“The pendulum swings between Light and Darkness”
– Brandon Mull
The days of fairy tales we were told as children will be brought back to like in this next installation of The Forgotten Classics. The film that I will be referring to is called Legend. Yes, another one word title movie.
This fantasy film from 1985 is about Darkness wanting to make the universe be engulfed in eternal night by destroying the last of the unicorns. Jack and his friends must go out of their way to keep the unicorn safe and keep Princess Lili out of reach of Darkness. I promise you, it is as cheesy as it sounds. Lets just say, someone defiantly cut the cheese with this film. Funny joke, right? That made no sense, but I just really wanted to say someone cut the cheese.
First off, the movie may be cheesy, like really cheesy, but it is actually pretty good. (That is coming from a person that turned off The Notebook because of the beginning movie theater scene. That scene, hurt me a little bit on the inside.)
Back to the topic at hand, Legend has a cast of few stars like Tom Cruise and Tim Curry. I promise you, there is no gun shooting, bomb threats, or a high stake situations that people are use to seeing with Tom Cruise movies. Instead, there is a high level of, dare I say it, romance in the film. I swear I would die if they put any more “with the power of love” lines in to the film. I’m not saying its a bad movie because there are little hearts dancing around the plot the entire time, but it can get old really fast.
To counter act with the love that’s in the air, there is a sense of light and darkness with in the movie. Good thing too, because one of the characters is actually named, ahem, Darkness. But within those elements of light vs. dark, there are the ever living thing called friendship, loyalty, betrayal, and the realization of the placement of darkness in all of us. There are light hearted themes throughout the film along with the heavy themes as well, like in some films you might see in theaters today.
With some recognizable films, they were awarded with some number of a vast variety of awards. (Say that five times fast.) Well, Legend was awarded Grammy Award for Best Music Film for the featured song “Loved by the Sun” by Tangerine Dream. With a smooth and rich sound, its easy to see why they included this song to the film and why it was recognized.
DING DING DING! The time has finally arrived to tell you why this movie was shipped out to sea and never be SEAn again. (I tried to make an obvious pun, but its weird if you can’t hear me say it. It physically pained me to write the incorrect seen. I apologize.) Well, lets start with what I hint out in the title of this little text post. Tom Cruise’s thighs. It seems odd but stay with me guys/gals/ they/them/ whatever pronoun you identify as. If you don’t pay attention to the camera angles they use, you might miss it. It seems that each time that Jack (Cruise) has a scene, it always starts from the back and it seems to focus on the lower half of Jack. It’s weird, watch the movie just so you understand what I am explaining. It is so strange.
There is a bit of an obvious reason for this next bit. The costume design of Darkness. As you can tell by the poster, Darkness is some what like a depiction of Satan/ the Devil. It wasn’t originally was suppose to be that but over the pre-production stage of the film it kind of just became a thing. All things considered, it’s Tom Curry, I don’t know. I just know is that the entire Darkness costume was prosthetic meaning that is all fake. So, I’ll just start us off on a big round of applause for Tom Curry for trooping through production in that and not quitting.
In conclusion, this film is a very cheesy rendition of light against darkness with a swing of romance in the mix as well. Over all, I have come to believe that it is a good film for anyone, but its a strange movie that might have a need for an acquired taste. Its essentially a fairy tail that was a bit heavy on the romantic atmosphere.
“One day you will be old enough to read fairy tales again.” – C.S Lewis
The Forgotten Classics 