I don't think Ridley Scott's Legend is very good but Tim Curry's Lord of Darkness is so remarkable in every way that he almost saves the movie. The character design and costuming are amazing, Curry's performance is mesmerizing, and Darkness also gets all the best dialogue. Darkness's courtship of Lili, played by Mia Sara—who puts a lot more mojo into her performance than Tom Cruise, who rarely strays out of "Dull Surprise" territory—is what really works about Legend. The rest of the movie feels like a semi-coherent jumble of fantasy elements.
The unicorns are a MacGuffin. The mutilation of the unicorn stallion puts the world in peril and gets the quest plot rolling, but otherwise their part might have been played by any magical creature in distress. I suppose if you want a powerful symbol of magic and innocence, unicorns are there for you, but they do nothing specific in Legend. (I'm reminded uncomfortably of how Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone murders a unicorn for little purpose beyond establishing Voldemort as especially depraved.) The movie goes to some pains to establish that the unicorn's severed horn is a formidable magical weapon, then goes nowhere with the idea. You'd think that the Lord of Darkness would do some vile magicks once he has the horn, but he doesn't. The goblins who stole the unicorn's horn vanish from the story halfway through. I'm honestly not surprised the movie bombed; it feels both overstuffed and stretched too thin.
Strange movie. It ought to have been a Jim Henson piece.
~Chara
