1985 - LEGEND, disappointing fantasy film

It's Tom Cruise in the silliest character role in his career,  a guy called Jack o' the Green. This is a very expensive and beautiful looking film from Ridley Scott a director who is always good for creating pretty pictures in his films at the very least.

Scott apparently had the desire to create an original fantasy film.  To that end the story was filmed on studio sets, in this case the giant 007 soundstage at Pinewood studios in England where he could completly control the atmosphere.  The story has something to do with unicorns keeping the balance between darkness and light or good and evil as it were. Into the forest comes the actor Mia Sara playing a character called Princess Lili, she manages to get one of the unicorns killed and is kidnapped by a demon called the Lord of Darkness.  To the rescue comes Jack o' the Green along with a ragtag band of elfish helpers.  The elfish helpers speak in ridiculously anachronistic dialog and Cruise just looks downright silly jumping and running around in his silly woodsman costume.

 The film has stunning cinematography from Alex Thompson, makeup effects from Rob (The Thing) Bottin and again some very impressive sets.  

 

Universal, the studio that financed the film must have realized they had a real turkey on their hands. They took the film away from Scott and reduced his 114 minute cut to 89 minutes.  In order to make the film feel more contemporary they replaced the Jerry Goldsmith score with one from Tangerine Dream.  All this tinkering was a waste of time, the film was a critical and commercial failure.

I viewed the 114 minute Ridley Scott cut of Legend.  The original film screenplay and story was by William Hjortsberg.