Legion:
whoa-hooooooo. Turns out Legion SUCCCCKed. do not go see Legion. ugh. uhhhh.
(if you loved “The Prophecy”… maybe you should just rent this one. If you loved 300… know that this movie was also made for trucker rednecks, but didn’t bother to steal decent one-liners from other movies. Also this one mysteriously had zero naked men. so, sorry bout that.)
My brain is still kind of hurting. i guess it had some fun bad CGI moments. the good ones ruined by the trailer. My mom actually turned to me at one point and said “oh i remember this from the trailer.”
something seriously wrong about that, and modern trailers. I wonder if the ruinous trailer actually made the movie less interesting. maybe if it had all been a complete surprise…
no. no.
*SPOILERS*
this movie was ruined by:
* the inexplicable amount of quiet time between Bettany showing up, and Quaid finally delivering the cliche “you better start talking!” demand. Why was everyone content to just take his guns from his stolen cop car and ignore the dead lady – UNTIL AFTER NIGHT FELL? Hours passed? seriously? He said “you really don’t know what’s happened?” and then everyone was like “should we ask? I don’t think we should ask…” for at least 4 hours?
* Quaid’s weird bad acting. Maybe he was trying something. but his weird smeared face contortions didn’t convey the character he was broadcasting.
* I guess I can’t help but dig Dutton. His manly crying moment seemed to come without proper buildup though. His hook hand seemed about as necessary as an eyepatch or fake leg. I’d guess hook hand was either his invention, or an excuse to show him holding his SMG steady with it. huh.
* that fucking guy who played the lead retarded hick. he really succeeded in conveying a slack jawed lack of intelligence, I guess. date rapist or innocent idjit. either way, I couldn’t stand his screen time. If you really want to loathe every second of his performance, as I did, try to count how many times he swallows and flexes his jaw muscles, accompanied by bizarre wet sounds. perhaps this is more the sound mixers fault. but. seemed like our lead had some sort of throat infection.
… I did like the scene with the (inexplicable) upside down crucifixion and exploding acid pustules. Just because it was so left field. I also kinda liked how Bettany noted “they were just testing our strengths, next they’ll test our weaknesses.” I was on board that this meant they’d be testing relationships and character flaws. but to what end? so a big monster could fly in and kill everyone? doesn’t match it’s own logic. I thought Bettany was maybe just judging them (old angel habits?), because he kept missing chances to tell people “don’t do that. it’s an obvious test of your character.” but then – he finally does come out and say “don’t open the door. it’s a trick. we’ll all die,” which is immediately followed by him telling them to open the door so he can go out and save the girl. Apparently the writer just wanted the nice guy to die there first, for doing the right thing. sighhhhh. Or maybe we’re supposed to think he’s got it coming, because he’s a shitty dad. Maybe this is a b-movie trick to engage you in the movie by breaking stupid rules it has just laid out. “we can’t save her. accept it.” … “ok, i’ll save her. all by my lonesome. easily.”
…
Tyrese was actually probably better in this than anything else I’ve ever seen him in. He was maybe halfway to the level of a DMX performance of fucked-up-gangster. I really found myself thinking he was probably a good man, screwed over. Weird that they felt the need to have a crackhead-looking gangster with a heart of gold show up in the middle of nowhere. Was there even a hint that he was once in the army? hmm. oh well.
I also liked the way the blown out guns/toy store in the beginning had a (inexplicable) squat cross design. like something Frank Miller would draw. that got my hopes up.
In fact, I should probably blame the first half of the movie for getting my hopes up, so that everything could be dropped and crapped on by the other half.
… i feel stupid ranting on and on about a failure. so much negativity. wasted.
Eh. anywho.
this movie would have been a lot cooler if they’d just stuck with the weird “god is just an asshole that wants to kill us all” angle. the heavy handed moral to the story, that soldiers should disobey orders if they don’t agree emotionally, just reminds me how bizarrely stupid modern American society has become.
There were several “big one liners” that made me kind of gasp at how bad they were. All I can remember at the moment is Quaid’s big “Sorry, we’re closed.” Maybe if they’d gone for a more manic cult peformance that would have been a joyous moment. But Quaid has just enough tough old man in him to make you wince.
Oh yeah, i thought it was more painful when the retard’s delivered his big movie ending comeback – when he’s about to die during “the Big Final Fight”, after the angel has asked him why he still fights, and all he can think of is to scream/grunt “… Fuck You!” ooooohhh my god. thank goodness he’s the savior of humanity. ohhhh mannnnn…
it’s the kind of movie where: if you were to find out it only cost 500,000 dollars you’d be like “ooohhhh, it was actually kind of amazing then. Because it looked more like you burned more than 50 million dollars on it; then still cut out most of the big action scenes it wanted to have; and then had to cut out and around most of the few special effects you did try, anyway, because they just looked like shit.” (i’m thinking of that weird half-shot of Bettany leaning into the burning mini-van to grab the girl. maybe they used a few frames just to make the CGI guys feel better about their lives).
blah blah. Ending with the same tacky line about god getting tired of all the bullshit was also horrible. Like they just ran out of ideas. but they wanted a big Terminator Sarah connor moment. Buuuuuut they just can’t think of anything else to say. ugh. So they replay this depressing out-of-context narration again, but this time over a big sweeping heroic movie-ending shot. As our heroes drive off into the sunset. weee! It would have been better to just come out and say “y’know, maybe ol’ god’s just a big drunken redneck, and he wants us fukkin’ shoot some shiiiit with this pile o’ guns in this beatup ol’ car we just took from some militia. N’stufffff. … eh. YEEE HAWWWW!”
…
more like Lesion, am i rite?