Legion (2010)
When the last angel falls, the fight for mankind begins.
I’m merciless with some of the tie-in stuff I do when it comes to logical steps in my thought chains. You see, one of my side gigs - really a hobby with slightly more effort invested - is charity streaming on my YouTube channel raising funds for a little outfit known as Extra Life - effectively raising money for Children’s Hospitals. For this year, I decide the theme was going to be horde games- you know, those cookie cutter games where you fight your way to an objective and then hold out against incredibly odds until you need to go to the next objective? Well, where all this ties in to tonight’s movie is really at the concept of that - get to an objective and survive the waves. Tonight things get slightly biblical at the apt named diner, tonight we are introduced to Legion.
Legion is a bunch of things, but in this case it’s a movie about angels with a slight disagreement about fathers wishes. Down on Earth, it’s apocalypse time because once again Papa all-powerful has had enough of humanity’s crap and pulled the reset plug. Not wanting to repeat himself with water, this time he angles irony into the mix by making the weak get possessed by angels and rise up against the powerful to create a meaty all out extinction event seemingly brought about by our very own hands. Thankfully on our end, one angel decides that although the Omega-man himself wants a certain unborn baby dead with everyone else, what he needs is for that baby to stay alive and relight his hope in humanity of which he has loved so dearly. Thus begins one angels quest to protect a single mom and her not-yet done cooking kiddo from hordes of possessed folks out to enforce their rapture-quotas.
The acting here is good enough. It isn’t particularly noteworthy, even for the particular niche that it’s going after - but it’s far from being horrible at all. There’s a level of devotion to characters, but it’s also a little subdued playing into a very specific role that isn’t ever meant to be a break out thing that lasts forever. The angels are quite deadpan and stoic about their lines, in contrast to the more emotional human sides - although the human sides also get to the point where they can almost be a little too over dramatic, as though we need to make sure everyone has their water works working to emphasis how emotional a scene should be as they remember something from when they were young and bond. It’s a noble attempt at making something that’s not phoned in, and it in turns end up being pretty good for it - but there’s always a but hiding somewhere isn’t there?
The characters themselves don’t have a real place to go in this. With so few people in the diner, you might think most would get a suitable amount of time to really build up, but most will only get a few interactions across the board that attempts to give any kind of connection to them outside of setting something up for later. The single mom is the only one that’s really given an arc of sorts, and really that’s more just a mood change than any super meaningful change on the outlook of her life. Granted, with a movie like this, it’s not necessary to really flesh out characters with huge motivations and deep backstories as from the start you don’t expect most to be around for the entire ride. The only reason it might even be that much of a deal that I feel like pointing it out is because I have in fact seen this done a bit better - but we’ll come back to that later.
Old Gladys needs a Snickers.
It’s a one setting sort of movie. Yes, you start with a little LA and you get outdoors and indoors of the diner, but for the vast majority of the film you’ll be in that diner, feeling all claustrophobic and in danger as intended. It might not explain in detail everything wrong with stuff - but it doesn’t have to when it can just hand wave any little detail to “the apocalypse” as easily as Star Wars hand waves things as “the force.” The movie isn’t hurt by the one location setting though, and like i said it does help to sink in that claustrophobic atmosphere of being under siege and trapped in a tiny building with nowhere to go. Costumes likewise don’t really get to have a ton to work with - in most cases it’s just common believable attire, and there’s no costume changes because people don’t go anywhere. Of course, the exceptions to this are part costume and part special effects - but none of the modern world aspects feel that out of sync with the idea of a rural, middle of nowhere diner on paper.
Of course, we get a few angels in proper angel get up by the end. Now, I don’t mean proper as in biblical eldritch eyeball creatures - but we get wings, we get fancy scripture style tattoos, and we get some armor that all look pretty good. On the possessed side we get a few little monsters that combine effects and costumes, with the most stand out probably being the ice cream man whose obviously way to focused on the “we all scream” part of the ice cream slogan. It’s mostly little thing in regards to that, although there is also a bunch of explosions, some violence, and a bunch of little things like bugs and the likes that all come off looking pretty good. Yes, granny on the ceiling might not be always immersive, but for the most part the effects work only helps the movie, down to the foggy outdoor barrenness of the areas surrounding the diner as lights rumble through the sky and illuminate the sudden gathered horde.
Audio is balanced well. Music doesn’t really stick around with me, outside the dang Ice Cream wagon theme, which is permanently ingrained in the mind of anyone who was a child that had such a thing traveling their road. Now, none of this movie is really badly put together, but I could see some being off put by the religious connotations and straight up bluntness about it - people get uppity when it comes to anything religious, especially if it doesn’t fit their specific reading of it. That said, and as I alluded to earlier, there is a movie that is incredibly similar that I feel does this entire concept better than this that came out earlier than this one - Tales From the Crypt: Demon Knight. It doesn’t quite have the same level of evil outside per say, but with how that movie handles it’s characters and development of them, it feels like this could have been a little better by putting a little extra depth into some of the folks that were sticking around in a manner that’s a little more engaging then just people sitting on a roof talking to each other to kill some time.
Ice cream comes to you.
The movie is a pretty decent one. It’s my second time watching if I’m being honest - so it can’t be that bad if I came back to it right? It has it’s moment of corniness, and you might find yourself alternating around thinking it’s a comedy or a horror movie that has a few too many laughs. I think it achieves what it set out to do, although I also feel like with a little more loving it probably could have done it a little bit more than what it ended up doing. Maybe little baby John “the Baptist” Connor (i know, dumb bible joke, whatever) will have fun if he ever gets a follow up that shows him rising against the evil things that look like humans - but I wouldn’t hold my breath for that one coming back around for a Legion 2.