Legion

All I wanted was to see some angels fight. That is not too much to ask for out of a movie. Paul Bettany was hot; I do appreciate that at least, but the movie...the movie was...I’m so irate with it’s failure that I find myself shaking with rage.

Let’s start with a simple logic problem. When writing a movie about angels, or any movie dealing with the Christian mythos for that matter, the first issue that must be addressed is the following question: is God all-powerful?

As a logic problem it would look something like this:

If God is All Powerful = True then Humanity Dies.

If God is All Powerful = False then Humanity has a Fighting Chance.

This is where you start because if you don’t have an answer to this question then you sure aren’t going to be able to write a movie about it. Whoever wrote this catastrophe of an apocalypse obviously grew up on The Prophecy and Constantine and was so excited about playing with ideas of angels, scripture, and Christianity that they apparently forgot you still have to have a believable mythos. The world you create must make sense.

I expected a particular level of suck from this film; let’s be honest about that. All I wanted was Paul Bettany with wings, preferably shirtless, fighting another man with wings, also preferably shirtless. I started to suspect there was trouble when the studio logo came up on the screen and it was BOLD pictures. Yeah. They call themselves Bold and apparently the best logo they could imagine for themselves was the world “bold” in bold font. Hyperbole is the BEST thing ever! We were off to a bad start, it was true.

Then the movie starts and the opening voice over is fine; not spectacular, but fine so far as movie about angels go. But then the music started. I pay attention to these things because music matters and when you’re making a movie about oh, say, THE FREAKING APOCALPYSE, you should have some pretty apocalyptic music--wouldn’t you agree? You better agree because I’m right. But still I thought to myself, Self--it’s gonna be okay. You aren’t expecting too much.

I feel a little bit like I’ve had a Dragon Wars pulled on me here. When I went to see that I expected dragons warring and was sadly (SADLY) disappointed, but this movie had Paul Bettany and in the end he is what saved it from being a total failure. I can’t even imagine what might have happened if they had to rely on Ashton Kutcher to carry that role. Probably I would have been in tears (but we all know I still would have seen it because the movie was about angels).

But even that part failed on many levels. The angels were sort of a part but not exactly. Because once again these people who thought they were so darned clever to present a new imagining of the Christian apocalypse couldn’t figure out which Christianity they wanted to present. After all, if God decides he wants to wipe out humanity and he’s all powerful then humanity doesn’t really get a say in the matter. If God decides he wants to wipe out humanity and he’s all powerful but the angel assigned to do the deed rebels perhaps, so long as it all happens in a short, finite amount of time, there is chance if said angel can reveal to God the error of his ways. If God decides he wants to wipe out humanity and he isn’t all powerful (or for some reason can’t use all of his powers to do so) then an angel absolutely can make a difference.

But if you present a God the audience is supposed to believe is all powerful and then there’s a baby that has to get protected for two days until it’s born and then has to be protected until it grows up...humanity is so screwed. Why? Because WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO FREAKING RUN FROM GOD AND HIS ANGELS? Kansas? Canada? Maybe New Zealand? What do all of these places have in common? Ding, ding, ding! They’re all on Earth and Earth is all under the jurisdiction of God! Hard to get away from a being that can literally see everything all the time. Hiding in the desert doesn’t exactly get the job done. Never mind the fact that he has a LEGION of angels at his beck and call. So one angel decides to rebel and won’t carry out the order? There are still thousands that must be fought off for an INDETERMINATE AMOUNT OF TIME.

You can’t fight the apocalypse because it’s the gosh darned apocalypse. By definition it happens everywhere at once. Even Iowa.

These are not questions that should stump screen writers. These are not even questions that are that hard if you’ve ever read a fantasy novel in your life. Even just reading Lord of the Rings would suffice. But apparently whoever wrote this monstrosity just assumed that because they showed us angels we wouldn’t think to hard about the physics of it all. Apparently they assumed no one would question the folly of trying to out run God.

I mean seriously. They try to out run God. I can’t...I can’t even deal with that right now.

I wanted angels. I wanted fighting. I wanted awesomeness. I would have settled for a few really cool scenes.

Instead I got a man and a woman climbing a mountain as the sun rises behind them literally hours after she’s given birth. Not even dealing with the fact that I have never known anyone that would climb a mountain after giving birth there isn’t even the pretense of subtlety in showing a man and woman carrying the savior of mankind coming over a ridge as the sun rises behind them. Like, I’m pretty sure that’s the visual equivalent of “Since the dawn of time love has been the greatest theme of all humankind.”

If this movie were one of my students’ papers I would fail it with malicious enjoyment. Malicious. I would make whoever turned it into me as a finished product cry with shame. And I would make sure they never, ever, did anything so silly again.

That’s how you keep the world safe.