Movie review: Legion
Jan. 23rd, 2010 10:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficLet me sum up this movie. You know that moment in the trailer where an ice cream man gets out of his truck, grows out his arms and legs to twice their normal length, roars, then rushes at the camera? Well, in the movie, he gets shot immediately and that’s it.
I think most of the entertainment value in Legion must come from figuring out which it rips off more, Terminator… or Terminator 2. To be sure, there’s some Night of the Living Dead mixed in there, with a budget-conscious apocalypse of survivors under siege by zombies (sorry, possessed people), although it’s hard to tell it apart from the dash of Tremors (although Kevin Bacon never had to sell a line like “When you grow up, being bad ain’t so good”). And if you ever wondered what The Prophecy would be like without Christopher Walken… to put it bluntly, this movie has a lack of shame when it comes to plagiarism that borders on Italian.
Here’s a synopsis for you. A woman is pregnant, and her baby is destined to lead the human race to salvation. Evil forces want to kill her baby before it can be born (and for the savior of all humanity, this is one ugly baby. I’m just saying I’m just saying.). One of them turns traitor and becomes the woman’s superhuman protector. At the end, the woman’s thoughts are narrated in voiceover as she drives off through a sun-drenched desert.
Actually, I think the best way to summarize it would be Terminator without all that pesky feminism.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
meganbmoore, you might wanna skip this one. Imagine if both the Terminator and Kyle Reese were protecting Sarah Connor, then at the end, the Terminator died and Kyle Reese destroyed the bad Terminator because he was the Chosen One, while Sarah Connor stood on top of a rock. That’s pretty much what happens here. Thanks, Legion. After Avatar, I needed something to rekindle my appreciation for James Cameron.
So the twists. In Legion… can I just take a moment to say that the title is undoubtedly referring to the famous “I am legion” demonic possession in the Bible. Why, then, are the possessions entirely angelic in this movie? There’s not one devil in this movie, and that’s the coolest part of Christian mythology, come on!
Anyway, God has gotten sick of humanity… I don’t know why now, since things are pretty good compared to the Holocaust, Genghis Khan, or the 80s, but I guess Jay Leno getting the Tonight Show back was the last straw. So God sends out a vaguely nonspecific apocalypse to wipe us out, which seems to consist of angels possessing “weak-willed” people (for a moment, the movie seems to imply that judgmental people are more vulnerable to possession, which is a lot more interesting than the “everyone but the main characters” possession that the movie ends up going with) and then killing other people while they’re not being easily killed off. Which… you’re God. Send a flood or something. Okay, that’s out of bounds. But push the Earth out of alignment, make the sun go supernova, greenlight a third Fantastic Four movie. You created the universe in seven days, you’d think You could be more efficient. Though perhaps I should give the Big Guy more credit, since he seems to be emptying out everyone’s magazines. There’s a scene where a girl fires two shots before she’s out, and another where Michael grabs a big honking machine gun and fires it for two seconds before dropping it to punch out the Heavenly Host. What would Chuck Heston say?
But anyway, angels killing us all off. I don’t know what angels these are, but they must be really into 28 Days Later, since they just act like fast zombies. Here’s some angelic behavior for you.
1. Acting like a creepy old person, saying “All the babies are going to fucking burn,” and then scurrying around on the wall.
2. Possessing a child, then saying things like “I just want to play with your baby” in a supernaturally deep voice.
3. Dressing up like punk rockers and hassling motorists… in hot rods.
It’s all so… generic. This is the Book of Revelations, right? Where’s the Whore of Babylon and the dragons and the seas of blood? Where are the action sequences that are more than people firing full auto as bullets pile up at their feet and squibs go off? Why are the angels given such short shift when they’re the only thing that sets this movie apart from every other movie ever? Does anyone really care about Willa Holand’s family drama when Michael and Gabriel are disagreeing on their marching orders to killinate mankind?
On a positive note, the sight of Gabriel swooping around with armored wings and a Swiss army knife of a mace leaves no doubt that a Hawkman movie would rock. Maybe we could turn this into a test reel for that. And Paul Bettany as Michael has his fun making sure that whatever his angel nuked Sodom for, it wasn’t for the eponymous act. There’s a scene where he tells Jeep about his faith in humanity embodied in the young man that’ll have you either going “I need an adult!” or “Just kiss already!” depending on your slash goggles, and I’ll be hanged if Michael and Gabriel aren’t making the beast with two backs and four wings.
Oh yes, a character is named Jeep, which makes you wonder if every character is considering a career as a rapper if you, like me, can’t stop hearing “Jeep” as “G”. “There are angels after us, G!” And surely, this guy must’ve listened to Sweet Home Alabama 24/7 in the womb to have a Southern accent as thick (and as fake) as his. But then again, if you name your kid Jeep, I suppose you get what you pay for.
I think most of the entertainment value in Legion must come from figuring out which it rips off more, Terminator… or Terminator 2. To be sure, there’s some Night of the Living Dead mixed in there, with a budget-conscious apocalypse of survivors under siege by zombies (sorry, possessed people), although it’s hard to tell it apart from the dash of Tremors (although Kevin Bacon never had to sell a line like “When you grow up, being bad ain’t so good”). And if you ever wondered what The Prophecy would be like without Christopher Walken… to put it bluntly, this movie has a lack of shame when it comes to plagiarism that borders on Italian.
Here’s a synopsis for you. A woman is pregnant, and her baby is destined to lead the human race to salvation. Evil forces want to kill her baby before it can be born (and for the savior of all humanity, this is one ugly baby. I’m just saying I’m just saying.). One of them turns traitor and becomes the woman’s superhuman protector. At the end, the woman’s thoughts are narrated in voiceover as she drives off through a sun-drenched desert.
Actually, I think the best way to summarize it would be Terminator without all that pesky feminism.
meganbmoore, you might wanna skip this one. Imagine if both the Terminator and Kyle Reese were protecting Sarah Connor, then at the end, the Terminator died and Kyle Reese destroyed the bad Terminator because he was the Chosen One, while Sarah Connor stood on top of a rock. That’s pretty much what happens here. Thanks, Legion. After Avatar, I needed something to rekindle my appreciation for James Cameron.So the twists. In Legion… can I just take a moment to say that the title is undoubtedly referring to the famous “I am legion” demonic possession in the Bible. Why, then, are the possessions entirely angelic in this movie? There’s not one devil in this movie, and that’s the coolest part of Christian mythology, come on!
Anyway, God has gotten sick of humanity… I don’t know why now, since things are pretty good compared to the Holocaust, Genghis Khan, or the 80s, but I guess Jay Leno getting the Tonight Show back was the last straw. So God sends out a vaguely nonspecific apocalypse to wipe us out, which seems to consist of angels possessing “weak-willed” people (for a moment, the movie seems to imply that judgmental people are more vulnerable to possession, which is a lot more interesting than the “everyone but the main characters” possession that the movie ends up going with) and then killing other people while they’re not being easily killed off. Which… you’re God. Send a flood or something. Okay, that’s out of bounds. But push the Earth out of alignment, make the sun go supernova, greenlight a third Fantastic Four movie. You created the universe in seven days, you’d think You could be more efficient. Though perhaps I should give the Big Guy more credit, since he seems to be emptying out everyone’s magazines. There’s a scene where a girl fires two shots before she’s out, and another where Michael grabs a big honking machine gun and fires it for two seconds before dropping it to punch out the Heavenly Host. What would Chuck Heston say?
But anyway, angels killing us all off. I don’t know what angels these are, but they must be really into 28 Days Later, since they just act like fast zombies. Here’s some angelic behavior for you.
1. Acting like a creepy old person, saying “All the babies are going to fucking burn,” and then scurrying around on the wall.
2. Possessing a child, then saying things like “I just want to play with your baby” in a supernaturally deep voice.
3. Dressing up like punk rockers and hassling motorists… in hot rods.
It’s all so… generic. This is the Book of Revelations, right? Where’s the Whore of Babylon and the dragons and the seas of blood? Where are the action sequences that are more than people firing full auto as bullets pile up at their feet and squibs go off? Why are the angels given such short shift when they’re the only thing that sets this movie apart from every other movie ever? Does anyone really care about Willa Holand’s family drama when Michael and Gabriel are disagreeing on their marching orders to killinate mankind?
On a positive note, the sight of Gabriel swooping around with armored wings and a Swiss army knife of a mace leaves no doubt that a Hawkman movie would rock. Maybe we could turn this into a test reel for that. And Paul Bettany as Michael has his fun making sure that whatever his angel nuked Sodom for, it wasn’t for the eponymous act. There’s a scene where he tells Jeep about his faith in humanity embodied in the young man that’ll have you either going “I need an adult!” or “Just kiss already!” depending on your slash goggles, and I’ll be hanged if Michael and Gabriel aren’t making the beast with two backs and four wings.
Oh yes, a character is named Jeep, which makes you wonder if every character is considering a career as a rapper if you, like me, can’t stop hearing “Jeep” as “G”. “There are angels after us, G!” And surely, this guy must’ve listened to Sweet Home Alabama 24/7 in the womb to have a Southern accent as thick (and as fake) as his. But then again, if you name your kid Jeep, I suppose you get what you pay for.
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no subject
Date: 2010-01-24 03:18 am (UTC)I noticed in the trailer when Michael comments on how "obedient" Gabe always was. Then I went "Okay, they're going for the Supernatural fandom? Alrighty then."
no subject
Date: 2010-01-24 03:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-24 05:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-24 08:18 am (UTC)