Movie Review--Legion

"Tell me, Gabriel, do you wish to be a son who gives his father what he asks for or what he needs?"
--Michael the Archangel, Legion


Legion is the product of combining the basic plot of the first Terminator with a highly inaccurate take on Christian eschatology, a combination kept afloat by its cast and its premise.  Slower than many apocalyptic stories, it tries to imbue its characters with depth, even if only a few stand out beyond their performances.  Legion is not the utterly horrendous film many critics treated it as upon its release, but it would have benefitted from tighter pacing and a more thorough exploration of certain characters (even though its characters do have more to work with than those of many recent films).


Production Values

For a movie about the onset of an apocalypse, there is a far greater amount of dialogue than action, meaning many scenes in Legion are not reliant on special effects.  An early possession scene shows its age, but the later angelic possessions hold up much better as far as the effects go.  Yes, angelic possession is shown instead of demonic possession, a unique take on an otherwise familiar cinematic and theological concept.

As for the two archangels that make appearances, Michael and Gabriel are particularly well acted, though Gabriel only appears on several occasions.  Without Paul Bettany's performance as Michael, Legion would not have the same core, as Michael's sincere but foolish philosophical stances ground the heart of the movie.  When the two archangels fight, the choreography does competently show how the archangels of Legion's universe utilize their wings for combat.

The human characters are not quite as developed as Michael, but the actresses and actors behind them are not devoid of emotion and talent.  Dennis Quaid, Adrianne Palicki, and Kate Walsh, along with the rest of the main cast, do handle their lines well--and they are even given more opportunities for development than plenty of characters from the past few years.  At the same time, some of them were clearly given less characterization depth than Michael, and the number of main characters also means the film cannot explore all of them to the same extent.


Story

Spoilers!

After being given a command by God to kill an unborn child who may help humanity endure an angelic apocalypse, Michael the Archangel stops directly serving God, removing his wings and traveling to find the child's mother.  Charlie, the mother, works at a gas station and diner, unaware of the significance of her pregnancy.  An elderly woman unexpectedly tries to kill her baby, the first of numerous humans possessed by angelic spirits to make the attempt.  Michael protects her, fighting alongside others at the diner as God's servants surround them.


Intellectual Content

Michael's entire basis for disregarding a command of God, who is portrayed as distant and susceptible to divine mood swings, is nothing more than conscience, the tool of no value for moral epistemology.  Conscience is not a guide to certainty about moral truths; it is a subjective thing that must be ignored, calibrated, or tossed aside if needed.  Rather than admit that God cannot be in moral error--there could be a deity without a moral nature, but if morality does exist, there is no moral authority other than God--Michael thinks that God can be persuaded to make a better choice, saying that Gabriel needs to give his divine father what he needs instead of what he wants.


Conclusion

Legion takes a fairly unique approach to Biblical metaphysics and eschatology, presenting angels as the villains and God as a morally confused entity.  This setup would certainly be heretical if it was actually treated like a legitimate exegesis of the Bible, but directors are not in the wrong just because they create an unusual story.  The basic story structure of Legion, apart from details like the fact that it is angels possessing people, is not anything novel, but the mythology of the universe is somewhat original (not that novelty is always a mark of artistic competence or that it is the most important part of a story!).  It is this and the performance of Paul Bettany that are the strongest aspects of the film.


Content
 1.  Violence:  A group of humans use firearms to kill human hosts for angelic possession in various scenes.  Gabriel uses his wings to cut the torsos of his opponents.
 2.  Profanity:  Variants of "fuck" are used all throughout the story.