(1985) 3 Jeremy Wheeler Ridley Scott's dark fairy tale Legend is a gorgeous exercise in fantasy storytelling. With the help of FX master Rob Bottin (Total Recall, The Thing), Scott created an unforgettable palette of imagery that will no doubt live on with audiences for years to come. While the story he brought to life admittedly isn't the meatiest, one has to remember that neither are fairy tales in general. It's basically a classic good vs. evil tale popping with lush eye candy from beginning to end. As far as the cast goes, it's Tim Curry's show all the way as the horned and hoofed Darkness. Aided by Bottin's astounding makeup design, Curry becomes the ultimate vision of evil as he chews up each scene with equal parts nasty glee and venomous seduction. If there's any stumble in the acting department, it goes to lead wimp Tom Cruise. His scrawny frame and puny line deliveries made it tough for audiences to swallow him as the hero of the piece. In contrast, pre-Ferris Bueller Mia Sara radiates enough warmth and beauty as Lili that it's easy to understand Curry's urges toward her. Beyond the leads, the rest of the film is littered with other great character actors, including Billy Barty of Time Bandits fame and Joe Dante favorite Robert Picardo, delivering the brief, but deliciously nasty bog witch, Meg Mucklebones. With gorgeous lighting, set design, and costumes filling each frame, Legend is a sight to behold -- a true fairy tale come to life. Though technically brilliant, the production was plagued with such infamous setbacks as the fire that severely destroyed a massive forest set beyond repair and of course, the major cuts due to the various test screenings it had to undergo. Not only did Scott cut the film immensely after one of them, but also the original score by Jerry Goldsmith was completely dropped by the studio to make way for a more "popular" score by hot band Tangerine Dream. Thankfully, you can now experience the original cut and Goldsmith's score on Universal's fantastic two-disc special edition DVD released in May 2002.

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Legend on AllMovie

Legend (1985)

Legend

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Watch With Your Kids

genres

Fantasy

sub-genres

category

Feature

directed by

Ridley Scott

countries

UK, USA

release date

April 18, 1986 (USA)

run time

114 min.

produced by

Universal, Legend Productions

released by

Twentieth Century Fox (Universal Pictures in U.S.)

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by Eleanor Mannikka synopsis

This lavishly staged and costumed fantasy is about young Jack (Tom Cruise) and his lady love Princess Lili (Mia Sara), and how Jack battles Darkness (Tim Curry) to save both the Princess and the world. When the peasant Jack takes Princess Lili to see the unicorns, the strongest animals around, he does not know that Darkness, with his cloven hooves, yellow eyes, and red skin plans on using Lili as bait to weaken the unicorns which he does -- and plunge the world into an ice age. Soon after that disaster, Darkness captures Lili and, Jack has to rally his elves and elvettes to rescue her and subdue Darkness at the same time.

characteristics

- High Production Values

- Other Dimensions

- Heroic Mission

- Daring Rescues

- Demon

- Princess

- Good-vs-evil

- Mythical Creatures

- Sorcerer

- Romantic

- Sorceress

- Sorcery

- Unicorn

- Romance

- Elf

related movies

DARING RESCUES