Going back to watch "Legend" and well, I don't think it was a good idea

I recall when Legend was released when I was a child. It was during the time when I think almost anyone with the appropriate budget wanted to get involved in the genre because it was seeing some pretty good payouts for a lot of those who were successful. Even kind of bad fantasy movies were seeing good returns so when Ridley Scott of Alien fame decided to get involved with a fantasy film with then up-and-comer Tom Cruise, it seemed like a slam dunk.

Yet the film performed miserably at the box office and lost a ton of money.

I saw it on VHS at home as a kid and recalled absolutely loving it so when my girl told me that she had not only not seen it but had never even heard of it, it seemed like a pretty safe bet that this was going to rock.

Man was I ever wrong. Seeing this through adult eyes kind of showed me why it was that this film performed so poorly during its initial run in theaters and it doesn't take a long time to come to this conclusion watching it through my nearly 5 decade-old eyes.

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This film had a budget of $25 million, which is peanuts by today's budgetary standards but was absolutely huge in 1985. Considering the fact that CGI barely existed and when it did exist it looked pretty damn fake, it is easy to understand how it may have cost so much to make this and honestly, I'm surprised they were able to do it for so little money.

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Green screen technology didn't exist so all of these sets that take place in some sort of enchanted forest had to be built on a soundstage or altered in actual nature. I am quite sure this was a very time-consuming procedure. I can appreciate that as can I appreciate the very convincing costumes that would have all involved puppetry and very elaborate body suits.

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The director having a background in Alien is quite noticeable here as well as it is with several of the other characters and the one that people probably remember the best is the brief but outstanding appearance by Tim Curry as "Darkness" who is a pretty gruesome portrayal of ultimate evil.

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We were commenting while we watched this last night that they must have had a million dollar glitter budget because almost everything is covered in glitter from start to finish. I can only imagine how annoying that might have been for cast members.

The scenery is outstanding, the character design was wonderful, the puppets and costumes were 2nd-to-none, the music is outstanding.... but yet this is an awful film... why? Well because the story is nonsensical and the progression doesn't make any sense. Various characters just seem to fall into whatever situation is necessary for them to be in and there is no real strategy or plan, things just kind of fall where they need to. As a child, none of this mattered, as an adult it is more of an eye-rolling experience than anything else.

Basically, nonsensical princess girl has a wildling forest friend Jack (Tom Cruise) and in an effort to woo her he shows her the unicorns in the forest which are forbidden to touch or approach so obviously she immediately goes and touches them and therefore upsets the entire balance of the world. One unicorn is killed and the other is captured and even though (I think) the baddies could at that point simply immediately kill the other unicorn and accomplish their evil goals they instead opt to go for some unnecessary killing ritual later on in their very easily found and infiltrated stronghold.

Some enemies stand in their way but they are all inept and for the most part, asleep, and even though they are captured (they literally fall into the cells) they immediately get released with the help of a fairy that has the hots for Jack.

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The princess that started all this trouble in the first place is for some reason, wandering the stronghold and is captured and turned by a bizarre dancing something or other than turns her to the dark side in a way and none of this is even remotely explained. She doesn't put up much of a fight and I think this was just a way to put Ferris Bueler's girlfriend into some sort of sexy goth costume.

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Then there is a battle of sorts between "Darkness" and "Jack" and of course the good guys emerge victorious with some sort of elaborate light reflecting something or other that they are able to sort out despite the fact that all of the "team" is presented as being a bunch of bumbling fools for the entire movie up to that point.

It's all very tiresome and I apologized to my girl after the film was over for subjecting her to that.

Maybe this film could have been better had it been more adult if they had pursued an "R" rating but they went for PG instead.

The PG rating was intentionally done perhaps in the hope of getting a large child audience, but that never really materialized either at the time. I can't say for sure why this is. It had already been proven with the success of R-Rated Conan doing very well and PG-Rated Conan flopping so badly that they abandoned the franchise entirely. Why didn't anyone learn from this?

Basically, this movie transfixed me as a child because of what at the time was amazing visuals the likes of which the world hadn't ever really seen. The fact that the story was total nonsense and completely disjointed didn't occur to me at the time. It did last night though.

Should I watch it?

This will upset some fanbois out there but I am going to say that no, no you should not watch this. There is a good reason why it failed in its original release and especially considering the fact that we have much better special effect abilities today a lot of the "wow factor" that one might have had in 1985 will be gone today. I suppose the only real reason to watch this would be to see Tom Cruise when he was at his young peak and get a glimpse into why it was considered that he was one of the best looking people in the world at at the time.

Tom was only 2 years in the limelight at this point in his career and at that time anyway, it was considered that anything that he was in was going to make money. While this film is listed as only losing around $2 million on a $25 million budget, these figures do not factor in the advertising budget and generally speaking this is estimated to double the budget of any film.

It has it's place in history but any praise that you will see for this film is probably around costumes and scenery and that I will admit is good. It's just a shame that such a terribly stupid story was built inside of that.

_{This film can be legally streamed as part of an Amazon Prime membership. It can be rented for a few pesos on just about any of the major streaming services. It is not on Netflix}