CineTV Contest: #72 Fav Tom Cruise Film - Legend (1985)

This week on the CineTV.blog, we’re asked “What is our favorite Tom Cruise movie”. I think this came about with the recent release of the latest Mission:Impossible movie, a franchise that lost me on the first installment when they made Mr. Phelps the villain. The upside, there are a lot of other films to choose from, and I thought I would look at one of Cruise’s films that may be overlooked, but that I found to be very good. It is a film I first saw when it was released, while stationed in Spain; my Bonnie Bride and I watched it together in preparation for this post. I’ll try to keep the spoilers to a minimum while enticing you to check this film out.

Legend (1985) poster - IMDB

Legend (1985), directed by Ridley Scott, is a beautifully made dark fantasy that stars Tom Curise as the hero, Jack, and Mia Sara (her first film role) as Princess Lili, along with Tim Curry as the big bad Lord of Darkness. Toss in Billy Barty as Screwball, and some additional lesser known actors rounding out the main cast, and you can expect a good treat. In fact, I think Mia Sara may have turned in a better performance than Cruise, at least in some scenes, especially where she has to play opposite Curry’s Dark Lord. Curry was a marvelous choice as the Big Bad in the film, and unrecognizable under the prosthetic makeup he wore for the film. (More on that later.)

Tom Cruise as Jack - IMDB

As a dark fantasy, Legend has a fairly good story and the driving conflict is Light versus Darkness, with Darkness wanting to destroy Light so that the world would forever be in Darkness. To do that, Darkness must destroy the Unicorns. Although the story is fairly typical, it is the characters that really make this make this stand out.

The backdrop for this fantasy film is two-fold; delightful woodland scenes with all kinds of critters whom Jack is able to communicate with and befriend, teaching Lili how to be friends with the critters as well, and then the ominous and foreboding castle and surrounding lands of The Lord of Darkness. The two sets of scenery are a real contrast and yet compliment each other.

Left - Lili as Light - IMDB - Right - Lili as Darkness - IMDB
Images cropped and merged in PaintShop Pro

We see two sides of Princess Lili, the first, innocent and full of life, the second as the Lord of Darkenss attempts to seduce her to the Darkside of the Force with shiny pretty things. The costume change between light and dark that Lili goes through is part of the ongoing battle between tose two opposing forces. I thought including a side by side shot of Lili’s two looks in the film would prove interesting.

Tim Curry as the Lord of Darkness - IMDB

The prosthetic makeup design for the various peoples populating the film is really darn nice. My first thought was that they were done by Rick Baker, one of the best in the business, especially during the era in which Legend was made. Wrong! I had to check, and the wikipedia entry for Legend has a lot of information on the makeup design, which was done by Rob Bottin, who turned out to have been a protege of Rick Baker’s. Small world. Wikipedia also has a nice article on Bottin as well, and worth checking out.

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Robert Picardo as Meg - IMDB

There is one other surprise in this film that surprised both my Bonnie Bride and I. It is an ealry film in which Robert Picardo plays a small role of some kind of swamp troll (and a female one at that) named Meg, about a decade before he would appear as a regular on Star Trek:Voyager as the holographic doctor. There, I got a Star Trek reference in!

Legendwas still fairly early in Tom Cruise’s film career (it was his 7th film, being the second film he made AFTER the success of Risky Business (1983 and also a darn fun film) and immediately before Top Gun (1986 – and a great film). Of the other five earlier films Cruise made, I have only seen Taps (1981), which was his second film, and starred George C. Scott. On the flip side, Legend stands out as his first journey into Fantasy/Science Fiction/Horror films, and I think it is the only one that Cruise made that is a pure Fantasy film. Being early in his career, his performance is not as good as what we see in Top Gun, however it is still a darn good film, and my Bonnie Bride and I both enjoyed watching it.

For more information on this contest and CineTV, check out - https://peakd.com/hive-121744/@cinetv/cinetv-contest-72-favorite-tom-cruise-movie

Thanks for stopping by.

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