Review: Ridley Scott’s Legend Gets Limited Edition Blu-ray from Arrow Video

All that’s missing from Arrow Video’s stellar release of Ridley Scott’s cult fantasy is an accompanying unicorn horn.

LegendWhen Ridley Scott’s Legend landed on home video after a troubled production and poor performance at the box office, it found a legion of impressionable young fans who were captivated by its intoxicating world of poster-perfect unicorns and muscle-bound princes of evil, as well as its heavy use of synths. The filmmakers originally envisioned a far darker tale, one that explored complex themes of burgeoning sexuality and death, but its sharper edges were sanded down heading into production, and by the time of its stateside release the film was cut by close to 30 minutes. Legend’s North American release was then delayed to replace Jerry Goldsmith’s more traditional score with new music by Tangerine Dream, Bryan Ferry, and Jon Anderson, and audiences and critics were presented with a fantasy epic that many felt was half-formed and incomplete—the very picture of style eclipsing substance.

The story is so simplistic that it’s almost primeval. Princess Lily (Mia Sara) is in love with Jack (Tom Cruise), a wildling who spends his days frolicking with the creatures of the forest. In an effort to prove his devotion to his impertinent, inconstant paramour, he gives her a glimpse of the most sacred creatures in their land: the two remaining unicorns whose lives keep evil at bay. This choice proves fatal when Lily ignores Jack’s warnings not to touch the creatures, giving the goblin Blix (Alice Playten) and her cohorts, Pox (Peter O’Farrell) and Blunder (Kiran Shah), a window to kill one of the creatures and steal his horn for their cloven-hoofed master, Darkness (Tim Curry). With the world plunged into an apocalyptic winter, Jack must seek out and save Lily before she can succumb to the master of evil’s seductive embrace.

Legend is extant in two separate and fairly distinct versions: the shorter theatrical cut featuring Tangerine Dream’s polarizing synth soundscape, and a director’s cut utilizing Goldsmith’s more traditional fantasy-style score. Several of Scott’s films have benefited from the director’s cut treatment, namely Kingdom of Heaven, but Legend is something of an exception to that rule. The shorter running time means that there’s less ill-defined fantasy hogwash to parse, and the synth score is so much a part of the film’s strange magnetism that Goldsmith’s more conventional music is simply not as inviting.

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Legend’s sets were built on the Albert R. Broccoli 007 Stage at Pinewood Studios in England, and the film is a monument to a type of handicraft and special effects wizardry that simply doesn’t exist anymore. Rob Bottin, riding high off of his genre-defining effects work on John Carpenter’s The Thing, assembled the largest makeup crew ever dedicated to a single film project at the time, and crafted in Darkness one of the most strikingly indelible character designs of the ’80s. With Alien and Blade Runner under his belt, Scott had already proven himself something of a cinematic stylist, but Legend was a unicorn of a different color.

The film is overwhelmed by its style, and at the expense of character development. For so many, however, its sensuous visual textures are enough to carry it, and the Tangerine Dream score adds to the sensation that Legend has more in common with the era’s music videos than its fantasy epics. In fact, it’s the film’s supposed flaws (its over-insistent synth score, its leading with its heart rather than its mind, its preference for visual over narrative storytelling) that have made it utterly transportive for those discovering it for the first time, and the film remains an ecstatic fantasy nightmare as only the MTV generation could dream it.

Image/Sound

Though there was some disappointment when Arrow Video announced that it was unable to produce a 4K UHD scan of Legend, this package does the film justice with a brand new 2K restoration of the U.S. theatrical cut from the original materials. This restoration corrects many of the issues that plagued the 2011 Universal Blu-ray release. Arrow has cleaned up the grain field, squeezing more detail out of the frame even in the film’s darker moments, and recalibrated the unnatural colors for a more lifelike and pleasing palette. As noted in the package’s booklet, the grading for this restoration was meant to mirror that of the 2011 HD master director’s cut as approved by Ridley Scott, which is also included here. This dated restoration shows its age, and though it would have been nice to have an updated scan of Scott’s preferred cut, it’s an understandable omission given the effort that had to go into contending with the film elements and licensing issues. Both cuts are presented in the original 2.35:1 aspect ratio with stereo and 5.1 surround sound. The sturdy sound tracks are identical to what was present on the 2011 Universal release. Then and now, they bring considerable weight and dynamism to the Tangerine Dream and Jerry Goldsmith scores.

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Extras

Arrow, per usual, offers up a boatload of new and archival extras, including interviews, featurettes, and isolated scores. On the disc containing the theatrical cut is an enlightening new commentary by Paul M. Sammon, author of Ridley Scott: The Making of His Movies, and a slight but still interesting new featurette interviewing grip David Cadwalladr, costume designer Charles Knode, actress Annabelle Lanyon, and various other crew members.

The rest of the discs gather essential archival features on Rob Bottin’s effects, the differences between the two versions, music videos, and more. Perhaps the best feature on either disc is a two-part featurette titled “The Music of Legend,” which finds film music experts Jeff Bond and Daniel Schweiger, in addition to Austin Garrick and Bronwyn Griffin from Electric Youth, dissecting the inherent strengths and weaknesses of the film’s dual scores.

Arrow rounds out the package with an illustrated booklet with new writing by Nicholas Clement and Kat Ellinger, production notes, and a 2002 interview with documentarian Charles de Lauzirika about the restoration of the director’s cut, all of which add immeasurably to the mythos of the film’s making and one’s appreciation for its artistry. The package includes a large, double-sided poster with newly commissioned artwork by Neil Davies and original theatrical artwork by John Alvin, glossy full-color portraits of the cast photographed by Annie Leibovitz, six double-sided postcard-sized lobby card reproductions, and a reversible sleeve.

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Overall

Unless fans of Legend were hoping for an accompanying unicorn horn, it’s difficult to image them asking for a single lick more given the goodies amassed on this Arrow Video release.

Score: 
 Cast: Tom Cruise, Mia Sara, Tim Curry, David Bennent, Alice Playten, Billy Barty, Cork Hubbert, Annabelle Lanyon  Director: Ridley Scott  Screenwriter: William Hjortsberg  Distributor: Arrow Video  Running Time: 94 min  Rating: PG  Year: 1985  Release Date: October 12, 2021  Buy: Video, Soundtrack

Rocco T. Thompson

Rocco is a freelance writer on film, and an Associate Producer for CreatorVC’s In Search of Darkness series.

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