Legend (film)

For the Hong Kong film known in the United States as The Legend, see Fong Sai-yuk (film).

Legend
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Ridley Scott
Produced by	Tim Hampton Arnon Milchan
Written by	William Hjortsberg
Starring	Tom Cruise Mia Sara Tim Curry David Bennent Alice Playten Billy Barty Cork Hubbert
Music by	Jerry Goldsmith Tangerine Dream
Cinematography	Alex Thomson
Editing by	Terry Rawlings
Studio	Legend Production Company/Arnon Milchan Productions
Distributed by	Universal Pictures (USA & Canada) 20th Century Fox (International)
Release date(s)	December 13, 1985 (1985-12-13) (United Kingdom) April 18, 1986 (1986-04-18) (United States)
Running time	94 minutes
Country	United Kingdom United States
Language	English
Budget	$30 million
Box office	$15,502,112

Legend is a 1985 fantasy film released by Universal Pictures, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Tom Cruise, Mia Sara, and Tim Curry. Though not a very notable success when first released, it received a single Academy Award nomination for Best Makeup, and since its initial release, has developed a cult following.

Plot

The story is set "once, long ago" in a world of unicorns, fairies, goblins, and demons. Hidden in a dark lair, the antagonist, the Lord of Darkness (Tim Curry) instructs his goblin servant, Blix (Alice Playten), to locate the two unicorns that roam the nearby forest and remove their horns. If the unicorns die and their horns are removed, the Lord of Darkness can ensure that dawn never again breaks, and sunshine never returns.

In the forest, Jack o' the Green (Tom Cruise), a young recluse, meets with his love, Princess Lily (Mia Sara). As one of a few forest dwellers able to locate the unicorns, Jack takes Lily to see the creatures while being followed by Blix and her two cohorts Pox and Blunder. The unicorns appear and Lily ignores Jack's pleas not to touch them. As Lily approaches the unicorns, the goblins attack with a poisoned blowpipe dart, hitting the stallion. The unicorns bolt, with neither Lily nor Jack noticing the attack.

Jack chastises Lily for ignoring his warnings. Unaware of the repercussions of her touching the unicorn, Lily engages Jack in innocent chatter and sets a quest for Jack by throwing her ring into a nearby pond and claiming that she will marry the one who recovers her ring. Jack immediately dives off the cliff into the pond to recover it. Meanwhile, overcome by the venom, the stallion dies and Blix removes its horn. The unicorn's death causes a fierce snowstorm, which freezes the pond. Unable to locate the ring, Jack breaks through the ice and resurfaces, to find the world transformed into winter with Lily nowhere in sight. Frightened by the storm, Lily returns to her village and enters a cottage owned by her friend Nell, a woodland dweller. However, she finds that Nell and her family have frozen as part of the curse brought on by the theft of the unicorn's horn. Hearing noises outside, Lily hides just in time to avoid arriving goblins, and overhears clues that explain the cause of the disaster. As the goblins ride off, Lily swears to undo her mistake.

Meanwhile, Jack meets Oona (a fairy), Honeythorn Gump (an elf), and Brown Tom and Screwball (two dwarves). Due to Jack's great crime of allowing a human to touch a unicorn, Gump is unwilling to lend his aid. At Jack's insistence, Gump puts a difficult riddle to him and offers forgiveness if it is answered correctly, certain that Jack will be unable solve it. Much to Gump's surprise and rage, Jack correctly answers the riddle. Gump soon recovers his composure and admits defeat, and invites Jack to join his party. The group then sets off on its quest together, and they discover the lifeless stallion without its mate, its companion alicorn. Gump and Jack conclude that the alicorn must be found at all costs, and only then will the world return to normal. Jack and the fairies leave Brown Tom with the female unicorn to find weapons for Jack. Lily runs back to tell Brown Tom that the goblins are coming for the female, and tries to help him, but they are discovered by the goblins. After a skirmish, Lily and the surviving unicorn are taken to the Lord of Darkness.

Jack, who has now been fitted with armor and a sword, is happy to learn that Lily is still alive, and resolves to rescue her. The comrades overcome various obstacles to reach the Lord of Darkness' lair, where they witness the evil Dark Lord trying to seduce Lily with his charm and power. Lily seems to succumb to the Dark Lord's advances despite initial resistance, and she asks for the privilege of killing the surviving unicorn. Jack and his friends overhear the Dark Lord tell Lily that sunlight will destroy him. Consequently they gather large metal dishes to use as mirrors, which they position around the castle in order to channel sunlight into the lair. The Dark Lord brings Lily to the unicorn, and Jack's friends encourage Jack to shoot Lily with an arrow to prevent the animal's death. Jack ignores their pleas, trusting his love. Indeed, Lily betrays the Dark Lord and cuts the unicorn free instead. Angered, the Lord of Darkness strikes Lily and she loses consciousness. Jack then appears and confronts the Dark Lord, but he is undersized and outmatched. As defeat looms, Jack plunges the stallion's horn into the Lord of Darkness' chest just as the last mirror is set in place and sunlight strikes the Dark Lord, blowing him towards a door leading to the void. But before Jack can finish him off, the Dark Lord warns that his evil can never be destroyed, claiming "I am a part of you all." Jack then sends the Dark Lord into the void, apparently destroying him.

Jack confused about his next step asks Gump what to do, but he tells him that only he (Jack) can solve this riddle. Gump then restores the unicorn to life by refitting its horn to his head. Jack attempts to revive Lily, but she remains asleep under a spell. Jack dives into the pond and recovers the ring. As Jack slips the ring onto Lily's finger, the Princess awakens. Lily then removes her ring and gives it to Jack, who invites her to return the next day. She returns home, and as Jack runs off into the sunset, Gump, Oona, and the rest of the group, including both unicorns, wave goodbye to Jack, the quest now concluded.

The U.S. theatrical cut ends with Jack and Lily running off into the sunset together. As Gump and their companions wave goodbye the final shot is of the Lord of Darkness laughing one last time, indicating his statement that darkness cannot be completely destroyed—it always exists to counterbalance light, until the two merge into one, transcending the bounds of duality.

Cast

• Tom Cruise as Jack o' the Green
• Mia Sara as Princess Lily
• Tim Curry as Darkness
• David Bennent as Honeythorn Gump
• Alice Playten as Blix, and uncredited voice of Gump*
• Billy Barty as Screwball
• Cork Hubbert as Brown Tom
• Peter O'Farrell as Pox
• Kiran Shah as Blunder
• Annabelle Lanyon as Oona
• Chris Lorch as Piecepypes
• Robert Picardo as Meg Mucklebones
• Tina Martin as Nell

Gump's voice was dubbed by Alice Playten because an executive thought that David Bennent's voice sounded too German.

Development

While filming The Duellists in France, Ridley Scott came up with the idea for Legend after another planned project, Tristan and Isolde fell through. However, he felt that it was going to be an art film with limited audience appeal and went on to make Alien and did pre-production work on Dune, a project of his that also did not happen (but eventually finished by director David Lynch). Frustrated, he came back to the idea of filming a fairy tale or mythological story. For inspiration, Scott read all the classic fairy tales, including ones by the Brothers Grimm. From that, he came up with an idea for a story about a young hermit that was transformed into hero when he battles the Lord of Darkness in order to rescue a beautiful princess and release the world from a wintery curse.

Screenplay

Scott wanted Legend to have an original screenplay because he felt that "it was far easier to design a story to fit the medium of cinema than bend the medium for an established story". By chance, he discovered several books written by William Hjortsberg and found that the writer had already written several scripts for some unmade lower-budgeted films. Scott asked him if he was interested in writing a fairy tale. As luck would have it, he was already writing some and agreed. Scott remembers, "The first notion was to actually make a classical fairy story, but if you actually analyze a classical fairy story, most are either very short, or very complex". The two men bonded over Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast. In January 1981, just before beginning principal photography on Blade Runner, Scott and Hjortsberg spent five weeks working out a rough storyline for what was then called Legend of Darkness. Originally, Scott "only had the vague notion of something in pursuit of the swiftest steed alive which, of course, was the unicorn". Scott felt that they should have a quest and wanted unicorns as well as magic armor and a sword. Hjortsberg suggested plunging the world into wintery darkness. Scott also wanted to show the outside world as little as possible and they settled on the clockmaker's cottage. Initially, the quest was longer and eventually substantially reduced. Scott wanted to avoid too many subplots that departed from the main story and go for a "more contemporary movement rather than get bogged down in too classical a format". By the time Scott had finished Blade Runner, he and Hjortsberg had a script that was "lengthy, hugely expensive and impractical in its size and scope". They went through it and took out large sections that were secondary to the story. The two men went through 15 script revisions.

Pre-production

The look Scott envisioned for Legend was influenced by the style of Disney animation. He had even offered the project to Disney, but they were intimidated by the film's dark tone at a time when Disney still focused on family-friendly material. Visually, he referenced films like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia and Pinocchio. Early on, Scott worked with Arthur Lea as a visual consultant who drew some characters and sketched environments. However, Scott eventually replaced Lea with Assheton Gorton, a production designer the director had wanted for both Alien and Blade Runner. Scott hired Gorton because he knew "all the pitfalls of shooting exteriors on a soundstage. We both knew that whatever we did would never look absolutely real, but would very quickly gain its own reality and dispense with any feeling of theatricality".

Scott also consulted with effects expert Richard Edlund because the director did not want to limit major character roles to the number of smaller people who could act. At one point, the director considered Mickey Rooney to play one of the major characters but he did not look small enough next to Tom Cruise. Edlund came up with the idea of shooting on 70 mm film stock, taking the negative and reducing the actors to any size they wanted but this was deemed too expensive and Scott had to find an ensemble of small actors. Universal Pictures agreed to finance and distribute Legend on a budget of $24.5 million.

In order to achieve the look of Legend that he wanted, Scott scouted locations in the Sequoias of Yosemite National Park to see the grand scale of trees there. "The whole environment is so stunning ... It was so impressive, but I didn't know how you would control it". However, it would cost too much to shoot on location and he decided to build a forest set on the 007 Stage, named after and used for many James Bond films, at Pinewood Studios. The crew spent 14 weeks constructing the forest set and Scott was worried that it would not look real enough. It was only days before the start of principal photography that it looked good enough to film. The trees were 60 feet high with trunks 30 feet in diameter and were sculpted out of polystyrene built onto tubular scaffolding frames. In addition, other sets were constructed on five huge soundstages.

Casting

While Scott was considering Richard O'Brien to play Meg Mucklebones, he watched The Rocky Horror Picture Show and saw Tim Curry. He thought the actor would be ideal to play Darkness because the actor had film and theatrical experience. Scott discovered Mia Sara in a casting session and was impressed by her "good theatrical instincts".

Makeup effects

Scott contacted Rob Bottin, who designed the special makeup effects for The Howling, about working on Blade Runner, but Bottin was already committed to John Carpenter's The Thing. Scott told him about Legend, and towards the end of production on The Thing, Bottin read a script for the film and saw an excellent opportunity to create characters in starring roles. After wrapping his work with Carpenter, Bottin met with Scott to reduce the number of creatures to a manageable quantity (the script suggested thousands). The process would involve complicated prosthetic makeup that would be worn for up to 60 days with some full body prosthetics. According to Bottin at the time, Legend had the largest makeup crew ever dedicated to one project. Bottin divided his facility into different shops in order to cover the immense workload. As actors were cast, Bottin and his crew began making life casts and designed characters on drafting paper laid over sketches of the actors' faces. He designed the prosthetics in his Los Angeles studio and then spent some time in England occasionally helping with the application of makeup.

With the exception of Tom Cruise and Mia Sara, all the principal actors spent hours every morning have extensive makeup applied. Between 8-12 prosthetic pieces were applied individually to each face, then made up, molded and grafted into the actor's face so that their muscles moved with the prosthetics. Each person needed three makeup artists working on them for an average time of three and a half hours spent applying prosthetics. Actor Tim Curry took five and a half hours because his entire body was encased in makeup. Out of all the characters, the most challenging one in terms of makeup was Darkness. Curry had to wear a large, bull-like structure atop his head with three-foot fiberglass horns supported by a harness underneath the makeup. The horns placed a strain on the back of the actor's neck because they extended forward and not straight up. Bottin and his crew finally came up with horns that were lightweight enough. At the end of the day, he spent an hour in a bath in order to liquefy the soluble spirit gum. At one point, Curry got too impatient and claustrophobic and pulled the makeup off too quickly, tearing off his own skin in the process. Scott had to shoot around the actor for a week as a result.

Principal photography

Filming began on March 26, 1984 on the 007 Stage at Pinewood Studios. On June 27, 1984, with ten days filming left on this stage, the entire set burned down during a lunch break. Reportedly, flames from the set fire leapt more than 100 feet into the air and the clouds of smoke could be seen five miles away. Fortunately, it occurred during lunchtime and no one was hurt. Scott quickly made changes to the shooting schedule and only lost three days moving to another soundstage. Meanwhile, the art department rebuilt the section of the forest set that was needed to complete filming. Four large trees were dropped into an existing forest and Scott shot the snowbound scenes there.

Post-production

Scott's first cut of Legend ran 125 minutes long. He felt that there were minor plot points that could be trimmed and cut the film down to 113 minutes and tested this version for an audience in Orange County. However, it was felt that the audience had to work too much to be entertained and another 20 minutes was cut. The 95 minute version was shown in Great Britain and then the film was cut down even further to 89 minutes for North America. At the time, Scott said, "European audiences are more sophisticated. They accepted preambles and subtleties whereas the U.S. goes for a much broader stroke". He and Universal delayed the North American theatrical release until 1986 so that they could replace Jerry Goldsmith's score with music by Tangerine Dream, Yes lead singer Jon Anderson, and Bryan Ferry. Scott allowed Goldsmith's score to remain on European prints and the composer said, "that this dreamy, bucolic setting is suddenly to be scored by a techno-pop group seems sort of strange to me". Normally, Goldsmith would spend 6–10 weeks on a film score but for Legend he spent six months writing songs and dance sequences ahead of time "so they could shoot them. Of course all that is out now".

Rediscovery

In 2000, Universal unearthed an answer print of the 113-minute preview cut with Jerry Goldsmith's score. This print had minor visual anomalies that were eventually digitally replaced with finished shots from the 89-minute U.S. version. This edition, what director Ridley Scott now calls his preferred "director's cut", and whose source is one of only two prints of this extended version known to exist, was used for Universal's 2002 DVD (and eventual Blu-ray) "Ultimate Edition".

Music

Soundtrack

Due to the changes in the film from its European and American releases, Legend has two different soundtracks. The first, produced and composed by Jerry Goldsmith, was used for its initial European release and restored in the director's cut edition of the Region 1 DVD release. The second soundtrack features music by German electronic artists Tangerine Dream and was used for the initial theatrical and home video releases in the United States. This soundtrack also includes songs by Jon Anderson of Yes and Bryan Ferry of Roxy Music. Both soundtracks are available on CD, though the Tangerine Dream soundtrack has become harder to find.

Songs in the film

The following songs were seen in the European and Director's Cuts, with lyrics composed by John Bettis (composer of many Carpenters songs) and music by Jerry Goldsmith:

• "My True Love's Eyes" (the main theme, sung mostly by Lily. Mia Sara provided some of the singing, while session singers provided vocals wherever Sara was unable to perform).
• "Living River" (the first reprise of "My True Love's Eyes", sung as Lily calls to the unicorn).
• "Bumps And Hollows" (sung by Lily after her forbidden act of touching a unicorn).
• "Sing The Wee" (the theme for the fairies. The first sung version was cut from all editions of the film as it accompanied a scene with Jack and the fairies that was itself cut; the final sung version by the National Philharmonic Chorus is heard over the end credits).
• "Reunited" (the final reprise of "My True Love's Eyes", sung by Lily as she says goodbye to Jack).

The following songs appeared in the 89-minute U.S. re-cut when it was re-scored by Tangerine Dream:

• "Loved By The Sun" (music by Tangerine Dream, lyrics written and sung by Jon Anderson).
• "Is Your Love Strong Enough" (written and performed by Bryan Ferry over the U.S. print's end credits).

A promotional music video (presumably for the U.S. market, where the Tangerine Dream soundtrack was used) was created for the Bryan Ferry song "Is Your Love Strong Enough". The video, which incorporates Ferry and guitarist David Gilmour into footage from the film, is included as a bonus on disc 2 of the 2002 "Ultimate Edition" DVD release.

Home media

DVD

In 2002, Universal released the aforementioned 113-minute "director's cut" on Region 1 DVD restoring previously cut scenes, and the original Goldsmith score. In creating the director's cut edition, producer Charles de Lauzirika turned to Legend fan and unofficial historian Sean Murphy, who runs the Legend FAQ and Terry Rawlings, the editor of Legend, for help in finding the footage for the Ultimate DVD creation.

Blu-Ray

Universal has released a Blu-ray version of the "Ultimate Edition" as of May 31, 2011. With the exception of the 2002 DVD-ROM features, this disc carries over all the content from the DVD, including the Jerry Goldsmith-scored "Director's Cut" and the Tangerine Dream-scored theatrical version.

20th Century-Fox, the international rights holder, is planning a Blu-ray issue of the 94-minute European version (also with Jerry Goldsmith's music) for Region 2 later this year.

External links

• Legend at the Internet Movie Database
• Legend at AllRovi
• Legend at Rotten Tomatoes
• Ridley Scott's LEGEND FAQ
• LA Weekly interview with screenwriter William Hjortsberg on the making of Legend