The Lord of Darkness wishes to snuff out the light in the world. He sends his goblin servant Blix to kill the the embodiment of that light, unicorns, and return with their horns. Innocence, he claims, will lure out the creatures. Princess Lili wanders into the forrest to meet her love, Jack. Hoping to woo Lili, Jack blindfolds her and escorts her to see the unicorns. Unbeknownst to them both, Blix follows along, sees, and kills one of the two unicorns. The world is plunged into a deep winter. The Lord of Darkness still fears the coming dawn and reprimands Blix for leaving another unicorn alive. Blix manages to capture the unicorn and Lili. Meanwhile, Jack teams up with a band of elves, dwarfs, and a fairy, and the group prepares to rescue the unicorn and the Princess. The group trudges through swamp, castle, and all sorts of evil minions on their quest. Will light and love be strong enough to challenge the Lord of Darkness? Well—it’s a fairy tale, isn’t it?
What a mixed bag. Ok, let’s start with the good. This film is gorgeous. Seriously. From the production design, to the makeup and wardrobe, the film envelops you in its world as well as modern, CGI-assisted fantasy does. This is no more true than with the design of the Lord of Darkness, an effect sold through amazing cosmetics, scale, and of course, the legendary Tim Curry. We only really get this satanic-villain for a brief intro and the final 15 minutes and I found myself wanting more, because the performance and look was amazing. Finally, the film perfectly straddles being derivative of classical fairytales while feeling uniquely original.
But ultimately, the plot is a mess. In admittedly true fairy tale fashion, there’s so much of the film’s lore that was left unexplained or uncontextualized. This was no more the case than with the diverse array of characters we encounter (both good and bad). With shallow, barely-there character development, I never really found myself rooting for our band of heroes. Every now and then, you can see glimpses of other characters from famous stories in our cast, but this wasn’t enough to draw my interest in. Ultimately, I was glad to watch “Legend” and cross off a film with so much lore (both on and off the screen), but I was left merely whelmed.