a being capable of unspeakable cruelty with a voice to convince man or woman to do even worse and to think of it as a good idea. Part of what I love about Curry is how big an actor he is. His every performance is so much bigger than anything in life. He is the perfect Shakespearian mad man, reveling at all times both in his evilness and in his penchant to chew the scenery. I don’t mean that as an insult either. Especially with a character like Darkness, who is so far beyond anything in real life, I think it adds weight and true overpowering menace to play that character so far to the hilt, to make the performance as big as the character himself. Well, Darkness hatches a plan to kill the last unicorn and bring night to the world, all the while, seducing Mia Sara to evil.

Legend captures the images of the fairy tale perfectly on the screen. The make up effects, whether for Darkness or the helper demons or even Jack’s allies, is fantastic. The real visual high point, though, is the set. Scott and his crew built an entire, functioning forest in a sound stage in England. The forest is bright and huge and full of life. It looks unbelievably real, while at the same time capturing all the truly unreal qualities of the forests of our collective imaginations. It just looks wonderful. Legend was recently rereleased on DVD in a special edition restoring the original Jerry Goldsmith score, which is phenomenal and much more fitting than the Tangerine Dream score, and almost twenty-five minutes of running time. This is the edition to see. As I said, the score is much more fitting to the overall fairy tale nature of the film and the extra time lets the story breathe more and adds a little to the tale. Further, there is a second disc, which, along with several other features, includes the shorter, theatrical cut of the film, with the Tangerine Dream score. While I prefer the longer cut, it is nice to have the original as well, especially since I am sure there are people who would prefer it. I really wish all director’s cuts and special editions would feature the original cut as a supplement, especially on films like Star Wars, in which the differences between the cuts are so divisive. Luckily, the DVD of Legend gets it right, allowing us a look at two tellings of a great screen fairy tale.