Legend (1985)
A fairy tale whose scenery has no intention of standing quietly in the background.
Directed by Ridley Scott · 113 minutes
Source-based draft ready for editorial review. Critical readings, verdict and advisories are proposed.
Version note: 113 minutes provisionally identifies the director’s cut. The US theatrical and European theatrical editions are shorter and use different editing/music arrangements; do not merge their assessments.
Some fantasy films use a forest as a place between plot points. Legend makes the forest a reason to have a plot at all. Ridley Scott's fairy-tale world wants to be looked at: its textures, creatures and extravagant darkness are the principal attraction.
That creates an honest critical problem. A beautiful world can justify an evening, but it still matters whether the people moving through it give the images a dramatic life.
Before you watch
Contains frightening fantasy creatures, threat to a young woman and violence involving a unicorn. The BBFC record supports the general guidance for its classified version. The discussion below identifies the director’s-cut ending separately from the theatrical endings.
The setup
Jack (Tom Cruise) and Lili (Mia Sara) become involved in a struggle against Darkness (Tim Curry), whose plans threaten the natural world. The film draws on fairy-tale figures and symbolic choices rather than an extensively explained political or magical system.
This draft provisionally uses the 113-minute director's cut. Arrow's edition documents the different versions and the competing Jerry Goldsmith and Tangerine Dream scores. The assessment here concerns that director’s-cut presentation; it should be reconsidered if the owner’s viewing was of a theatrical cut.
A world made for temptation
The central visual idea is transformation. Environments can express innocence, corruption and desire, giving the film a language more immediate than explanation. The design should be discussed as dramatic material rather than filed under impressive scenery and left there.
Curry's Darkness is also an argument for theatrical scale. A fairy-tale antagonist can be fascinating because the performance embraces an impossible physical presence and speaks from within it. That force makes the temptation more compelling than the simpler exchanges around it. The danger is imbalance: the villain’s physical and vocal authority can make the nominal hero feel like a visitor to somebody else’s more interesting film.
Lili's part in the story needs particular attention. Innocence can be an active capacity to choose or a decorative quality that other people defend. Lili’s curiosity makes her vulnerable, but the later deception gives her an active response to what she learns. Jack supplies determination and practical rescue; the simpler characterisation leaves the environments and Darkness doing more of the imaginative work.
The cut distinction is essential. Editing and music alter the duration of enchantment, the clarity of relationships and the distance between a tale being told and a mood being sustained. The director’s cut uses Goldsmith’s score and allows more room for the fairy-tale relationships. Its longer enchantment is an attraction for viewers absorbed by the world, while making the thinness of some exchanges more conspicuous for anyone left outside it.
Corny DNA
Lavish artifice and outsized evil can support a camp reading, while the film's commitment may also create genuine wonder. Those responses can coexist. They do not settle whether a particular version's narrative holds together.
Verdict
Watch with caveats — proposed. Most promising for viewers who value elaborate fantasy design and a theatrical villain, and who accept fairy-tale simplicity. This recommendation concerns the 113-minute director’s cut. The visual imagination and Curry’s presence are stronger attractions than the simple hero’s journey.
Spoilers from here
Reveal the plot details and ending
Lili acts inside the temptation
Lili appears to accept Darkness's offer while demanding the role of killing the remaining unicorn. At the ritual she frees it instead. Jack and his companions use reflected sunlight against Darkness, and the severed horn is restored to the stallion. The plot and version account corroborates these actions.
The reversal gives Lili something more useful than preserved innocence. She can recognise a threat and work within its expectations long enough to frustrate it. Jack's rescue matters, but the resolution is not accomplished by keeping her untouched and waiting for him.
The director's cut does not send them away together
In the 113-minute director's cut used for this draft, Lili returns to her own responsibilities after affirming their attachment. The theatrical endings send the pair away together; the US version also adds Darkness's laughing image. Those are distinct conclusions and should not be merged.
The director's-cut ending allows the fairy tale to restore its world without pretending the lovers' ordinary lives have become identical. That modest separation is more interesting than the broad opposition between light and darkness, although the film's strongest pleasures remain visual. Its richly imagined surfaces can make the simpler dramatic exchanges feel thin by comparison.