As I understand it, and I clearly understand very little, the early 1980's were a hotbed of fantasy film making. After John Milus (director of Red Dawn) helmed Conan the Barbarian to box office success every sword and sandal property that could be had for cheap was optioned by Hollywood underdogs like Canon films, Roger Corman and the like. Where Conan the Barbarian was based on a much beloved character with 50 years of history behind him, the copycat films were based on hastily written scripts churned out by Dungeons and Dragons fanboys hoping to get their big break. Within a very few years the video store was full of classics like Deathstalker, Ator, Blademaster, Yor: Hunter from the future (who was from the distant past) and so on. Terrible films all and because they were terrible the American viewing public shunned them en masse. They also shunned them after masse but before Sunday night football which is as it should be.
This put many an un-kissed basement dweller in a tough position. For once they were seeing reasonable facsimiles of their favorite stories, but the stories were badly told and laughably constructed. What could have been a golden age of fantasy story telling on the big screen was turning into an exasperating exercise in VHS fastforwarding to get to the best parts of movies starring that guy that was in the remake of Tarzan with Bo Derek. But soft, a champion was rising to give us a new story with a real budget and known actors. Ridley Scott, director of Alien, Bladerunner and, one day, G.I. Jane was making a film called Legend. It had swords. It had sandals. It had Mia Sara. What more could one ask for? For what more could one ask?
Here's the problem with Legend: It doesn't make a whole lot of sense even for a fantasy film. The plot, regardless of which version you watch, is basically this: There is a mean guy/goat named Darkness who lives in a big scary tree with goblins and fat guys and living furniture. He's really evil and he'd like to be evil full time, but that pesky sun keeps him from getting out and about to spread ruin and strife as is his wont. You see, the sun is his destroyer. We know this because he keeps telling everyone who will listen. This is like Superman telling every villain that his weakness is kryptonite (or Richard Lester - BA-ZING!).
So, Darkness has a plan to get rid of the sun. He's going to kill himself the only two unicorns in the world. This act, apparently, will keep the sun from rising and allow him to walk the Earth unfettered. No fettering for him, not after his plan is enacted. To this end he hires a goblin named Blix to go kill him some unicorns and bring back the horns as proof. I guess the complete lack of sunlight would not be proof enough, gotta have those horns.
Off Blix goes to slay the magical beasts and he takes two half-wits with him because that is just what you do with the lord of evil asks you to fundamentally change the course of the entire world for him. When it comes to important tasks Idiots = Success. But where to find a unicorn? The fabled beasts don't like goblins. If only there was someone pure of heart and intact of hymen who could approach these majestic critters and hold them still long enough to allow the goblins to slaughter them. If only...
Enter Mia Sara. Mia plays Lilly, a princess. We know she's a princess because she sneaks into the home of a local couple and steals their food. If that wasn't enough to communicate her pedigree the peasant wife keeps calling her Princess Lilly, so there. When she's not stealing eats from poor people she's running around the woods with Tom Cruise who is dressed like a homeless Robin Hood. He can talk to the animals and climb trees and swim. This qualifies him as a forest boy and Lilly loves her some forest boy.
In order to impress his lady fair, Forest boy take her to see the unicorns who are so special and so sacred that they are never to be touched. This being the case, it is only reasonable that Forest boy should take his under-aged girlfriend with boundary issues to see them. And what is the first thing she does? Touches the unicorn. It's a good thing too because Blix has been following her. I don't know why he follows her. He's got no reason to follow her, but he was so he's ready when it's time for the unicorn killing. With a quick shot of poisoned dart the beast goes down.
Anyway, the mutant horse is dead, the mate is captured and taken to Darkness even though he totally told them to kill both the unicorns. Lilly is captured as well and it is up to Forest boy, a couple of dwarves and a half-naked 12 year old to save the day. The long and short of it is that they infiltrate the giant tree by walking up to it, finding a entrance, and going inside. They meet up with one of the half-wits from Blix's party who tried to cross Darkness and was presumably destroyed but it turns out not to be so. Then they do the only thing they can do, they split up. Forest boy and 12-year-old nudist find Lilly just as she is being seduced by Darkness into being all evil and wearing a black dress (the harlot) and they hatch a plan. Darkness keeps telling folks about the sun being his arch-nemesis so they decide to use plates as mirrors to reflect sunlight throughout the tree, direct it down all the corridors with perfect precision and blast Darkness with a big old laser beam of sunny goodness. This is exactly what they do and it works exactly as described. Darkness is destroyed and Lilly was just pretending to be evil and is soon back in her white dress again. The band returns to the forest where the unicorns are restored, somehow, and all is right with the world. Except everyone is still stupid.
Obviously this script could have used some work. Questions are raised at every turn and then never answered. Why doesn't Darkness just kill the unicorns himself? Is he trapped in the tree? Clearly the unicorns vex him but just not enough to actually do anything about it himself. Why does Blix need Mia Sara to touch the unicorn before he shoots it. Those horses are on screen for a good five minutes only yards away from the goblins before they interact with anyone. Blix holds his shot for no reason. Also, why does Forest boy take Lilly to see the unicorns if they aren't to be disturbed? What did he expect his 15 year old girlfriend to do when she saw fantasy creatures at play in the forest? I could go on asking questions about practically every scene, but I won't. What would be the point? See, another question.
When the film was released in the US it was cut by about 30 minutes and the original soundtrack by Jerry Goldsmith was replaced by a New Wave soundtrack courtesy of Tangerine Dream. That's a weird choice to make for a fantasy film right up there with Lady Hawk's rock and roll incidental music. However, I submit that the Tangerine Dream score, once you get used to it, is the superior score. In the Director's cut, and European release, the Goldsmith score was intact but it's very blah as soundtracks go. For all the action and strange imagery the Goldsmith tracks just sort of hang in the air doing nothing. They don't give you an auditory description of the scene, they don't punctuate the action or stir feelings in you the way a great soundtrack should. The music isn't poorly written or produced, it just doesn't seem to fit what's on screen.
Not only does the US release of Legend get the better music, it gets a trim job that cuts out most of the long listless shots of nothing. There are pieces and parts missing from the plot because of these cuts, but that doesn't matter as the intact plot doesn't make sense either. The result is a tighter more quickly paced film that doesn't make you feel like you're watching a fantasy version of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
That's the major problem with the Director's cut: it drags. We don't need extra shots of Forest boy and under-age girl sitting around the forest. We don't need another iteration of Darkness telling people about his weakness. We don't need extra shots of empty corridors inside the big evil tree. What would have been nice is some sort of backstory telling us who in the hell these people are. Now, LOTR was way too long. All three movies could have been trimmed down considerably and so could the novels for that matter, but part of that length was taken up explaining where folks were, why they were there and what they hoped to achieve. Legend doesn't do that. We are never told anything about any of the characters besides their names. We know from inference that Gumps, Dwarves and fairies are commonplace because nobody freaks out when they see them. We know that goblins are evil because of the dialog that says "I'm so evil because I'm a goblin!" We also know that unicorns control the rotation of the Earth and the weather. And there are great opportunities to tell a better story, give it some meat, some foundation. When Forest boy goes to get his armor and weapons he is led into a cave under the forest where several suits of bejeweled armor lay untouched. No reason is given for this. He accepts the armor without question and carries on to the evil tree to fetch his woman...well...little girl friend. Oh, and about that tree. Clearly there is a ginormous evil tree full of evil not too far from Lilly's kingdom. It appears to be right down the road from the forest but it is never mentioned or named specifically, so we assume folks just don't mind it very much. Maybe it's invisible unless someone steals your under-aged girlfriend. In the same way that killing a unicorn arrests the Earth's movement in the heavens so too does kidnapping a child bride enable your enemies to see your secret hideout. You'd think that Darkness would think of this eventuality and post some guards, but he doesn't. And how did he become Lord Darkness to begin with? Is it a hereditary title? Was he duly elected by his peer man/goats? Do they maybe take turns? This week Lord Darkness is Tim Curry, next week: the guy that played Riff Raff, the week after: Susan Sarandon. Barry Bostwick could maybe be an evil maintenance guy that never gets things as clean as he could given the time and resources at his disposal. But, such is the nature of evil.
Digression being the better part of...something, I find myself at the summation. Neither the Director's cut or the US cut of the film are particularly good. But, the Director's cut is too long, has an uninteresting musical score and adds nothing to the story despite 30 extra minutes to work with. I had always heard from fans of Legend that a Director's cut would be a Holy Grail of moviedom. More story, more FX, better music; but it was not to be. What those fans fail to realize is that Legend is a cult classic in this country because of the goofy score, because of the shorter runtime. Sit through the director's cut just once and you'll understand. Just as Robert Wise cut extraneous footage from Star Trek: The Motion Picture and improved the final product, Ridley Scott has infused his already nonsensical story with more nonsense and removed the parts that made it bearable. Ergo, to wit, therefor, Legend: the Director's cut is stupid.
