I'll just wait until you're done snickering, shall I?
Okay then.
It's possible that you remember this post from a while back, in which I picked apart the squandered potential of Daybreakers. Just in case you don't feel like going back to it, here the part of that entry which is especially pertinent to tonight's entry:
"...I fully expect a thoroughly bad movie with Legion. I mean, come on- end of the world, holed up in a diner, fallen angel Michael defending the soon-to-be-mother-of-the-next-messiah from other, non-fallen angels (sent by a pissed-off God, no less) with a sword and automatic guns. Eff. Yeah. Everything about that movie sounds terrible (well, minus Paul Bettany, whom I sort of adore a lot) but that's part of the appeal for me- there's no pretending to be anything more than what it is- a movie about kicking ass. In a diner. Against freaky-deaky angels who remind us that they're just demons who haven't fallen yet. Brilliant. Social commentary on our squandering of natural resources? Um, no. Decapitation? Probably yes."
Gentle readers, I should not have hoped for decapitation; I did not receive it. And as bad a movie as I expected Legion would be- it was even worse. I'm talking it was so bad that Nathan and I agreed that Paul Bettany must have lost a friggin' bet to have been a part of it. So bad. So very, very bad.
The moment I realized that the movie had lost me was a small one- probably not even noticed by your average movie-goer. And you'll laugh because it's such a nit-picky thing, but to me it was important. There is a scene in which a (yet to be revealed as possessed) woman orders a rare steak. When they bring it out to her the damn thing is raw. Not rare- raw. And that just... it just pissed me off, readers. A rare steak is one that has been seared on the outside and left red on the inside. It is not effin' raw. So in that moment, when they felt the need to point out how creepy this woman is because she's eating her meat raw, I knew that they weren't even going to try.
The other thing that I kept exclaiming about? (Because oh yes- we MST'd the crap out of this film right from the opening credits) Surprisingly fragile angels. You'd think that celestial beings would be impervious to bullets. Or, at the very least that they couldn't be killed by them. Well you'd be wrong. Also you'd be wrong if you thought you couldn't choke an angel to death. So very wrong. As such, I kept remarking about the serious design flaws in the angels (and by the way apparently Heaven is a space ship? In the sky? Who knew!) because man- God was apparently not thinking things through on that one!
Okay, enough blasphemy for tonight. All I can say is, I hope someone with a shred of non-suckiness can maybe take the bare bones of Legion and turn it into something worth reading (perhaps a comic? Eh?). As with Daybreakers, the concept was pretty great (especially had they chosen not to take themselves so damn seriously) but the execution? ::shudder::
Also? Check out the finished (and highly adorable if I do say so myself) product:
Adorable!
I will have to remember not to check out that movie, though I don't think it was even on my list of movies to check. Thanks for taking the bullet on that one. As for the bib, too cute. Keep up the great work.
ReplyDeleteIronically, I swing the other way. I will now add that movie (partially because I just forgot about it). Couple of things. Not disagreeing with you. I'm sure the movie is attrocious.
ReplyDelete1. Raw steak - Full agreement. It's weird to eat a raw steak, but far stranger to order a rare one and get a raw one. Cook should be *ahem* fired.
2. Weak angels - Like ugly elves. Perhaps bullets are instruments of the devil so they can actually hurt an angel. Like the inverse of the golf club in Dogma. Or angels are just weaker in Midgard (mixing "myths," I know). Or possibly we are all just God's pawns and he wanted to see a bad action movie.
Besides if God really wanted to wipe us out, pft...2012. There are better ways to do it than sending foot soldiers to do a slow Terminex routine on us.
Tavish- Yeah, you probably should see it, because you can't really conceive how bad it is until you do (and I know how you love you some bad movies). Let me know your take on it.... Now, to address your points:
ReplyDelete1. Groan.
2. OH EFFIN' A UGLY ELVES! ARGH!!! That still annoys the hell out of me, all these years later... I will grant you the bullets instrument of the devil thing, but would it have killed them to use two lines of exposition to explain that? You know, someone with a brain (oh wait- there's the problem) says, "How is it possible bullets work on angels?" and Michael replies, "Instrument blah blah blah." I will not grant you angels being weaker in Midgard. Makes no sense.
Also, the reason God must Terminex us rather than 2012 us? Because that way the atheists can't blame that shit on anything but He Who Is. I mean, the last time I checked, angry (non-bullet-proof) angels were not a typical weather pattern. Oh man, I think I have tonight's topic...
So, I finally got around to watching this. I did not hate it like you did. Yes, I still took issue with the steak thing. The swarming flies around it also a question mark. No diner would serve that, not even in the apocalypse. I can get past the angel-piercing bullets too. We do seem to be dealing with varying levels of angel in this. Gabriel on par with Sephiroth, Michael at Cloud's level and then a shit ton of NPCs. It's already plagued with the issue of God is trying to exterminate us...not exterminating us with omnipotence...trying to do it with lesser angels. After that gunning down droves of them is a small step down.
ReplyDeleteYes, it suffers from a lot of that kind of nonsense. And, while the moral of the story is right out there on the sleeve and kind of obvious, it still kind of works for me. I like the idea that a semi-fallen angel could restore God's faith in humanity. Sure it's a little contrived, but so's the rest of the movie.
I don't know why Heaven is a space ship. Maybe there was still some room on the schedule for filming in Robot Heaven after Transformers 2 wrapped.
I like Paul Bettany as an action hero a little bit. Also liked Gabriel's trumpet, though not so much Gabriel himself.
My biggest problem with all this is still God basically giving up and throwing an angel infused temper tantrum on earth. And if He really gave up.....why is there a new Messiah at all? The small stuff, like the raw steak, I'll throw towards immature film making. The big stuff I guess I either have to atribute to poor story telling or file under "Moves in mysterious ways."
Whatever the case, I came out more on the positive side of Legion.