Sometimes, a mishmash of religion, myth, and popular culture creates an enchanting alchemy (see Star Wars). Sometimes, you get Legend. Don’t blame the craft. With sets that are on the right side of artifice, cinematography that casts spells, and above all seamlessly surreal makeup design, this fantasy absolutely looks the part. Yet narratively, it’s at once overly explicated and slimly imagined. (There is an opening crawl of text that makes Star Wars’ intro feel like haiku.) Mia Sara stars as Lily, a princess who escapes to the woods to canoodle with a feral boy named Jack, played by Tom Cruise—two years after Risky Business and one year before Top Gun. While frolicking in the forest, they encounter a pair of unicorns; as Lily attempts to touch one, a hiding goblin shoots it, then cuts off its horn to bring back to his master, Darkness, a demon intent on extinguishing all light from the world. It’s something of an Adam and Eve rock video (Tangerine Dream did the score), set in a land that J.R.R. Tolkien forgot. Director Ridley Scott, coming off of Alien and Blade Runner, was then and continues to be dependent on solid material (his filmmaking has more visual than narrative force). That’s not what he has here in William Hjortsberg’s screenplay, a gobbledygook of a fairy tale that not even Tim Curry’s literally towering performance as Darkness (his makeup is the design pinnacle of the film) can overcome.
(8/29/2026)
