Weirdhouse Cinema: Legend

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss Ridley Scott’s dark fairy tale “Legend,” starring Tom Cruise, Mia Sara and Tim Curry.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
today on Weird House Cinema we're going to be talking
about the nineteen eighty five Ridley Scott fantasy tale Legend,
starring Tom Cruise, Miasara, and Tim Curry. I wanted to
start off just by saying, because I mentioned it so
many times on the show, that I love a good

(00:36):
synthetic forest set like a you know, a fairytale woodland
built inside a sound stage. Legend is a kind of
heaven for me, because it is there's more of that
in this movie than any other movie I can think of.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah, they built an enormous forest for this one, inside
the Double O seven stage at Pinewood Studios. That was
the studio that was built for nineteen six seventy seven's
The Spy Who Loved Me, And interestingly enough, it burned
down shortly before filming could wrap on Legend, tragically killing
the last two living unicorns.

Speaker 4 (01:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yeah, now, no, the unicorns are fine, but some of
their final scenes had to be filmed in an actual
outdoor location because of this, So if you're watching closely,
there may be some unicorn scenes here and there where
you're like, oh, that looks like maybe that's for real
outdoors instead of this lush and amazing indoor forest they built.

(01:32):
But they do a good job of making not necessarily
focus on the difference.

Speaker 3 (01:37):
I love that it goes back and forth and you
can't always tell if you're actually outside or if this
is an indoor forest.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Yeah, like they just like they are like particles floating
around in the air. I'm not sure if it's like
pollen or fairy dust. I mean, it's just there's a
lot going on. It's a very rich visual texture.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
In my opinion, this is an almost perfect example of
a movie that has all the things it needs to
be absolutely wonderful, but it doesn't know exactly how to
use them to the greatest effect. So this movie has
unbelievably gorgeous sets, some of the most amazing production design

(02:20):
of any movie I can think of.

Speaker 5 (02:22):
Ever.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
It has stupendous makeup effects and costumes, has a great cast,
especially in the sort of the down cheat character roles
and the villain roles. It has some intriguing ideas and
moments and some fun and funny dialogue in it. It's
got unicorns, all the resources and technical skill that is

(02:44):
needed to make a best of the best fantasy adventure,
and yet somehow the movie always still feels like it
kind of doesn't come together right, something kind of falls
apart at the core of it. It's like it's not
organized correctly toward a toward its storytelling purpose.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah, I know what you mean, and this is going
to be something we're going to discuss back and forth,
I think the whole episode. But it's also I think
one of the reasons that I realized that the time
was right to discuss legend. We've been talking a lot
about alien and alien related content on the show, and
I was heavily tempted, and we may still come back
and do Alien at some point. But Alien is one

(03:23):
of those films, a Ridley Scott film that I mean,
it's basically perfect, like it like everything works in that picture,
and it's I don't know, it's fun to talk about
films we're passionate about and that are you know, are
so great that you don't really have anything critical to
say about them, But I don't know, sometimes it's a
little more engaging maybe to get into something like this,

(03:44):
a film that is rougher around some of the edges
in some aspects of the production.

Speaker 3 (03:50):
I very much agree that Alien is basically perfect, but
Legend is different. This is not the only Ridley Scott
movie that could be described in the way as having
so many technical elements that are just at the peak
of excellence. You know, maybe has a kind of esthetic perfection,

(04:10):
but something just doesn't all work as a narrative, It
doesn't fit together in the right way. And I want
to be clear that nobody's going to tag me as
a Ridley hater, you know, as I already said, I
think Alien is basically perfect. I'm not one of those
people who thinks Blade Runner is overrated. Some people say
that now I don't agree. I think it is brilliant,

(04:31):
and I even personally find delight in some of Ridley
Scott's more arguably or some would even say objectively bad films,
like Hannibal or Alien Covenant. I sort of think, well, yeah,
maybe they are bad, but I kind of like them anyway.
But apart from that, I think it's interesting that Scott
has made a number of these films that at least

(04:52):
as I see it, pull together the best of the
best in terms of all the technical elements of filmmaking.
They look amazing, they sound amazing, they have beautiful and
interesting things to show you. But at the same time
they can end up feeling kind of disorganized, flabby, and
sometimes even irritating. Exercises in storytelling.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
Yeah, yeah, I would broadly agree with all that, And
I think maybe a lot of it comes down to
the particular way that Ridley Scott seems to command a picture,
because yeah, I think he's a tremendous visual director. His storyboards,
which are often called Ridley Grams. I don't know if
he calls them Ridley Grahams or people who work with
them call him Ridley Grahams, but I'm not sure in
the origin of the term. But the Ridley Grams alone

(05:34):
are always worth a look because on one hand, they're
just I mean, they look you could say, here's a
comic book past the Ridley Grahams and you would buy it.
Like they don't. They don't feel as much like a
rough sketch of what is to be filmed as as
some storyboards, do you know what I'm saying? M Yeah,
And also it's it's provides a lot of insight into

(05:55):
how it all comes together, even though again they are
essentially blueprints of everything to come. It's where he takes
the screenplay written by others and projects them into a
more solidified visual form. And like you say, you know
that on top of that, really Scott's going to bring
in just the absolute best behind the scenes crew and
generally just great casting choices as well to make it

(06:16):
all come alive. That being said, yeah, he is often
criticized for being inconsistent. And I guess one of the
weird things here is I'm, by by all means not
a Ridley Scott completists. There are a bunch of Ridley
Scott films. I haven't seen many of his Yeah, many
of his historical pieces, for example, many of his dramas,
even some of the big dramas like Film and Luise,

(06:37):
I just haven't seen it. And it's it's not on
my immediate to watch list. It's not something we could
work into weird house, you know. But that one was
critically acclaimed and nominated for multiple awards. But yeah, for
my money, Alien and Blade Runner are all timers. I
personally loved Prometheus an Alien Covenant and really admired Covenant

(06:57):
more on a recent rewatch. That one's kind of divisive,
but it certainly has its fans, and I think it's
its faults, in my opinion, are trivial in the face
of everything it does. Right. Hannibals, that's another weird one
to look at. Hannibal is one I would almost consider
doing for Weirdhouse as well, because I remember when the

(07:18):
novel came out and it was I thought it was
kind of a mess and kind of repellent, And if anything,
the film improved matters by cutting out some of the
more lurid elements and finding its own sort of strange,
grotesque tale to tell again with a stunning cast, great visuals,
and this kind of like you know, baroque awfulness that

(07:40):
Scott does so well. But yeah, that's one I probably
need to rewatch, but it's it's also not one I'm
in a super hurry to see again.

Speaker 3 (07:48):
I don't know. Ridley has a kind of magic that
even when he makes a movie that I'm not going
to go out and defend, I don't think is a
great movie. I do want to keep looking at it. Usually,
like I will come back to these movies.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean Ridley is going to bring
you somewhere you haven't been before, and in all likelihood,
no one else is going to bring you to, you know,
And I think that's one thing I really love about Covenant.
That's one thing that I even admire about Hannibal is
like there have even been other adaptations of the source
material for Hannibal, and that adaptation as well has its

(08:22):
own visual flare, but it's not quite the same. You know.
There's just something about the riddle is really scott approach
to filmmaking that is just really going to sing.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
Now, Rob, I'm curious about your your own viewing history
with Legend because mine is a bit confused. I'm going
to say what I think it was, but I'm not
positive about this. I think the order for me goes.
I saw pieces of this movie on TV growing up,
so you know, running it, I don't know which cut

(08:52):
they'd be airing on TV. Well, we'll have to talk
about the multiple cuts of the film. I'd guess probably
the US theatrical cut, but bits of it on TV
where I was just seeing like a big devil with
gigantic horns. That's very striking and hard to forget Mia
Sara wearing a kind of like triangle shaped black dress
with goth makeup on, and seeing Tom Cruise's legs and

(09:17):
thinking I didn't know Tom Cruise was ever in a
fantasy movie like this. I'm not sure what's going on,
but it just kind of getting past me, you know.
I'd see a little bit here and there, and then
at some point I saw the film in full, and
I don't know what cut it was, but I remember
thinking it was beautiful and I was mighty impressed by

(09:40):
it in some ways. But I do kind of remember
feeling tempted to fall asleep at certain parts.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
Yeah, I mean there are plenty of stretches of this
film that are very hypnotic and also in places a
little slow especially. I mean it depends on the cut
of the film, which we'll get into there. I think
two major cuts and probably four step rick cuts you
could point to. But with me, it's possible I saw
part of it on TV at some point, or had

(10:07):
seen a VHS box for it certainly previously. But my
clear memory was being homesick from school one day and
I had a couple of movies rented movies to watch.
One of them was Highlander and the other was this
And I do remember from the moment the VHS type
started playing the film proper. I remember, you know, getting

(10:28):
hit with that Tangerine dream score, and then you know,
the visuals began to kick in, and I realized right
away there was something special about this one. You know,
this was an enthralling dark fantasy world that I just
hadn't seen anything like this on the screen before. You know,
like you look back to this time period and like,

(10:50):
what else, what else did you have in nineteen eighty
five that really, I mean, that gave you live action
fantasy at all, but much much more to the point,
gave you live action fantasy that was this dark in
its texture, you know. I mean, nowadays you can easily
point to Peter Jackson Florida, the Rings films, which really
get in there with all the more door stuff and

(11:11):
that works in the goblins and deliver it to you know,
in spades. But at the time, like this was kind
of this is as deep as dark and dark as
it got.

Speaker 3 (11:20):
Yeah, I guess you've got the different sort of sub
genres of fantasy. So like by the mid eighties you
had you had Conan type stuff, which could be dark,
but was more I don't know, it was more gritty
and though it had magic in it was more brutal
and realistic overall, and was more pitched at a I

(11:41):
don't know if this is the right word, but a
mature audience. You know, it was the original Cone and
rated R. Surely not or was it?

Speaker 2 (11:48):
I believe it was an R.

Speaker 3 (11:49):
Yeah, oh okay, I mean so just like very violent,
kind of gritty, barbarian fantasy. You had that kind of thing.
Of course, you had the more animated approach off into
high fantasy type stuff. But I think it's interesting that
Legend is is dark fantasy that shows you a lot
of scary, devilish kind of stuff, but at its core

(12:13):
it is a fairy tale. It's not a grim, gritty,
more to kind of muscle and steel fantasy like the
Conan movies. It's a fairy tale with a broad fairy
tale kind of brushstroke to it. But it's also very dark.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
Yeah, And I think this is another thing that even
early on I realized there was kind of a disconnect
with because the visual style of Legend is insanely epic,
the actual story that it tells is maybe it. I
mean it has high stakes, like you know, the the world,
it's about saving the world, but in many other respects

(12:48):
it's less epic. The story is a little more simplified
and more I think just sort of fairy tale in form.
So it's yeah, it feels it feels like the visuals
are like far out delivering the actual story.

Speaker 3 (13:05):
Can I suggest I think a reason why it feels
less epic. I think it's because it's a fairly tight
character list, Like there are not we never see masses
of people or armies or anything like that in this movie.
It's actually quite intimate in terms of the characters. The
only regular people we ever meet in the movie is like,

(13:27):
is a single cottage full of peasants in the forest?
You know that Miasarra's character goes to visit at the
beginning of the movie. And so there's no sense at
all of kind of the broader world of peoples and
armies clashing or anything like that. I mean, we are
too believe that somewhere out there there is a castle

(13:47):
where the king Miasara's father lives and all that, but
we never see them. So the characters almost kind of
exist in this private, intimate kind of fantasy Forrest dream World.
And so though we know that the fate of the
entire world is at stake with what happens to the
unicorns in the movie, we never see mighty forces coming together.

Speaker 2 (14:13):
Yeah. No, I think that's a solid red.

Speaker 5 (14:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:15):
Yeah, because just looking at the picture, they're less than
less than twenty people in the whole world, but we
know that they're out there. There's supposed to be a castle,
there's supposed to be these more expansive civilizations, we assume.

Speaker 3 (14:27):
Now, Rob, maybe this is a good place to address
the different cuts of the movie. Because when you picked
Legend for the show and you told me we're going
to be watching the director's cut, which is not the
cut that has a Tangerine Dream score, I was quite
confused how you could make this selection. But this is
preferred by most fans of the movie. They're going to

(14:49):
say that the director's cut, which is a good bit
longer and has a traditional orchestrated Jerry Goldsmith's score instead
of the Tangerine Dream score. Most people say this is
massively preferable to the US theatrical version.

Speaker 2 (15:03):
Yeah, that's that's the vibe. I've always gotten, and so
I felt like, well, if we're going to talk about Legend,
even though I'm all my nostalgia and my love is
built up around this theatrical cut, it's going to be
a little weird if we come in and then we're saying, well,
this this movie has problems, and then people are going
to say, well, did you watch the director's cut, and
we'll say no, no, we just watched the one that

(15:24):
we're familiar with, so and you know, I want to.
I thought, well, this is a way to experience a
film that I do have nostalgia for and then I
do admire in many ways. It's experiencing it in a
different light. So yeah, I was like, let's do director's
cut and then we can compare.

Speaker 3 (15:43):
To be clear, I still think the director's cut has problems.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
But yeah it does.

Speaker 3 (15:48):
I will say, on rewatching it, I was expecting, you know,
I sort of had this idea in my memory that
it was a very beautiful looking movie that had massive
narrative of deficiencies. I don't know which cut it was
I saw in you know, the intervening years in between
seeing Bits on TV and this rewatch. It may have

(16:09):
been theatrical may have been Director's cut. I'm just not sure,
but I thought the film was not as bad as
I remembered in terms of putting together a cohesive narrative.
I still think it's flawed, but it's better than I
would have said.

Speaker 2 (16:24):
Yeah. Yeah, I'll get into some particular examples of ways
that I think that the director's cut improves upon the
theatrical cut, and I do want to also go ahead
and throw in here that I think there are maybe
like four different cuts total that have been out there
and the ecosystem of movie viewing the director's cut, which
came out years later, decades later. I think there's the

(16:46):
there's the US theatrical cut, there's the euro theatrical cut
that I think is in large part, you know, reflected
in the director's cut. And then there's apparently some sort
of a TV cut out there that I think was
US theatrical cut with some extra added stuff added in
to fill out a certain run time, that sort of thing.

Speaker 3 (17:05):
However, one other thing I want to say about the
different cuts is that I was not able. I didn't
have time to watch the US theatrical cut in full,
but I watched the full director's cut, and then the
first I don't know ten minutes of the US theatrical cut.
And the difference is not just that there is more
stuff in the director's cut that was taken out for
the theatrical That is not the only difference. There is

(17:28):
a very different style and approach. For example, in the
opening scenes, the US theatrical cut just straight up shows
you the villain's face, which is delayed for a long time.
In the director's cut, there's a big build up. And
so I perceived the US theatrical version to be significantly

(17:48):
more clumsy and awkward in its edit from the very beginning,
even without talking about major differences in what material is there.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
Yeah, Yeah, Like it feels like the US theatrical cut
was very much an attempt to make everything tighter and
more exciting at the beginning, and like, I guess to
keep people from falling asleep or leaving the theater or something.
I don't know. But in doing so, yeah, they make
some choices like this, like let's go ahead and show
them darkness in full. Let's go ahead and show them

(18:20):
the tree, Let's go ahead and show them the hell kitchens.
We're gonna go ahead and roll out all of some
of our at least a glimpse of some of our
big set pieces early on, and they have this scrolling
intro on the screen that really feels like the abstract
from a peer reviewed science paper, you know, where it
just lays out all the basics of the hypothesis, tells

(18:41):
you what the experiments were and the findings right up top,
whereas the director's cut does not do this. The director's
cut lets you pick up on this or not pick
up on it on your own. But the yeah, the
the US theatrical cut basically force feeds it to you.

Speaker 3 (18:58):
Now, on one hand, you can kind of understand the
impetus behind the theatrical cut because you were saying they
were trying to make it tighter and more exciting right
at the beginning. I don't know if the director's cut
needed to be more exciting right at the beginning, but
I will say the first twenty or thirty minutes of
the director's cut, it happens at a very dreamy, lilting pace,

(19:23):
and that can feel particularly it can have a kind
of sedative effect, especially when you know Tom Cruise and
Mia Sarah are just kind of frolicking around in the
forest and you know, looking at the flowers and stuff,
I was feeling the call of sleep at those times.

Speaker 2 (19:41):
Yeah. Again, it's very hypnotic and dream like as well
in these sequences, and be watching all unicorn run and
slow motion through an unreal forest. Yeah, I mean, you're
supposed to feel at peace at that point.

Speaker 3 (19:53):
I'm not knocking it too much. I'm just saying, like
I can understand somebody watching this and saying the first
third of it is slow. You've got to have some
patience to go with it at the beginning there. But
I agree that that the way they tightened it in
the US version is not an improvement. Instead, it just
sort of like it kind of blows the air out

(20:13):
of the whole thing.

Speaker 2 (20:15):
All right, Well, let's go ahead and hear a little
little trailer audio, not the full trailer, but just a
little of it to get a certain taste of it.

Speaker 5 (20:25):
There is a balance to the universe. The struggle to
maintain that balance is the stuff of religions. For there
can be no good without evil, no love without hate.

(20:46):
Life needs death, Innocence creeds last. There can be no
heaven without hell. No light will out.

Speaker 4 (21:04):
Darkness.

Speaker 2 (21:11):
All right, if you want to go out and watch Legend. Well,
you can stream, and I'm mostly speaking to the US
situation here. I'm not sure what availability is like in Europe, where,

(21:31):
of course there was a different theatrical cut. But at
least here in the United States you can stream Legend
in a number of places. You can buy it rent
it digitally, but at least currently, for the director's cut,
you'll need to hunt that up on disc. Fortunately, there's
a great Arrow Blu ray of the film that features
both the US theatrical cut and the director's cut, plus

(21:51):
loads of extras. This is the version that I rented
from Video Drome.

Speaker 3 (21:55):
Yeah, I watched the Arrow Blu ray, and Robert, I
don't know if you have the same thing to me.
I was kind of surprised by how much grain it
still felt like there was in the film, Like it
seemed like something that would or could have been sharpened
up a good bit, but it wasn't. And I don't
know if that's for lack of effort or if that's

(22:17):
an intentional choice about this release.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
Yeah, I wouldn't sure about that either. I'm not tech
savvy enough on their whole remastering scenario, but certainly we've
seen some older films that have been remastered to like
just a level of perfection that certainly influences your viewing
of other films. You know, why why aren't other films
as flawless looking as this one? So I don't know

(22:41):
what exactly, you know, the choices or hurdles were with
this one, but there was more grain than I expected.
But still it did not get in the way of
appreciating these visuals in the long run.

Speaker 4 (22:53):
No.

Speaker 3 (22:54):
I almost wonder if it's a oh, I don't know,
kind of a film version of like tea staining a
docum meant to make it look ancient, you know that
I may maybe there was a concern that if it
was sharpened up too much, it wouldn't have the kind
of the dreamy fairy tale effect that they were going for.

Speaker 2 (23:12):
I wonder if these, you know, I'd have to go
back and rewatch. But I wonder if these were some
of the restored segments in the director's cut. I know,
sometimes there's a sourcing issue there, and you have to
sort of make do with what you can get when
you're restoring sequences and scenes that were not used in
like the main cut of the film. Possibly, all right,

(23:43):
let's get into the people involved in this one, starting
at the top, of course, with Sir Ridley Scott born
nineteen thirty seven, highly successful and influential English filmmaker who,
at eighty six years old and turns eighty seven in
just a few months, shows no signs of slowing down,
is directing and producing. I mean, it's really quite an inspiring.

(24:04):
He worked on projects as a TV production designer from
nineteen sixty two through nineteen sixty five, and his first
directorial credit was a nineteen sixty five episode of a
police series in the UK called Z Cars.

Speaker 3 (24:17):
Sounds great, yeap.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
His debut film was, of course, nineteen seventy seven's The Duellists,
starring Keith Carrodine, Harvey Kaiitel and Albert Finney, a serious
historical drama that is cited as a key inspiration on Highlander.

Speaker 3 (24:32):
I've wanted to see this for years, but I never have.

Speaker 2 (24:34):
Yeah, this one kind of ends up falling through the
cracks for me because it is it's a Ridley Scott
period piece. And I mean I have seen some of
his historical films, of course, I've seen Gladiator, but I
don't know, they're just not the ones that I'm drawn
to as much. So he followed this up, of course
in nineteen seventy nine with Alien and then in eighty
two with Blade Runner. He tackled some smaller projects during

(24:57):
that time, including the Apple Mac nineteen eighty fourmmercial and
so already a really strong genre heavy early career, and
then comes Legend, a fairy tale, a fantasy, and this
of course ends up proving a commercial failure upon release,
and from here we see Ridley Scott veer off into
historical crime and drama pictures. He doesn't return to science

(25:20):
fiction or fantasy for twenty seven years, returning to the
Alien franchise with Prometheus in twenty twelve. Then he did
twenty fifteen's The Martian, which it is quite good as
well based on the novel, and then he did twenty
seventeen's Alien Covenant and two episodes of the super weird,
very original and criminally canceled Max series Raised by Wolves,

(25:44):
which he also produced. Now as a producer, he's also
had a hand in many other great films and series,
including AMC's The Terror, which I really enjoyed. The recent
Alien Romulus is of course a Scott free production, and
Academy Award nominations for Ridley Scott include nineteen ninety two's
Film and Luise, two thousand and ones, Gladiator, two thousand

(26:06):
and two's Black Hawk Down, and twenty sixteen's The Martian.
I should note that Ridley Scott, as far as I
can tell, has never directed what you'd truly call a
kids movie or maybe even a family movie. This really
legend for eighty five is really the best case you
can make for either category. But at the same time,

(26:26):
it is just way too dark, both visually and thematically
for children.

Speaker 3 (26:31):
Yeah, this is who this is one of those who
is this four movies. I mean, I don't have a
problem enjoying it, because I'm the kind of adults that
can enjoy a fairy tale. But it is clearly it's
a fairy tale which is going to make a lot
of adults think, oh, this movie is not meant for me.
And while the movie it doesn't have a lot of
like explicit like sex or violence in it, it really

(26:56):
doesn't seem appropriate for kids because of the way that
it is. I don't know, it has kind of erotic undercurrents,
and it has a lot of very scary suggestions of violence,
even if you're not seeing explicit like blood and guts
on screen.

Speaker 2 (27:13):
Yeah, and also a subtext that I'll get back to
that seems to deal with with sin and shame. Yeah,
in ways that I just don't feel as fun for
you know, ten and twelve.

Speaker 3 (27:25):
Year olds, right, So it's like it's a fairy tale
but not probably not appropriate for kids. So you're limiting
your audience here.

Speaker 2 (27:34):
Yeah. Now, the screenwriter on this one was William Hertzberg,
who lived nineteen forty one through twenty seventeen American writer,
best known for his work on this film, as well
as as his nineteen seventy eight horror novel Falling Angel
that was adapted into the nineteen eighty seven Alan Parker
movie Angel Heart. I did read this book ages ago,
and I remember liking it. I remember liking it more

(27:55):
than I liked the actual film, all right, Now, getting
into the cast, Yeah, this is a Tom Cruise movie,
but it's also not a Tom Cruise movie in the
sense that it from the modern perspective of what you
expect from a Tom Cruise movie. It's not that it's
something different, it's something a little it's like proto Tom
Cruise movie.

Speaker 3 (28:13):
This is from before Tom Cruise was Tom Cruise. I
mean he was a star at this time, I think
because he'd already been in risky business, right, that's correct. Yeah, okay,
so he was like a young actor who'd been in
at least one or two big movies. So like he
wasn't a nobody at the time, but he also was
not the like the Hollywood juggernaut that we know today.
He was like a young, up and coming, good looking actor.

Speaker 2 (28:37):
Yeah. I mean today Tom Cruise is someone that is
known around the world. He's like one of, if not
the most bankable stars in Hollywood. You know, you put
him in Blockbusters. That's where he lives, that's his ecosystem,
and he's one of these people too that it's like
he's more industry than man. You almost don't think of
Tom Cruise as an individual, but he's like an industry

(28:58):
built around somebody that that is almost as much myth
as as human, if not more myth than human, at
least from our perspective. Outside of that.

Speaker 3 (29:08):
Yeah, speaking of built around, I mean, now I think
some of his movies they build around some stunts he
wants to do. He's like, so he'll be a producer
on the movie. He's like, here, I'm going to cling
to the side of an airplane or something. Write a
script around that.

Speaker 5 (29:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:21):
So Legend was only his seventh film role. His debut
part was in nineteen eighty one's Endless Love, and he
also had a supporting role in Taps the same year.
But in eighty two he had a starring role in
the teen comedy Losing It, and nineteen eighty three was
a real breakout year with parts in Francis Ford Coppola's
The Outsiders and the starring role in both Risky Business

(29:44):
and the football movie All the Right Moves. So the
time was right for Tom Cruise to do a genre film,
but not a B movie, you know, not a B
sci fi or horror movie on your way up, but
I don't know, a lavish twenty five million dollar that,
of course wouldn't quite break even at the box office.
So the next year he would go on to star

(30:06):
in the mega hit Top Gun, and I guess his
legacy was assured at that point. But then again, it's
kind of with Tom Cruise. It's easy to say that
because he has proven to have this real staying power
in Hollywood and has remained this juggernaut despite you know,
various things popping up that would you know, you might
expect to derail some careers or certainly the occasional film

(30:29):
that doesn't deliver to the degree that producers would like.
For the most part, he has remained stable up there,
and it's still big business.

Speaker 3 (30:38):
Yeah. So from what I understand, apart from weird movie connoisseurs,
if you're just looking at it from the kind of
Hollywood business point of view, I think Legend would have
long been mainly regarded as a as an early misstep
in the career of Tom Cruise. You know, it's just
like a this was some weird, failed little movie that

(30:59):
Tom Cruise did early on that critics hated and audiences
hated too, and just didn't go anywhere. But then he
corrected course and was in top gun.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
Though it is kind of interesting that I don't think
he would come back to any genre pictures like this
for a while, though he would in time come back
and do you know, at least some weirder and sci
fi type material, but still very much like blockbuster angled
material at the same time. But that was the case
with this film as well. This film was meant to
be a big success at the box office. That's why

(31:31):
they spent twenty five million dollars on it.

Speaker 3 (31:34):
Wait, is this the first time we've talked about either
Tom Cruise or Ridley Scott on Weird House?

Speaker 2 (31:40):
The first time they've come up that we've looked at
something they were either involved with. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So
they're both, you know, huge mainstream successes. Though when Ridley
wants to go weird, he definitely I think goes weirder
than Tom Cruise goes weird.

Speaker 3 (31:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:54):
Well, in terms of movie plots, yes, And part of
this too is like, what is Tom Cruiser's role in
a picture? It is the leading man, and it has
always been the leading man with you know, a few
small caveats along the way, you know you're only going
to go so weird in the kind of role that
Tom Cruise plays. Well, maybe there's an alternate dimension where

(32:15):
he ends up playing a bunch of villains and it's
really fascinating as well. I don't know, but anyway, Cruz
was twenty three at the time, and we should acknowledge
that he was I think, by many estimates, dangerously hot.
I was looking around for some like outside the podcast
commentary on this, and I found some words from the

(32:35):
blogger Jin at ep bot dot com, who has a
post titled Legend, the thirty six year old movie that's
a love letter to Tom Cruise's thighs and other thoughts.

Speaker 3 (32:46):
I could not help but notice that the camera is
all up in Tom Cruise's upper thighs. Yes, it's yeah,
so they gave him a costume like once he gets
his armor on, its basically like a short tunic. He
wears no pants most of the movie, and just yeah,
it's it's all up in his haunches.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
Here's a quote from that post by Jen at epbot
dot com. Tom Cruise was twenty two during filming, and
fresh off the set of Risky Business, the movie that
gave us the world famous underwear dance. Not to be outdone,
the producers of Legend decided Tom would not only be
pantiless the entire movie, he would also be prohibited from
walking upright for most of it.

Speaker 3 (33:28):
I noticed the same thing. He is like squatting or
crawling or on the ground in nearly every shot of
the movie.

Speaker 2 (33:36):
Yeah, and I guess part of this is that he
is kind of like a fairal creature. You know, he
especially early on like he is a he's a boy
of the woods. He's kind of a Peter Pan. Yeah,
he's a little loopine, so I guess that's part of
the whole attraction here. I also want to note that
this is cruse prebraces, so he doesn't have that perfect

(33:59):
Holly would smile yet, but he has like he has
a smile befitting of a fairal young man in a
fantasy world, which I think is perfect. He also has
like a bit of a unibrow going on, like not
a full unibrow, but like his brows are a little
more connected, you know, which again is also perfect for
a fairal young man running around the woods falling in

(34:21):
love with princesses.

Speaker 3 (34:22):
I guess.

Speaker 2 (34:23):
So, speaking of that princess, the princess is, of course
played by Mia Sara born in nineteen sixty seven. This
is Lily, and we talked about her previously on Weird
How Cinema because she was in nineteen ninety four's time
cop Ah.

Speaker 3 (34:35):
Yes, I was thinking this is not our first Mia
Sarah film.

Speaker 2 (34:38):
Yeah, this was. This was her first film role, following
just of one shot I think on TVs. All in
the Family Legend and Labyrinth were shooting next to each
other at the same time here, and the casts and
crew apparently frequently mingled. And this is where she would
meet her future husband Brian Henson.

Speaker 3 (34:55):
Oh okay, but was she in Time Cop?

Speaker 5 (34:58):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (34:58):
She was, So you can go back and check out
her episode on Time Cop if you want. Now. Is
this also our first Tim Curry movie on Weird House?

Speaker 2 (35:06):
This is the first time we have gotten to talk
about Tim Curry. There was a time when you were
out in parental leave and Annie Reese came on the
show and we talked about Congo.

Speaker 3 (35:16):
Oh my Lord, where he plays Herkimer Hamolka, formerly of Romania,
traveling the world and doing good.

Speaker 2 (35:24):
Yes, another great scene chewing performance, but not as the
primary antagonist, second or third level antagonist.

Speaker 3 (35:32):
Tim Curry in Congo is one of the most hilarious
movie acting jobs I can think of ever.

Speaker 5 (35:38):
He is.

Speaker 3 (35:40):
I love Tim Curry. He is just a delight every time.

Speaker 2 (35:44):
Yeah, it plays darkness in this Born nineteen forty six. Yeah,
just a true legend of stage, screen and TV. He was,
of course doctor Frankenfurter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show
back in nineteen seventy five and was in the original
stage version as well. He was Wadsworth nineteen eighty five's
Clue Other memorable films and Clue, Let's say There's Annie,

(36:04):
There's the nineteen ninety adaptation of it, in which he
played penny Wise, the dancing clown. And he's also done
a great deal of voice work over the years. I know,
outside of Weird House cinema, you and I have also
discussed his triple role in the Tales from the Crypt
episode Death of Some Salesman.

Speaker 3 (36:20):
Oh, where he terrorizes Ed Begley Junior. Right, Ed Begley
Junior is like he's like some kind of corrupt salesman
or something.

Speaker 2 (36:27):
Yeah, but yeah, obviously just a terrific all around performer.
Been in a share of more than his share of
bad movies as well, but some of the other like
credits worth noting. Nineteen ninety is The Hunt for the
Red October nineteen ninety two's Fern Gully, ninety three's The
Three Musketeers, ninety four is The Shadow, and nineteen ninety
six is Muppet Treasure Island. But like, even if it's

(36:48):
a not a great film, you know that Tim Curry
is going to be amusing in it no matter what.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
Now, this movie makes an interesting decision, which is legend
takes a solid gold care actor with charm for Miles
and hides him behind forty seven pounds of makeup. He
is under so much makeup in this movie it is
hard to believe. And the makeup I think looks amazing.

(37:16):
But yeah, it's an interesting way to like there's a
trade off here, isn't there. It's it's almost like maybe
they did have to cast somebody with with Tim Curry's
you know, kind of not just screen presence, but stage
presence almost like it's almost like it requires a type
of stage acting to get through the makeup to the camera.
Does that make sense?

Speaker 5 (37:36):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (37:36):
Absolutely. I think it is a huge testament to both
Curry and the effects crew that this works as tremendously
well as it does. That it doesn't feel like you've
buried Tim Curry and a bunch of prosthetics that you know,
that it doesn't feel like you have something that only
works in close up shots or something like. They managed

(37:58):
to make this feel like a cohesive living being as
opposed to know what it could have been.

Speaker 3 (38:05):
Of course, Tim Curry plays the main villain in the movie.
I don't know if we already said this, but he
is like the devil essentially, he's the lord of darkness,
and he has I don't know how long do you
think his horns are. I mean, he's got so much
horn on his head it looks like his neck muscles
should be sore.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
It is. I mean, if you haven't seen it, do
look up at least images of this character, because it
is essentially an outrageous red devil. Men aitar that. It
feels like it's about eight feet tall, not counting the horns.
So it is a bold design choice, and they manage
to make it work.

Speaker 3 (38:48):
You know who else in this movie I feel like
really acts through heavy makeup and just shines right through
a character design is Alice Playton as blicks.

Speaker 2 (38:58):
Yes, Oh my god, she's so good in this. She
lived nineteen forty seven through twenty eleven stage actor with
a lot of Broadway and off Broadway credits, TV and
film credits going back to sixty three. But she's often
best remembered for her voice because she has this this
kind of childlike voice that she can utilize and she
can perfectly lean into really haunting an Uncanny Territory with it.

(39:23):
She voiced a demon in nineteen eighty two's Amityville to
the Possession. She has also voice credits and things like
nineteen eighty one's Heavy Metal nineteen eighty six is My
Little Pony the movie. She was also in twelve episodes
of The Croft Super Show in seventy six. But yeah,
in this she plays the scheming goblin blicks like just
a perfect goblin that also has an outrageous design in play,

(39:48):
you know, with the long nose and like elongated head,
just so nasty, so vicious looking, and she just shines here.

Speaker 3 (39:57):
Appears to be made of rot in a way, almost
kind of an undead looking sort of goblin, and also
speaks in rhyming couplets, which I love. I would say that,
you know, it's weird because we were saying the way
in which this movie falls short, despite all of its
great elements, is in its cohesiveness as a story. So

(40:22):
you might think from that the script is weak, but
actually I think moment to moment, line to line, the
script is pretty strong. Like the dialogue is good, and
so this character speaks in rhyming couplets that are mostly
I think great rhyming couplets. They're very pleasing. So like
when Blick's is looking down on Princess Lily, he says,

(40:44):
maybe innocent, maybe sweet, ain't half as nice as rotting meat.
And Clayton really sells the couplets like I just believe
that this is how Blicks talks.

Speaker 2 (40:53):
Yes, and indeed like just such a goblin, like just
delights in grotesqueness and depravity, but not within without any
underlying argument for why that is the superior choice. It's
just that is just the texture of Blix's life and
Blix's values, and Blix is very vocal about his preferences here.

Speaker 5 (41:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:19):
Now, interestingly enough, I mentioned that Alice Clayton's voice like
it has this she can lean into these uncanny aspects,
but she can also get kind of like a childlike
voice going on as well. She actually dubs the character
Honeythorn Gump.

Speaker 3 (41:35):
Oh the picture that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
Honey Thorn Gump is our elf, our youthful elf guy
who's helping out, played physically here by David Bennett born
nineteen sixty six, a German actor at the time eighteen
or nineteen years old, but he looks younger and yeah,
we don't hear his actual voice. I've read that producers
thought he sounded too German, which I'm kind of like,

(42:00):
why did you cast a German actor? I didn't want
him to sound potentially German. But anyway, then it is
still really good in this It's still a very good
physical performance even though we don't hear his voice and
he's been working in German productions. For Age is still
active now, started out at an early age. His other
like big international credit is probably nineteen seventy nine's The

(42:23):
ten Drum.

Speaker 3 (42:24):
I think the job they did dubbing him. I didn't
realize while I was watching that that was also Alice
Playton doing his voice. But I think the dubbing is fantastic.
It totally matches the pace of the character speaking, and
instead of feeling uncanny and unpleasant, as some post production

(42:45):
dubbing without live sound can be, instead it fits the
character the way that his voice doesn't feel like it's
coming like it's what should be coming out of his
mouth works and makes him feel more kind of magical.

Speaker 2 (42:59):
Yeah, I would agree, I would agree, So, yeah, it
didn't throw me off. It's one of those things I
only picked up on much later reading about the production.
All Right, now, I want to probably try and speed
things along here a little bit, so I'm going to
spend less time than I should, perhaps on some of
the additional cast members. We have a number of various
Elvin folk that are involved in the plot. For instance,

(43:21):
they're Screwball, played by the tremendous Billy Barty, who lived
nineteen twenty four to through the year two thousand, three
foot nine character actor who often played wise, cracking, little
person roles, but he instantly stands out in any ensemble
cast because he is at the heart just a tremendous
character actor. His uncredited work goes back to I believe

(43:42):
nineteen thirty and apparently includes a very small part as
the baby in nineteen thirty five's Bride of Frankenstein. So
one of those early scenes with the little miniature people
in the vials.

Speaker 3 (43:53):
Wow, I didn't realize that so.

Speaker 2 (43:54):
Many credits to Billy Barty, but they include the likes
of Roger Corman's The Undead in nineteen fifty seven. In
nineteen eighty seven's Masters of the Universe film, he has
a memorable role in that He's in eighty eight Willow,
but He also did some voice acting as well, like
nineteen nine he's the rescuers down under all right, some
of the other folks here, we have Brown Tom, who
I guess is kind of a leprechaun. He's part of

(44:16):
the good guy Elvin Cork here. He's played by Cork Hubert,
who lived nineteen fifty two through two thousand and three.
A four foot eleven actor. His other credits include eighty
one's cave Man under the Rainbow from eighty one and
nineteen eighty nine sent Bat of the Seven Seas.

Speaker 3 (44:32):
He has a real dad joke moment in the movie
that I think works pretty well.

Speaker 4 (44:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:37):
There's also there's a scene where he thinks he's been shot.
What I'm talking about? Yeah, yah, yeah, I love that.
That's great. Okay, all right, we have Pox. Pox is
a pig demon and somewhere underneath all of the prosthetics
for this role, there is a man by the name
of Peter O'Farrell. I couldn't find any additional information about

(44:58):
this actor in terms of his you know, when he
was born and so forth by His other credits include
nineteen eighty Hawk the Slayer, nineteen eighty five, Santa Claus
and he has a role in two thousand and two
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. All right, we
also have Blunder. We'll get into Blunder in a bit.
He's kind of he's one faction then another. But he

(45:18):
is played by Kira and Shaw born nineteen fifty six,
a four foot one and a half tall actor who
is Elijah Woods scale double in all three Lord of
the Rings films. His other credits include two thousand and
five's The Chronicles of Narnia, various Star Wars productions, The
Dark Crystal, and Raiders of the Last Dark. We also
have a fairy Una, played by Annabelle Lanyon born nineteen

(45:40):
sixty British actress who has worked a lot in TV.
She's our temperamental tinker Bell.

Speaker 3 (45:46):
She doesn't want you don't get to know about what
her powers are. That's that's for her to decide.

Speaker 2 (45:51):
Yes. Oh, and then we've talked about this is a
character that it comes up every now and then on
the show pretty much any time we're talking about hags,
because oh, we have such a hag in legend. The
character is Meg Mucklebones and the actor underneath there and
also I think doing a great job shining through and

(46:11):
making this a living being. Is Robert Picardo really? Yeah? Yeah.
We talked about him previously in our episode on Joe
Dante's Grimlins too, because he's like the he's like one
of the executives there that ends up marrying the lady Grimlin.

Speaker 3 (46:29):
Right, Oh, yes, that's right, Yes, what a beautiful marriage. Yes,
but he what is he? Is he like a coach
on The Wonder Years, Jim Teacher or something?

Speaker 2 (46:39):
Yeah, yeah, some sort of role like that. I'm wondering.
There's been a while since I've seen that he was
on China Beach, but most I think people would know
him from like Star Trek Voyager. He's like the hologram
guy on there. But his other film credits include eighty
one's The Howling, eighty seven's Inner Space. Oh, he's Johnny
cab in nineteen ninety's Total Recall, And he also has
a role in the twenty sixteen Coen Brothers film Hail.

Speaker 3 (46:59):
Season The Door Opened. You got in.

Speaker 2 (47:03):
Richard O'Brien what was apparently considered for this role, and
that's what led them to realizing that Curry would be
perfect for darkness. Wow, all right, some behind the scenes
people worth noting here. Production design Ashton Gordon, who lived
nineteen thirty through twenty fourteen, worked on such films as
nineteen sixty six As a Blow Up, nineteen seventy one's
Get Carter in two thousands Shadow of the Vampire. The

(47:24):
director of photography was Alex Thompson, who lived nineteen twenty
nine through two thousand and seven. Regular camera operator for
Nicholas Rogue in the nineteen sixties before becoming a director
of photography in nineteen sixty eight. Nominated for an OSCAR
for his work on the nineteen eighty two John Borman
epic ex Caliber, which I think that shows there's definitely
some great scenes in this with the lighting and shiny

(47:47):
armor that made me think about Excalibur.

Speaker 5 (47:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:50):
You've mentioned Excalibur before as a movie that is gleaming.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
Yes, and yeah, we have some gleaming armor in this
one as well. Thompson's other cinematography credits include Doctor FIBs
Rises Again, which we've talked about on the show Deathline
from the same year in nineteen seventy two, Michael Mann's
The Keep from eighty three Electric Dreams. In eighty four
Labyrinth in nineteen eighty six, which is like right next door,
So I guess he's just walking back and forth Leviathan

(48:15):
in eighty nine, Alien three and ninety two, Demolition Man
in ninety three, and Hamlet in nineteen ninety six. Who
you called this one out, Joe? What credit stood.

Speaker 3 (48:28):
Out to you? It's just because I saw it in
the credits as it was rolling by. So we have
somebody named Vic Armstrong as he was given two titles.
I don't remember what the first one was, but the
second one was Unicorn Master.

Speaker 2 (48:42):
Yes, yeah, it's not often you have a Unicorn Master
on set, but yeah, that's Vick Armstrong. He was also
the stunt coordinator born nineteen forty six, very prolific. Guinness
Book of World Records has Listen listed him as the
most prolific like stunt coordinator. But his earliest role is
apparently an uncre credited Ninja extra part in nineteen sixty

(49:02):
seven's You Only Live Twice.

Speaker 3 (49:04):
Oh recently came up in our Ninja episodes.

Speaker 2 (49:07):
Yep, he's still working well. The costumes in this are
pretty great costume designer and this was Charles Node. He
lived nineteen forty two through twenty twenty three English costume
designer whose work includes nineteen seventy Nine's Life of Brian,
the MNTY Python film, Blade Runner fourteen ninety two, The
Conquest of Paradise, another Ridley Scott film, Oh, and then

(49:27):
Braveheart from ninety five.

Speaker 3 (49:29):
Costumes are great, you could mention a number of them.
Mia Sarah's goth gown is just like the triangular color
hood thing. I don't know what that is, but it's great.

Speaker 2 (49:42):
Yes, Yeah, and then everything that Jack is wearing, from
his the rags that he's wearing initially like the faral rags,
to the like gleaming elven armor that he dons for
the main adventure portion of the picture. Yeah, But then
again we have to come back to the special effects
makeup and the special effects makeup lead on this was
Rob Botein, who've talked about on the show before, the

(50:06):
Rob Botein crew as well various people working with and
for him on this. He was born nineteen fifty nine,
special makeup practical effects wizard who worked on such films
as Squirm in seventy six, Star Wars in seventy seven,
The Howling The Thing from eighty two, The John Carpenter
version RoboCop from eighty seven. I think we talked about

(50:26):
him in that one as well. Total Recall from nineteen
ninety just capable of such phenomenally nasty, fleshy work. And
you know, it's hard to imagine this picture with anyone else.
It would be a different picture if anyone else had
done the makeup effects.

Speaker 3 (50:45):
Now, wait, so Robert Piccardo played the Johnny Cab. Did
Rob botteen make the Johnny Cab in Total Recall?

Speaker 2 (50:52):
Oh, that's a good question. I don't know for certain
on that, because I mean, we know for certain some
of the things that Rob Botein was doing on Total Recall,
you know, but I'm not sure about Johnny Cab. But
I guess it very likely.

Speaker 3 (51:06):
How to split my time between a quatto and a
Johnny Cab?

Speaker 2 (51:09):
Yeah, yeah, he was definitely on quato duty, all right. Now,
coming to the music, this film Fade famously features those
two separate scores. There's the original Jerry Goldsmith's score and
this is the one that is used in the original
euro theatrical release of the picture, But then for the
US theatrical release, they brought in Tangerine Dream to do

(51:31):
a new score for the film. Now, I, of course
is what we've been saying. Grew up on the Tangerine
Dream score, and I think it's absolutely excellent. I listened
to it a couple of times through while working on
notes for this episode. It really connected with me when
I was younger, and there are a few things that
I love more today as an adult than a really
good Tangerine Dream motion picture score, so this one, in

(51:55):
my opinion, They instantly elevate anything they touch, so it
was hard for me to set that aside and watch
a full cut of the picture, and even longer cut
of the picture that has this score by Jerry Goldsmith.
Jerry Goldsmith lived nineteen twenty nine through two thousand and four.
Multiple Academy Award winner, responsible for the scores of seventy
sevens to Omen Alien, nineteen eighties Star Trek, the Motion Picture,

(52:16):
and many more. Obviously, Jerry Goldsmith is no slouch. This
is his score for Legend is terrific. There are times
where it is maybe more is certainly more mainstream, more swashbucklery,
and its scope maybe by some estimates a little hammy
in an intentional way, but it's also just really great

(52:38):
in moments as well, like the whole section we'll get
into with the Hell Kitchen. Jerry Goldsmith's score here is tremendous.

Speaker 3 (52:44):
Yeah, it's a very traditional score you would expect with
the fantasy movie and it delivers on that front. But yeah,
as I said earlier, Rob, I know your love for
Tangerine Dream, for electronic music generally, but especially Tangerine Dream,
goes so deep. That is why shocked that you would
have us watch the director's cut. But what's the main
difference in the sonic texture here? What does the Tangerine

(53:07):
Dream score sound like in the US cut?

Speaker 5 (53:10):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (53:10):
I mean the Tangerine Dream cut is of course it's electronic,
it's very synth heavy, but it also has this kind
of ethereal, otherworldly vibe to it, you know that I
think is typified by that opening bit of music that
plays in the US theatrical cut, where it's like a
strange elven synth flute playing to you, you know, across

(53:33):
the dimensional barrier. Tangerine Dream is, of course a German
electronic act founded by the late Edgar Frosi who lived
nineteen forty four through twenty fifteen. There have been numerous
lineups over time, but he was the only consistent member
of the group at the time of this score. I

(53:53):
believe Christopher Frank and Johannes Schmoling were also in the group.
The band Tangerine Dream is still around. They still record
and tour, but it is a younger lineup, so none
of the original members. And I could be wrong in this,
but I don't think any of the current members were
alive when the band was initially formed. But you know,

(54:15):
I haven't seen them that. I assume they're still great,
but it is not the original members, all right. Finally,
of note, we also have two different vocal tracks on
the US release, We Have Loved by the Sun, a
Tangerine Dream track with vocals by John Anderson, former lead
singer of the band. Yes, this one plays towards the

(54:36):
end of the very end of the picture. I don't
hate it, but it's far outclassed. I think by the
end credit song, which is Brian Ferries, is Your Love
strong Enough?

Speaker 3 (54:46):
I was trying to describe this one, and it's like,
it's such a mood. It is soft, smooth, neon waves
of emotion.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
Yeah, yeah, I think it's a great vibe. You got
fairy and his vocals. Of course, this was the front
man of Roxy Music. Ridley Scott co directed one of
their music videos in eighty two and then on guitars.
For this track we have David Gilmour of Pink Floyd.
So great track, I think, A great way to end
the picture. I think is one that I overlooked this

(55:16):
when I was a kid. I was like, I had
some sort of cheesy pop song. But now now I'm like,
this song is amazing and it should be it should
be heard.

Speaker 3 (55:30):
You ready to go to the plot, Let's do it.
So note as we get into the plot that I'm
going to be talking about this from the point of
view of having watched the director's cut most recently. So
in this version, the plot begins with a character we
do not see or only see from behind, in a
high backed chair like doctor Claw. This is the Lord

(55:51):
of Darkness, and he is in a shadowy hall within
a stonework palace, illuminated by fire, with fog flowing across
the floor, and we hear his voice. It's deep and complex.
It's almost like it was kind of made of multiple voices,
or maybe it contains its own echo. And Darkness says,

(56:11):
I am the Lord of Darkness, I require the solace
of the shadows and the dark of the night. Sunshine
is my destroyer. All this shall change tonight, the sun
sets forever, there shall never be another dawn. So we
learn that the Lord of Darkness has a plan. He

(56:33):
wants to forever destroy the sunshine and rule over a
frozen kingdom of eternal midnight. And he calls forth his
most loyal, infernal servant, a foul, fetid goblin named Blicks,
and Darkness says that he senses the presence of an
enemy in the forest outside, an enemy that, mercifully he

(56:54):
had almost forgotten the existence of. But now it's sort
of resurging in his mind. Out it's a power that
threatens him. What power could that be, well, Darkness says,
looking upon these frail creatures, one would not think they
could contain such power. One could rule the universe with it.
And then he tells Blicks, you must find them for

(57:16):
me and destroy them. Blicks asks what these creatures look like,
and Darkness gets very angry, says, you fool, and he
stabs a piece of silverware into Blix's head. Or it
might be a dagger or something. So the answer is
they look like this. They've got a single spike growing
out of their heads, like an antenna reaching up to heaven. Now,

(57:39):
Blix is like, okay, single horn on the head, intenna
reaching to heaven. Got it. I will destroy them. And
but wait a minute, how am I going to find
these creatures? And here, Darkness says, you know, there's only
one lure for such disgusting goodness, one bait that never fails.
Blick says, what's the bait? And Darkness says, in no sense,

(58:01):
in no sense. I can't quite capture Tim Curry's delivery there,
but it is the best.

Speaker 2 (58:09):
This, this is this is a great scene. Pretty much
any interaction between Blicks and Darkness is golden, and I
wish we had more of it, because yeah, Darkness is
of course just absolute, over the top dramatic evil, and
Blicks is of course also extremely evil, but in a
more sniveling way. But also you know, like he like

(58:33):
clearly Blicks canon will betray Darkness at any moment, but
he also knows he could be destroyed at any moment
by Darkness, so he's yeah, I love this line where
he's like, what be the baby?

Speaker 5 (58:44):
Please?

Speaker 2 (58:45):
You teach you teach me, you know, and oh it's
so good.

Speaker 3 (58:49):
Yeah, Blix is your classic subordinate villain, who is who
is haughty and abusive when he is out on his
own with his own subordinates, but then very survive when
in the presence of his of his infernal lord.

Speaker 2 (59:02):
Yeah, it's it's tremendous. Great vocal performance, great physical performance,
shining through the makeup.

Speaker 3 (59:09):
It's a bummer that Blicks and the other goblins just
disappear at some point in the movie, like somewhere in
the second act. They never show up again.

Speaker 2 (59:16):
Yeah, I think I read that at some point it
was they'd written it so that they would come back
in for the final showdown, you know, which would make sense, right,
because there's especially Blick's is such a great character. This
is such a great secondary villain. It's weird that he
just like retires or something.

Speaker 3 (59:34):
Yeah. So Blicks goes out hunting the in no sense
with a couple of other goblins. One of them is
a bipedal hog named Pox, and the other is a
goblin whose face we do not see. This goblin is
named Blunder, and he wears a cage visored bucket helmet
with horns.

Speaker 2 (59:54):
Yeah, he kind of looks like he could have wandered
out a labyrinth down down the studio road there.

Speaker 3 (59:59):
Yeah, So next we're going to meet our main characters,
Lily and Jack. Lily is a princess, but we learned
that she does not want to be cooped up in
the stuffy castle with her servants and her glittering treasures.
She wants to wander free in the countryside and roam
through the forest. She hangs out with peasants in their cottages,

(01:00:20):
and especially she wants to meet up with Jack, and
she I think she's talking to well, I don't remember
if she's talking to one of her peasant friends or
to Jack when she says this, but she says, this
place holds more magic for me than any palace in
the world.

Speaker 2 (01:00:35):
So Lily is, of course the embodiment of purity and
innocence here, but there is something more, and it's kind
of underscored at this point in the picture, especially I imagine
more so in the US theatrical cut. But I think
her privilege is also really key to her character, because
you know, who would deny you anything princess? You know,

(01:00:56):
you know, she's really sweet and she's innocent, but she
does feel like she has the right to everything in
the world, be it walking into a peasant's house and
observing their life and feeling to some level like she
gets to be a part of it, or, as we'll
see in a bit, that she should be able to
walk right up to a unicorn and touch it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:16):
Yeah. The other side of innocence is naivety, and so
she does not realize the consequences of her actions and
maybe doesn't even consider them.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
Yeah, she doesn't understand that there are things in the
world that are not meant for her.

Speaker 5 (01:01:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:01:31):
Now, the other character is Jack, played by Tom Cruise,
and Jack, I'm not sure exactly what he is in
the movie. I see if you agree with this, Rob,
I think the layout is that he is biologically a
regular human, so he's not a fairy or an elf
or any of the other types of hidden folk that

(01:01:51):
we meet in the story. But he does not seem
to be a part of human society and seems to
live alone in in a kind of ageless and carefree
communion with the forest. He's almost a hot raticas.

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
Yeah, I think. I think hot ratagas is a good
way of putting it. I also was thinking of him
as sort of a fairal Peter Pan, you know, so
he also has more than his share of innocence. He's
very connected with with nature, very connected to the forces
of light in the fairy folk, but this is underscored
a bit as well. But he's also lusty, granted in

(01:02:29):
a way that I think we're to understand is a
largely in a largely innocent way, you know, part of
his youthfulness. And it's not like he's manipulating Lily or
anything like that. But his desire is obvious as well,
so you know, it's like that's kind of that's we're
setting that up to be his sin here. And I
mentioned this because the plot, especially in the in the

(01:02:49):
director's cut, is very concerned with the interconnectedness of light
and darkness, as well as feelings of shame and our
two protagonists, though it feels rather lily heavy in that regard,
which I guess, you know, kind of matches up the
basic story of Adam and Eden, where it's you know,
far more shame is placed on the female in the
scenario when really it takes two people to touch sacred fruit.

Speaker 3 (01:03:11):
Yeah, so Jack and Lily they meet together in the
forest to frolic about, and eventually Jack takes Lily to
show her something very special. He sort of blindfolds her
while he's leading her to a secret place, and he
takes her blindfold off when they arrive. They're at this
kind of hidden brook somewhere in the forest glen, and

(01:03:33):
what they see there is a pair of unicorns that
emerge from the trees, and then they kind of gallop
about together like they're playing. And these unicorns, we understand,
are sacred creatures, almost primordial, and their fates are linked
to the fate of the world itself. So Jack communicates somehow,

(01:03:54):
we've got to treat these creatures with reverence. You know,
remember she had to be like blindfolded to go to
their secret ground.

Speaker 2 (01:04:01):
Yeah, yeah, these This matches up with some of the
ideas swirling around the concept of the unicorn. We talked
about unicorns in an older episode of Stuff to Blow
Your Mind, where at times like the unicorn is presented
as Christ as Jesus Christ himself in the form of
a single horned horse.

Speaker 3 (01:04:20):
Now we watch the unicorns play together and Lily becomes enraptured,
I guess because of her In no sense, she does
not take the proper precautions in their presence. She doesn't
want to hold back and just observe them from a
distant a distance like Jack recommends. She sort of runs
out of hiding and touches one of them.

Speaker 2 (01:04:39):
I think the stallion, right, And it's not so much
the touch that is going to be disastrous, but it
does impact other elements in play.

Speaker 3 (01:04:49):
Right, because all along Lily has been tracked by the
goblin trio. They've been they've been following the in no sense,
and sure enough, the inno since led them straight to
the unicorns. And I think this is around the scene
where Blick says that line may be innocent, may be sweet,
ain't half as nice as rotting meat. So we see

(01:05:11):
where Blick's preferences lie, and they are with death and attack.
So they when the goblins see the unicorns, I think
Blunder yells out look ugly, one horned mule, and they
take the opportunity to strike. They shoot one of the
two unicorns with a poisoned dart, and the unicorns gallop away,
and I think at first Jack and Lily don't realize

(01:05:34):
what has happened. Like Jack is disturbed that Lily was
so brazen with these holy creatures, but he is quickly
distracted by love because Lily takes off a piece of jewelry,
a golden ring inlaid with gems, and she throws it
into the pool at the base of a waterfall where
they're hanging out, and she says, I'm gonna marry whoever
finds this ring, and Jack is just hot diggity he

(01:05:58):
dives right in after it. Now a lot happens while
Jack is diving under the water looking for the ring.
The goblins catch up to the unicorn, which is faltering
under the influence of the poison, and blicks his dart
and they go up to it and they chop off
its horn, and this instantly causes a worldwide calamity. A

(01:06:20):
supernatural winter descends. The peasants are frozen solid in their cottages.
Ice forms over over the pool where Jack is diving
for the ring, so like when he comes up for air,
he has to break through the ice. Lily is caught
out in the blizzard and she runs in terror as
the goblins come tramping through the new world of frosty

(01:06:40):
horror that they've created. It's a scary time.

Speaker 2 (01:06:43):
And it must have been scary to read this script
and think about producing this. You know, this is it's like,
we're gonna build a forest, then it's gonna be winter
in the forest. We're gonna have a frozen over pond.
We're gonna have somebody swimming in that and breaking up
through the ice later, Like I don't know. This is
one of the many places in the film where you
really have to admire the what they really set out

(01:07:04):
to do here, Like this is a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:07:06):
Blick says, mortal world turned ice. Here be Goblin paradise.
So the goblins are having a ball. They run around
using the unicorn horn as a magic wand they're just
doing all kinds of mischief and Lily eventually tracks them
back to their Goblin camp, which I think his position's
sort of down in a kind of ravine or a

(01:07:27):
pit in the earth, and they've got a fire going
and they're playing around with the horn, and this is
all good stuff. I love this scene. I think this
is where Blick says, higher burning fire making music like
a choir, and they're all sort of talking about what
they could do with their newfound of power. I think

(01:07:47):
the pig goblin. I love this suggests turning everything into garbage.
That's a quote. He says, why not turn everything into garbage,
A big, towering mountain of slot. Wouldn't that be magic.

Speaker 2 (01:08:01):
He's a simple guy. He knows what he wants.

Speaker 3 (01:08:03):
Love, numb, numb, garbage.

Speaker 2 (01:08:05):
Now, my one of my recurring questions on this rewatch
of Legend, given recent changes and slaying, is this goblin mode?
Does this constitute goblin mode if you're not familiar. Goblin mode,
as defined by the Oxford Dictionary in twenty twenty two,
is a type of behavior which is unapologetically self indulgent, lazy, slovenly,

(01:08:26):
or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms
or expectations.

Speaker 3 (01:08:30):
You know, I would say that the goblins in this
movie are not in goblin mode by default, but in
this particular scene, they are going goblin mode. Okay, like
Pox's desire to quote, turn everything into garbage, that's goblin mode.

Speaker 2 (01:08:46):
That's different, right, yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:08:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:08:49):
Now, at the same time, Blick's he seems he's having
a big time here waving this unicorn horn wand around,
and it seems like he has he has greater designs.
He's thinking about the power of the wand here and
what he could do.

Speaker 3 (01:09:02):
With it I don't know, So we'll see what happens
and when Darkness shows up. So Darkness arrives at the
goblin camp. He's covered in a cloak, so we still
don't see his face or his true form. And this
is where one of the three goblins I know it's Blunder,
the one with the helmet on, tries to take the
horn and use it to usurp the power of the
Lord of Darkness, but he's he's not strong enough. Tim

(01:09:25):
Curry just like sucks it out of Blunder's hand magically
and then reanimates a nearby mummy to grab up Blunder
and cast him into a crevice in the earth, though
we'll meet him again later.

Speaker 2 (01:09:37):
Yeah, this is a great thing because basically, yeah, Blicks
has been playing around with the wand there's really getting
into it and has all these flourishes to his movements.
You know clearly he's really digging this power trip. And
you get the impression that Darkness has shown up really
to be like, Okay, enough of this before it gets
out of hand. I'm here for what's mine. So but
Blix is smart enough to just drop it to the

(01:09:58):
ground immediately.

Speaker 3 (01:10:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:10:00):
Yeah, but Blunder is stupid, and Blunder is like, oh,
there's the wand it's mine now, this is my time
to shine, and as sind at the top, and he's
just instantly destroyed. Yeah, or seemingly at the time.

Speaker 3 (01:10:14):
Blunder has some good lines though, before he gets cast
into the ravine when they're like they're talking about uh
Lily and they're like, oh, she's so beautiful, and then
Blunder's like, I know, I could eat her brains, Like jam, they.

Speaker 2 (01:10:27):
Just don't have the same values as mortals.

Speaker 5 (01:10:31):
Though.

Speaker 3 (01:10:31):
Unfortunately, the mission is not fully accomplished because Darkness is like,
you fools, look, Dawn is about to break. That means
one of the unicorns still lives. You have to get
both of them, So go find the other unicorn and
bring it to me.

Speaker 2 (01:10:45):
Yeah. Yeah, because the remaining unicorn is the Mayor And
they're like what, it's just the female and Darkness is like, yeah,
that one has the power of creation, you dummies, Like
that's the most important unicorn.

Speaker 3 (01:10:55):
Yeah, so you got to bring me unicorn too. Meanwhile,
Jack wakes up being frozen in the Blizzard of wickedness,
and when he does, when he wakes up, he is
surrounded by a coterie of hidden folk. So there is
a sort of panlike magical boy called Honeythorn Gump. I
think he's supposed to be an elf, do they say?

Speaker 2 (01:11:16):
Yeah? I believe so.

Speaker 3 (01:11:17):
I don't know technically what all of the fantasy classes
of these creatures of the forest are. They're all various
hidden folk of different kinds. A couple of them are
Brown Tom and Screwball. They will be companions along the
rest of the journey. In the movie, there is a
fairy creature named Una, who I think is like a
will of the Wisp. Honey Thorn Gump is sort of

(01:11:40):
the leader of them. He's got the most lore information
in his head and seems to like kind of know
what's going on. And Gump is interesting. He has these
great fantasy time units that he always talks in. All
the expressions of time are things like three flicks of
a badger's or two hundred beats of a sparrow's heart.

Speaker 2 (01:12:03):
Yeah, it's like you get the impression where if you
were in tune with nature as much as an elf
is or any of these magical fairy folk here you
would know exactly what that means. You would innately know
what that means. But to us mortals, we're a little
lost on the particulars.

Speaker 3 (01:12:19):
Yeah, there are some initial negotiations. When they first meet
Tom Cruise, he has to answer a riddle or die.
I think, is that right?

Speaker 2 (01:12:28):
I'm always this scene kind of lost me a little bit.
I'm not sure exactly what is happening in the scene.
But then it's kind of like, Okay, I guess he
passed the test, whatever it was.

Speaker 3 (01:12:39):
Also, I don't understand the logic of the riddle. The
answer is flowers, bluebell flowers, but I don't understand how
it corresponds to the riddle itself. Anyway, they eventually decide
that Tom Cruise is the Champion foretold who must defend
the world from the Lord of Darkness, and so there's
a scene of him being sent to raid a treasure

(01:12:59):
trove and a hit barrow to get magical armor and weapons.
Around here is where I first started to notice that
Tom Cruise is not getting to stand up in this movie.
He's always squatting or creeping on the ground.

Speaker 2 (01:13:11):
Yeah, and now he has like a golden chain mail
skirt to wear the whole time. Yeah, and a really
cool shield and sword too, So he's decked out. He's
gotten his plus one plus two gear from the Dungeon
Master and is ready to hop into the main adventure. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:13:27):
Meanwhile, there's a scene where Lily makes her way to
sort of the camp where Jack originally was, but they
don't meet up. Lily is there with the Unicorn Mayor
and they get captured by the goblins and taken back
to Tim Curry. And there's a funny moment here where
Brown Tom, who was with one of the good guys,

(01:13:48):
he gets shot in the head with an arrow and
you think he's dead, and he thinks he's dead. When
his companions show back up, he says, I was shot
through the brain pan. But then he takes his hat
off and he literally had a pan in his hat
and it was the air went through it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:04):
It's a great moment. When this movie wants to be
silly and funny, it succeeds.

Speaker 3 (01:14:16):
So now that Tim Curry has Lily and the last
living Unicorn, that they got to turn this into a
rescue operation, right, So Jack and his magical friends make
the journey to the Layer of Darkness to confront Darkness
and his minions, which and I thought this was interesting.
It's shown from the outside and it is not your
typical stone castle, but seems to be built inside a giant,

(01:14:41):
ancient tree. The Honeythorn Gump describes it by saying, the
Great Tree. When evil anarchy ruled the land, the wicked
came here to sacrifice. That's an interesting, almost kind of
biblical foundation story that, like the Cursed Play, is a
place that you associate with the sacrifices made by an

(01:15:04):
ancient enemy.

Speaker 2 (01:15:06):
It's interesting too in that like what we have here
in form and it looks amazing in the picture we
see like the spots of carry and birds circling around it.
But in many respects you could compare this to like
a world tree from various mythologies, you know, connecting the
realm of Earth to the realm of the cosmos. But
it's corrupted and it's dark. But on the other level,

(01:15:29):
numerous times we have, especially our evil characters, speak to
a universe here in which darkness was the purity of
existence that was then invaded by light. And therefore it
maybe feels kind of fitting that the world tree here
is something of the darkness because the darkness is the
original structure of the universe.

Speaker 3 (01:15:49):
Yeah, it is an interesting mythology. And again we get
these statements about the necessary interconnectedness of the elements that
come back in the very end as well. On the
way to the castle, they've got to do battle with
a swamp hag.

Speaker 2 (01:16:03):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:16:03):
We brought a meg Mucklebones early on, played by Robert
Piccardo in some amazing makeup and prosthetics or I don't
know if there's puppetry involved in as well.

Speaker 2 (01:16:13):
It feels like it. There's feels like there's some sort
of like a device that's moving him around at the base.

Speaker 3 (01:16:19):
Yeah. So it's like a big old Jenny Green teeth
pops up out of the water and is going to
eat Tom Cruise because she's like, you look delicious, and
he starts trying to get out of it by flattering
her beauty and she ends up saying, ooh, what a
fine meal you'll make be the rest of you as
sweet as your tongue.

Speaker 2 (01:16:39):
Oh and this scene, this scene is just so perfect,
but just and I'm just to touch on like some
of the little things that make it great. The scene
where he has the resplendent golden shield up and Meg
is like close to it, half seeing a reflection in it,
and her nails are tapping against it, and there's all

(01:17:00):
so there's the gleam of the shield and then also
there's a little bit of her sliminess on it. So
it's just like visually and just sonically too, that tapping.
It's just got complete overload. It's just a tremendous scene,
even in this small detail.

Speaker 5 (01:17:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:17:13):
Yeah, So eventually Meg is decapitated and our heroes, you know,
they go on their way into the Great Tree of Wickedness,
where they quickly fall into a pit and end up
trapped inside prison cells. Now they will get out of
these eventually released by the Fairy Una after she reveals
that she had abilities that even Gump did not know

(01:17:34):
of before. She's interesting because she's one of the heroes,
but she's capricious, you know, she doesn't want to be
pinned down. She's like, I'll do what I want, and
you know, just so happens that that turns out to
be helping them sometimes. But she also wants Tom Cruise.
By the way, yes, but while in this prison they
meet the goblin Blunder who reveals he is not actually

(01:17:57):
a goblin. He takes his helmet off and learned that
he is one of the hidden folk of the forest
and known to Screwball and Brown Tom. But I guess
he sort of went astray and now he's back on
the team. But unfortunately, right after they meet him and
realize who he is, he gets snatched up by their
jailers and the dungeon and taken away to be baked

(01:18:19):
into a pie. Because this dungeon is right next to
the kitchens of Hell. This set we need to talk
about the hell kitchens. Here, there's this doctor Salvador prep
table in this blood Bucket kitchen, where like right in
the middle of the floor there are random fires burning,

(01:18:39):
so it's like a barbecue preparation area attended by like
bondage axe murderers.

Speaker 2 (01:18:46):
Yeah, they're like big ogres and execution hoods, just very
physically intimidating. The fires are just raging, like just out
of control levels of flame. It's like a delirious vision
of hell, like a baroque mashup of Texas chainsaw massacre
and a medieval wood cut. And they're also throughout like

(01:19:07):
the last half or third of the picture. There are
also just lots of creepy statues, Like there's a pazuzu
statue from that pops up twice, I think, once in
the swamp and then once in the depths of the
underworld here. Sometimes those statues are actually alive and they move.
So there's just a very rich, disturbing visual world down

(01:19:29):
here in the hell. Kitchens are just yeah, absolutely terrifying.

Speaker 3 (01:19:33):
Now, there's also an extended series of scenes, a kind
of drama here where after Lily is brought to the
palace as a captive, Darkness decides that he wants to
seduce her, and he's sort of instructed by this other voice,
this kind of statue or other god speaking to him.
I think it says, make her one of us, and

(01:19:53):
so that's his goal. He wants to take the innocence
of the princess and to make her evil as well,
to bring her into the darkness and make her a creature.

Speaker 5 (01:20:04):
Of the night.

Speaker 2 (01:20:05):
You know, it's interesting that you look at this in Labyrinth,
two films being made at the same time, next door
to each other. They both have very similar elements in
that you have a dark lord who is pleading with
like trying to seduce and ultimately just offering to be
subservient to a woman. He is in love with a
mortal woman. And they I'm to understand that with Labyrinth too,

(01:20:30):
they were they were aware of what was going on
in Legend and made deliberate choices with Jareth the Goblin
Goblin King to portray him in a less like overtly
satanic manner and like finding a different sort of form
for him. But it is interesting that, yeah, out of
the same production timeline, you're getting like these two different

(01:20:50):
I guess kind of like equally iconic versions of somebody's
potential supernatural boyfriend, you know, from beyond the realm of mortals,
you know. So it's like, ultimately, like who do you
see yourself with on the dating show? Is it Darkness
the Prince of Evil, or is it Jarret the Goblin King.

(01:21:11):
I don't know, your preference may vary.

Speaker 3 (01:21:13):
But now Lily here goes through a transformation. At some
point she gets a kind of spell cast on her
while in the banquet hall of Darkness here, and she
becomes Goth Lily. She like transforms to have this bizarre
gown with like there's sort of this this we were
talking about this big extending triangular hood or collar thing,

(01:21:39):
and then like a big V cut in the middle
of it, and her hair gets very stringy and dark,
and she's got this, I don't know what you call it,
the kind of a twiggy, twiggy black crown on her head.
It's a it's a very strange and interesting look and
props again to the costume designers there. But so there's

(01:21:59):
like it's it's to symbolize that she has in a
way had a spell cast over her, but she that
doesn't mean she's been like hypnotized fully by the Lord
of Darkness, because she's still not into him at this point.
He's he's trying to make all these you know, seducing
her to evil kind of moves, and she she's still
screaming like no, I will do nothing for your pleasure.

(01:22:22):
But in the end she does appear to make a turn.
She says, Okay, I will stay with you here if
you will grant me one thing. Let me be the
one who cuts the throat of the last unicorn instead
of you and Tim Curry. You could just see him.
He's like, yes, yes.

Speaker 2 (01:22:41):
He's like this is exactly the sort of thing I'm
into and I'm so glad you are into it as well.

Speaker 5 (01:22:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:22:46):
But oh but before we get to that point, I
have to talk about her brow though. Oh because yeah, yeah,
because yeah, the costume of Goth Lily is amazing, you know,
the makeup is amazing. But they make a seemingly very
deliberate choice to narrow and nearly unify her brow. So
she has this very sweek monobrow unibrow going on here

(01:23:09):
in a way that is of course also very like
beautiful and hot. Don't get me wrong, it is enough.
It is like the kind of like stylized younibrow that
can make you realize, you know, it is like maybe
a silly cultural thing that some of us don't think
brows should grow together, because here's proof that it can
look really cool. But like, first they made this decision,

(01:23:30):
and I wonder like how they talked about it behind
the scenes, where they're like, I really think we need
to give her a unibrow here, and like maybe people
were doubtful and then they saw the results and they're like, no,
you got it. This is exactly what God Lily needs.

Speaker 3 (01:23:44):
So the audience at this point may be left to
wonder like, okay, has she fully been captured by the darkness?
Does she want to kill the unicorn for real? But no, No,
Lily has a plan, and Jack's about to get a
plan too. Like the Jack and his friends. They've snuck
into the palace and they're like peeking through a through
a window and watching what's going on. And so Jack

(01:24:06):
comes up with an idea that involves bringing light into
the darkness. So they need to go gather a bunch
of big shiny plates from the hell Kitchens, which have
shiny plates for some reason, that they're going to use
to create a series of reflector beams to bring sunlight
from up above down into the darkness where it will
destroy Tim Curry.

Speaker 2 (01:24:26):
Now on the way.

Speaker 3 (01:24:28):
At one point they get drawn into a fight with
the Ogres and the hell Kitchen. I think they they
beat them by like dumping out a big pot of broth.
Unclear exactly how this fight is resolved.

Speaker 2 (01:24:41):
Here now, Yeah, I'm not sure either. But while it's happening,
the fight is very cool. There's a lot of running
around and jumping and dodging, and of course the set
is amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:24:50):
And skipping over a few more things that go on
in the Palace. Here it all leads up to this
final confrontation where Lily and Darkness are down there with
the last unicorn, and Lily is about to exercise her
privilege to be the one to put an end to
all goodness and bring on the forever night, and Jack
and Honeythorn Gump are They've got the plans set up

(01:25:12):
to bring the light in, and they're watching from above
with bows drawn as this is about to happen, and
Gump is saying, oh, no, she's going to kill the unicorn.
You've got a stopper, Jack, But Jack says, no, I
trust you, Lily, And so this is a sort of
repeated idea that he puts his trust in her, and
it was well placed because she in fact does not
go through with hurting the unicorn. She instead cuts it

(01:25:34):
free of its bindings, and then it kicks off a
final action scene where Jack rushes in to fight the
Lord of Darkness and put an end to this once
and for all. The fight scene here, I'm of mixed
opinions about it. It has some cool elements, something about
it feels kind of thrown together in a way, but

(01:25:56):
individual moments of it I like.

Speaker 2 (01:25:58):
Yeah, I think the thing I was most impressed by
is that Darkness still feels like a cohesive entity here,
despite the fact that we're suddenly seeing him move around
a lot more like he's swinging a giant sword. He's
like shooting fire from his fingertips and in one sequence
like runs like charges like a bull at jack and
sort of like pins into the wall and snarls at him.

(01:26:22):
And I feel like like, if the effects were not
just so on point here, either this wouldn't feel believable
or we wouldn't see an attempt like this at all.

Speaker 3 (01:26:32):
Yeah, yeah, I agree. And he has some great dialogue
in the scene too, like while they're fighting at one point,
Darkness as every wolf suffers fleas 'tis easy enough to scratch.
Oh and then at the final defeat, okay, so you know,
they blow the doors open with the sunlight brought in
through the maze of mirrors, and it shines a big
ray of sunlight onto Darkness, which is a destructive It

(01:26:55):
like unleashes this destructive gale upon him that blows him
out through this big sort of aperture we've seen in
the wall. There's like this gap in the wall that
seems to lead out into space and the night we
just see black and stars beyond it. And as he's
being blown out, Darkness says, you think you have won?
What is light without dark? What are you without me?

(01:27:17):
I am a part of you all. You can never
defeat me. We are brothers eternal. But he is seemingly defeated.
He's blown out into space. And I just want to
point out for comparison, So the villain of this movie
is destroyed by being sucked out into space? How is
the Starbeast defeated at the end of Alien, also by
Ridley Scott from several years earlier, blown out the airlock.

(01:27:41):
Both of these movies end with the villain being the
villain nor the monster being blown out into space.

Speaker 2 (01:27:47):
That's also how Gladiator defeated Emperor Commitists in that movie,
right just out through the airlock. You know.

Speaker 3 (01:27:54):
Strangely, I would say, Thelma and Louise does have an
almost kind of out into space ending.

Speaker 2 (01:27:59):
That's true, Yeah, like into the void. I guess you
could say. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:28:03):
Now, after the evil is defeated, the unicorn is all right.
Somehow we see the other unicorn revived, so now they're
both okay. The Supernatural Winter ends, Lily is freed and
everything can go back to normal. I think depending on
which cut of the film you are seeing, there'll be
a slightly different ending. There might be one where it
seems like they're going to get married or something. I

(01:28:25):
think there is one ending where we hear Darkness laughing
after the happy ending, suggesting, oh, he's actually coming back.
The ending of the director's cuts has them coming to
a kind of bittersweet agreement where Jack and Lily conclude
that Jack can't really be part of Lily's world, that

(01:28:47):
he is going to have to stay in the forest.
But she says, can I come visit you every day?
And he says yes, all right.

Speaker 2 (01:28:54):
I guess this getting into the the basic thesis statement
that our heroes are going to have to embrace darkness
and light, that they're going to have to find some
balance of things, and that maybe, like the ideal happy
ending isn't really in the cards. But I don't know.
But then I don't know. Especially in the US theatrical cut,
it does feel a lot more good conquers everything, you know,

(01:29:15):
good over evil, And then we can't argue with those songs.
We're hit first with that tangerine dream vocal track, and
then we get your love? Is your love strong enough?
And the answer is yes, clearly, the answer is yes
a million times. Yes, love is absolutely strong enough?

Speaker 3 (01:29:32):
Is your love strong enough to turn the world into garbage?
One great big mountain of slop?

Speaker 2 (01:29:39):
All right, Well there you have it legend from Ridley Scott.
I'd be very interested to hear what everyone out there
has to say about this film, like it, did you
see it? What version did you initially see? And what
were your impressions? And has it grown on you over
the years, like again, like it's a film that had
such an impact on me, like visually that it's always

(01:30:00):
stuck with me. But it's also a film that I
always come back to and realize that Hell, you know,
it's a little rough around the edges in the in
the end, but you know it's it's definitely developed its
own cult following and has become iconic in its own right.

Speaker 3 (01:30:13):
I can't deny there's something about it that just doesn't
quite come together. And yet I'm not going to get
rid of my copy. I know I'm gonna be watching
it again.

Speaker 2 (01:30:22):
Yeah, this is a great one to put on. I've
played this one before, just in the background with other
music on top of it, and it's always a delight.

Speaker 5 (01:30:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:30:29):
All right, Well, we're going to go and close out
this episode of Weird House Cinema, but we'll be back
with the future installments, which air on Fridays in the
Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. If you want
to see a full list of the movies we've covered
over the years for Weird House Cinema, go to letterbox
dot com. It's l E T T E R B
O x D dot com. You'll find us on there.
Our user name is weird House and there's a list
of all the films we've covered and sometimes a peek

(01:30:50):
ahead at what's coming up next. Also, if you're on Instagram,
go to st b ym podcast. That's the Stuff to
Blow Your Mind podcast channel handle and you'll get updates
as well.

Speaker 3 (01:31:01):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuffed blow your
Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:31:21):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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