I promise that this is not a sanctuary dedicated to Ridley Scott's filmography, but I do feel that many of his films are often misunderstood. None more so than the fantasy epic LEGEND of 1985 starring a feral Tom Cruise as Jack o' the Green, a sleepy Mia Sara as Princess Lili, and a devilishly robust Tim Curry as The Lord of Darkness--the focus of this particular essay.
The character is presented from the start as the film's antagonist; the maligned intruder whose only purpose in the story is to intervene and bestow misery upon our heroes--though, this could not be further from the actual truth. The legend of ... LEGEND (shut the fuck up) is in truth The Lord of Darkness' story, as if he had never felt the urge to expand his prowess in the first place, little to nothing would have ever happened in the world as a direct result. We would genuinely not give a thorough shit about anything else at all. Think about it. Jack and Lili would have had another ordinary day aside from Lili finally getting to witness the unicorns in all of their sacred glory. They would have just had their little encounter in the forest with them and that would have been that. The two insufferables would have then just continued to eye fuck each other and kiss like children in prep school until they grew old and died boring, separate, platonic deaths.
It is not until The Lord of Darkness himself decides to take control of his life, his destiny, that anything of merit happens within said story, and therefore, ipso facto, it is really his journey, and his inevitable downfall, that we are indeed following from the opening credits. He would have succeeded, too, in his plans of grandeur if it were not for those meddlesome, adolescent twerps. They really are the fucking worst.
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