Legion (Red Band Trailer) - This looks like a movie the siccness can get behind
- Thread starter ColdBlooded
- Start date
I just got back from seeing Legion.
It was okay. The best parts are the ones you see in the previews (the old lady goin bad, and that Lil' white kid goin bad) Tyrese did a good job in the movie, his character was one that you could relate too. Graphics were cool. When the angel Gabriel shows up that was one of the better parts. This movie reminded me of the zombie genre of movies with a biblical twist. It was good to see Charles Dutton and Dennis Quaid in a new movie.
At a certain point the movie becomes predictable, and starts to drag, but then you wanna sit there and watch just to see if they gonna let you get a look into "Heaven"
This movie is a cross of Dawn of the Dead, The Seventh Sign, with a lil' bit of Terminator sprikled on top.
It was okay. The best parts are the ones you see in the previews (the old lady goin bad, and that Lil' white kid goin bad) Tyrese did a good job in the movie, his character was one that you could relate too. Graphics were cool. When the angel Gabriel shows up that was one of the better parts. This movie reminded me of the zombie genre of movies with a biblical twist. It was good to see Charles Dutton and Dennis Quaid in a new movie.
At a certain point the movie becomes predictable, and starts to drag, but then you wanna sit there and watch just to see if they gonna let you get a look into "Heaven"
This movie is a cross of Dawn of the Dead, The Seventh Sign, with a lil' bit of Terminator sprikled on top.
Damn, this movie must be really bad...
By all appearances, Legion looked like the perfect way to kick off the New Year. The trailers promised a film loaded with gun-toting angels, explosions, old ladies crawling across ceilings, and a plot featuring the chaotic consequences of God’s contempt for his creations. Sony Screen Gems was clearly looking to deliver an epic film, and they did deliver an epic film: an epic FAILURE.
Screen Gems is quickly becoming known as the studio responsible for a number of lackluster thrillers (Prom Night, When a Stranger Calls, Underworld, The Stepfather, The Covenant, Boogeyman, The Grudge, etc.) that are in many cases near-unwatchable. In the end, it all comes down to the fact that they’re greenlighting half-assed scripts unfit for production. It doesn’t matter if you have a huge budget, a visionary director, and good actors if the screenplay completely sucks. It’s infuriating to see so much potential thrown in the trash because the studio refuses to develop a script into something that would result in a film not only worth sitting through, but maybe even watching more than once. I guess that’s not in their business plan?
Legion has a great idea at its core (considering the mythology is a complete rip-off of The Terminator, it better be) that pits God vs. man in an apocalyptic battle that could potentially end the world as we know it. God has lost faith in his creations and has sent his angels down to possess the weak-minded humans and murder the rest (wouldn’t it be easier to just flood the Earth again?). These angels – who look and act human - wear battle armor and have super crazy awesome weapons (like clubs with blades), yet instead of actually using the weapons they simply possess their human victims, who then go on to become frightening creatures with sharp teeth. Yeah, that makes sense. Anyway, the angel Michael (Paul Bettany) hasn’t lost faith. In the opening, he falls to Earth (and cuts his wings off) to defend the humans against God’s army (led by rival angel Gabriel [Kevin Durand]). The big battle will take place at a little diner in the middle of nowhere, where the entire staff has lost their faith – except for Jeep Hanson (Lucas Black), who is the inspiration for Michael’s disobedient behavior. In order to save the world, they must fend off God’s army and protect pregnant waitress Charlie (Adrianne Palicki), whose child will grow up to save the world (because, again, that makes sense).
The main problem with the story is that there is NO mention of the Devil, or Hell for that matter. Also, the idea that God is exterminating man, yet somehow humans are able to defend themselves, makes no sense whatsoever. The concept of Angels possessing humans, and transforming into creatures, also makes no sense. How is this little f*cking kid mankind’s last hope? Never explained. I guess whoever wrote this expects us to have “faith” in their idiotic plot.
But whatever; I expected cheese. I expected a moronic story that I would scoff at on numerous occasions. There was no surprise there. As a film fanatic, what pisses me off is that they failed to even deliver a FUN and ENGAGING film. The screenplay is littered with obvious idiocracies, but that’s not necessarily the problem; the problem is that the screenplay is total sh*t. The movie opens with a quasi-interesting moment where Michael falls to Earth, cuts off his wings and stitches them together, but then we’re quickly taken to the diner where we’re forced to endure a hideously-written conversation between Charlie and Jeep; within 5 minutes I was already daydreaming and thinking about other sh*t going on in my life. I mean, the scene just goes on and on and on and on. The makers of the film might call this character development; I call it character mutilation. This scene, unfortunately, established a pattern for the rest of the movie: instead of seamlessly integrating character development into the action, everything routinely came to a stop so that each and every actor could have their own mother f*cking monologue. I wish I was kidding. After the anti-climactic finale, I leaned over to Chris (Eggertsen) and exclaimed, “Watch, the movie will end with a long, stupid-ass monologue.” And I was right. Not only does the flick end with a voice over monologue, it’s also a complete rip-off of The Terminator, right down to the (ridiculous) badass bandana wrapped around Charlie’s head.
So there you go. The flow of Legion is consistently interrupted by long-winded monologues, and as a consequence the action sequences are few and far between. I’m not exaggerating when I say you’ve already seen most of the movie between the clips, TV spots and trailers. There just isn’t any action beyond a few short standoffs and the scene with the old woman crawling along the ceiling.
Wait, did I mention the screenplay? Oh yeah, I did. I just can’t get over it. First off, I need to know…NEEEEEEDDDDD to know how Tyrese Gibson was able to act in this movie with a straight face. The way his character was written is straight-up racist, and anyone reading this script would had to have done a double or triple-take when taking in his dialogue. Honestly, how could Tyrese not have looked Scott Stewart straight in the eyes and said, “F*ck you man, there is no way in hell I’m reciting these lines!”? I kid you not; there was one moment during a (sigh) monologue by Tyrese’s character where the entire theater erupted into laughter. Said monologue opened with (honest to god) the following line: “When I was a shortie” (surely written in the script as “When I was a shawty”
. That’s just a taste.
All of that out of the way, I will say here that I actually thought Legion was well-directed. The look and style of the film was incredibly polished – huge props to cinematographer John Lindley for his use of the color palette. I can only hope that Stewart’s upcoming Priest delivers on the screenplay front, because as a director he’s quite talented. It’s just a shame that with this film he was working with such a horrid script (for which he can only blame himself).
When all is said and done, Legion is all talk and no “do”, a prude film with some seriously wasted potential. It’s boring, slow-paced and takes itself way too goddamn seriously. Why they couldn’t have simply delivered a fun movie and blasted my eyes with an orgy of bloodied angels, gunfights and ginormous action sequences is beyond me. If God loses faith in mankind, take my word for it: it’ll be because of movies like this.
Score: 2 / 10
Screen Gems is quickly becoming known as the studio responsible for a number of lackluster thrillers (Prom Night, When a Stranger Calls, Underworld, The Stepfather, The Covenant, Boogeyman, The Grudge, etc.) that are in many cases near-unwatchable. In the end, it all comes down to the fact that they’re greenlighting half-assed scripts unfit for production. It doesn’t matter if you have a huge budget, a visionary director, and good actors if the screenplay completely sucks. It’s infuriating to see so much potential thrown in the trash because the studio refuses to develop a script into something that would result in a film not only worth sitting through, but maybe even watching more than once. I guess that’s not in their business plan?
Legion has a great idea at its core (considering the mythology is a complete rip-off of The Terminator, it better be) that pits God vs. man in an apocalyptic battle that could potentially end the world as we know it. God has lost faith in his creations and has sent his angels down to possess the weak-minded humans and murder the rest (wouldn’t it be easier to just flood the Earth again?). These angels – who look and act human - wear battle armor and have super crazy awesome weapons (like clubs with blades), yet instead of actually using the weapons they simply possess their human victims, who then go on to become frightening creatures with sharp teeth. Yeah, that makes sense. Anyway, the angel Michael (Paul Bettany) hasn’t lost faith. In the opening, he falls to Earth (and cuts his wings off) to defend the humans against God’s army (led by rival angel Gabriel [Kevin Durand]). The big battle will take place at a little diner in the middle of nowhere, where the entire staff has lost their faith – except for Jeep Hanson (Lucas Black), who is the inspiration for Michael’s disobedient behavior. In order to save the world, they must fend off God’s army and protect pregnant waitress Charlie (Adrianne Palicki), whose child will grow up to save the world (because, again, that makes sense).
The main problem with the story is that there is NO mention of the Devil, or Hell for that matter. Also, the idea that God is exterminating man, yet somehow humans are able to defend themselves, makes no sense whatsoever. The concept of Angels possessing humans, and transforming into creatures, also makes no sense. How is this little f*cking kid mankind’s last hope? Never explained. I guess whoever wrote this expects us to have “faith” in their idiotic plot.
But whatever; I expected cheese. I expected a moronic story that I would scoff at on numerous occasions. There was no surprise there. As a film fanatic, what pisses me off is that they failed to even deliver a FUN and ENGAGING film. The screenplay is littered with obvious idiocracies, but that’s not necessarily the problem; the problem is that the screenplay is total sh*t. The movie opens with a quasi-interesting moment where Michael falls to Earth, cuts off his wings and stitches them together, but then we’re quickly taken to the diner where we’re forced to endure a hideously-written conversation between Charlie and Jeep; within 5 minutes I was already daydreaming and thinking about other sh*t going on in my life. I mean, the scene just goes on and on and on and on. The makers of the film might call this character development; I call it character mutilation. This scene, unfortunately, established a pattern for the rest of the movie: instead of seamlessly integrating character development into the action, everything routinely came to a stop so that each and every actor could have their own mother f*cking monologue. I wish I was kidding. After the anti-climactic finale, I leaned over to Chris (Eggertsen) and exclaimed, “Watch, the movie will end with a long, stupid-ass monologue.” And I was right. Not only does the flick end with a voice over monologue, it’s also a complete rip-off of The Terminator, right down to the (ridiculous) badass bandana wrapped around Charlie’s head.
So there you go. The flow of Legion is consistently interrupted by long-winded monologues, and as a consequence the action sequences are few and far between. I’m not exaggerating when I say you’ve already seen most of the movie between the clips, TV spots and trailers. There just isn’t any action beyond a few short standoffs and the scene with the old woman crawling along the ceiling.
Wait, did I mention the screenplay? Oh yeah, I did. I just can’t get over it. First off, I need to know…NEEEEEEDDDDD to know how Tyrese Gibson was able to act in this movie with a straight face. The way his character was written is straight-up racist, and anyone reading this script would had to have done a double or triple-take when taking in his dialogue. Honestly, how could Tyrese not have looked Scott Stewart straight in the eyes and said, “F*ck you man, there is no way in hell I’m reciting these lines!”? I kid you not; there was one moment during a (sigh) monologue by Tyrese’s character where the entire theater erupted into laughter. Said monologue opened with (honest to god) the following line: “When I was a shortie” (surely written in the script as “When I was a shawty”
. That’s just a taste.All of that out of the way, I will say here that I actually thought Legion was well-directed. The look and style of the film was incredibly polished – huge props to cinematographer John Lindley for his use of the color palette. I can only hope that Stewart’s upcoming Priest delivers on the screenplay front, because as a director he’s quite talented. It’s just a shame that with this film he was working with such a horrid script (for which he can only blame himself).
When all is said and done, Legion is all talk and no “do”, a prude film with some seriously wasted potential. It’s boring, slow-paced and takes itself way too goddamn seriously. Why they couldn’t have simply delivered a fun movie and blasted my eyes with an orgy of bloodied angels, gunfights and ginormous action sequences is beyond me. If God loses faith in mankind, take my word for it: it’ll be because of movies like this.
Score: 2 / 10
Legion Review
***This thread contains spoilers***
***LUCKILY THE MOVIE IS SO BAD YOU WONT CARE***
The movie starts out as a mixture of stolen scenes from Terminator 2 and Dogma. An "angel" appears on earth and removes his wings to become human. Cut to a diner in the shit middle of nowhere. This will be the setting for the entire flick.
They introduce you to the pregnant waitress. They never tell you who the father is, only that he's not in the picture, and THE country-bumpkin mechanic guy wants her anyhow, and doesn't care about who the father is.
"Your baby is going to fucking burn".
So a demon old lady shows up and does everything you saw in the commercial.
Angel-now-human guy arrives and saves the day. Tons of cars driven by demon-people start showing up, out of fucking nowhere, and they all park, get out and just kind of stand around for a while while the people from the diner shoot at them from the roof. It's at this point that you think to yourself "those cars are going to vanish in the middle of this movie aren't they?" and they do.
There's another instance where the people are outside the diner and you can see in both directions HUGE black, swirling, clearly evil clouds. Eventually you come to find out that these clouds are actually swarms of flies/locusts.This confused me because that means that millions of bugs were flying toward another huge swarm of bugs that were going in the opposite direction. So one cloud of bugs flew through another cloud of bugs and did what exactly? Nothing. They never tell you. The bugs never even converge on the diner. The only time we really see them is when the people from the diner are attempting to escape and are about a mile down the road. Then the bugs are just.... gone.
Eventually, Angel-turned-human "dies", and he just comes back as the same angel he started out as at the start of the flick. That's right. The angel-turned-human DIES, and comes back AS A FUCKING ANGEL! WTF?
They don't bother to tell you anything in this movie. Why is "god" (presumably) sending angels to kill the baby in the first place? Does it have something to do with the absent father that they didn't bother to fill us in on in the beginning of the movie? What the fuck are those bugs doing flying around with no purpose? Why do the demons just stand around to get shot? Where the fuck did all those cars go?
And the best unanswered question is the end. Angel-turned-human, of course has to fight Angel-baby-hunter. He's your main "bad-guy" of the movie. Ok. So they wind up on a cliff somehow and Angel-baby-hunter says something like "I'm giving him what he wants", referring to god and the fact that the other angel didn't follow orders. So Angel-turned-human says "You give him what he wants, I give him what he needs", (something to that effect) and Angel-baby-hunter just kind of goes...
"Oh... Ok. Uh... Nevermind then"... and turns around and fucking FLIES AWAY. THAT WAS THE END. So there's some random baby in a random diner that had way too much business in the first place and is full of people that are way too good looking to be there are saved by an angel/human who kills "demons" that are torn apart by guns, then Angel-turned-human-TURNED-ANGEL-AGAIN says a generic phrase to Angel-baby-hunter and he just flies the fuck away.
This movie by the way, was actually written by two people. It's another case of two writers writing two different scripts, then splicing them together, and it shows.
I should mention that two of the maybe 8-9 people in the theater walked out about a half hour into it. I've only walked out of ONE movie and that's because I was drunk and needed a cigarette, but I swear about 15 mins in even I wanted to leave. This movie is comically bad. If you're into going to the movies with a few friends just to talk shit about it, then you'll have a good time. But if you're expecting something in the way of I Am Legend or Eli, then you should really put your money elsewhere.
***This thread contains spoilers***
***LUCKILY THE MOVIE IS SO BAD YOU WONT CARE***
The movie starts out as a mixture of stolen scenes from Terminator 2 and Dogma. An "angel" appears on earth and removes his wings to become human. Cut to a diner in the shit middle of nowhere. This will be the setting for the entire flick.
They introduce you to the pregnant waitress. They never tell you who the father is, only that he's not in the picture, and THE country-bumpkin mechanic guy wants her anyhow, and doesn't care about who the father is.
"Your baby is going to fucking burn".
So a demon old lady shows up and does everything you saw in the commercial.
Angel-now-human guy arrives and saves the day. Tons of cars driven by demon-people start showing up, out of fucking nowhere, and they all park, get out and just kind of stand around for a while while the people from the diner shoot at them from the roof. It's at this point that you think to yourself "those cars are going to vanish in the middle of this movie aren't they?" and they do.
There's another instance where the people are outside the diner and you can see in both directions HUGE black, swirling, clearly evil clouds. Eventually you come to find out that these clouds are actually swarms of flies/locusts.This confused me because that means that millions of bugs were flying toward another huge swarm of bugs that were going in the opposite direction. So one cloud of bugs flew through another cloud of bugs and did what exactly? Nothing. They never tell you. The bugs never even converge on the diner. The only time we really see them is when the people from the diner are attempting to escape and are about a mile down the road. Then the bugs are just.... gone.
Eventually, Angel-turned-human "dies", and he just comes back as the same angel he started out as at the start of the flick. That's right. The angel-turned-human DIES, and comes back AS A FUCKING ANGEL! WTF?
They don't bother to tell you anything in this movie. Why is "god" (presumably) sending angels to kill the baby in the first place? Does it have something to do with the absent father that they didn't bother to fill us in on in the beginning of the movie? What the fuck are those bugs doing flying around with no purpose? Why do the demons just stand around to get shot? Where the fuck did all those cars go?
And the best unanswered question is the end. Angel-turned-human, of course has to fight Angel-baby-hunter. He's your main "bad-guy" of the movie. Ok. So they wind up on a cliff somehow and Angel-baby-hunter says something like "I'm giving him what he wants", referring to god and the fact that the other angel didn't follow orders. So Angel-turned-human says "You give him what he wants, I give him what he needs", (something to that effect) and Angel-baby-hunter just kind of goes...
"Oh... Ok. Uh... Nevermind then"... and turns around and fucking FLIES AWAY. THAT WAS THE END. So there's some random baby in a random diner that had way too much business in the first place and is full of people that are way too good looking to be there are saved by an angel/human who kills "demons" that are torn apart by guns, then Angel-turned-human-TURNED-ANGEL-AGAIN says a generic phrase to Angel-baby-hunter and he just flies the fuck away.
This movie by the way, was actually written by two people. It's another case of two writers writing two different scripts, then splicing them together, and it shows.
I should mention that two of the maybe 8-9 people in the theater walked out about a half hour into it. I've only walked out of ONE movie and that's because I was drunk and needed a cigarette, but I swear about 15 mins in even I wanted to leave. This movie is comically bad. If you're into going to the movies with a few friends just to talk shit about it, then you'll have a good time. But if you're expecting something in the way of I Am Legend or Eli, then you should really put your money elsewhere.
Sorry, didn't see this thread.
That other large review is strikingly similar to mine... where did you find it? I completely agree with his mention of there being too many monologues, the direction was ok at best, (except for the editing of the fight scenes), and the lines written for Tyrese were absolutely stereotypical. I even asked my wife "Is it just me or is that character completely fucking racist??"
I'm glad I'm not the only one who was sitting there nitpicking the whole time because there was nothing better to do.
That other large review is strikingly similar to mine... where did you find it? I completely agree with his mention of there being too many monologues, the direction was ok at best, (except for the editing of the fight scenes), and the lines written for Tyrese were absolutely stereotypical. I even asked my wife "Is it just me or is that character completely fucking racist??"
I'm glad I'm not the only one who was sitting there nitpicking the whole time because there was nothing better to do.
The concept was there, but the execution wasn’t. I would have liked more back story and lore about why everything was happening, but instead everything slowed down so they could give us back story on the people in the dinner, but they never really delivered on that either. I didn’t really care about why anything was happening and cared even less about who it happened to. I thought the special effects/creepy shit was pretty cool. I’d give more depth, but don’t want to include spoilers. 2.25 out of 5
