Pictures At an Exhibition Legend

By RICHARD CORLISS

Along time ago, in a conference room far, far away . . . it was ordained that sword-and-sorcery movies would be the Next Big Thing. Just imagine crossing the fantasy worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien and George Lucas! Mythic reverberations! Megabucks! Didn't work. The crossbreeding produced curious offspring: the low- birth-weight Dragonslayer, the gnarled Krull, the sepulchral The Keep. Most 1980s moviegoers found the landscapes of these films too remote, the quests too familiar, the special effects too rudimentary--no laser blades here, just an endless arsenal of singing swords. Nor did the heroes and heroines of these chivalrous tales have much vitality; they were as pure as toothpaste, and as sexy. How could the Forces of Evil defeat these perfect folk? And how could the modern moviegoer care? Only Conan the Barbarian made much box-office noise, perhaps because it had Attila Schwarzenegger punching out entire races as if he were a Dark Ages "Duke" Wayne.

And yet adventurous filmmakers like Ridley Scott continue to buck the trend and spend the bucks on these archaic entertainments. Legend cost about $30 million, runs only 89 minutes in its current form, and had its U.S. release delayed for almost a year before surprising everybody with two consecutive top-grossing weeks. But even with this belated victory, why should Scott have bothered making Legend? Because, of all movie genres, the quest epic is the one most amenable to the artistic dictatorship of studio moviemaking. The fantasy world is not a photocopy of any world present or past; it exists only in the mind of the screenwriter, the eye of the production designer, the hands of the carpenters, the computerized Wurlitzers of the effects wizards. God is in the details, and he sits in the director's chair.

Scott is a past master of artifice. In Alien (1979) he devised a grungy spaceship through which a ravenous parasite moved and mutated. In Blade Runner (1982) he created a city that existed simultaneously in the 21st century ! and the film noir 1940s. Legend offers more of the hermetic same. Virtually all of the movie's "outdoor" sequences were shot in the caverns of England's Pinewood Studios. The fairy dust that caresses the heroine is borne on wind machines. Most of the actors play their roles (goblins, elves, trolls) inside elaborate masks. The whole idea is to turn image into narrative, to let every synthetic picture tell a real story.

Scott must have thought the story of Legend was immensely rich and complicated; the film begins with a 168-word crawling preface. Yet it is as simple as a bedtime tale, and may have the same effect: putting the kiddies right to sleep. Lili (Mia Sara) is a fairyland princess, all coquettish glances and sweet mischief. Her beau, Jack o' the Green (Tom Cruise), is a swain of the woodland working class. When Lili touches one of the magic white unicorns--can't have your bucolic fantasy without some unicorns--the Lord of Darkness (Tim Curry) begins to work his evil alchemy. And the film, which has been reclining under glass, content to be admired like pictures at an exhibition, comes to seductive life.

Curry was the mad scientist of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, resplendent in black satin and bad manners. Here he is a figure of more majestic maleficence. Sprawling in the lubricious gloom of his lair, he looks like a huge Naugahyde goat demon who has been flayed and candied, then served sweet- and-sour at a Chinese restaurant in Middle-Earth. "I require the solace of shadows," he purrs to the benighted Lili. "Neath the skin, we are already one." And he leads her into a dance that black magically turns this virgin into Salome, fit for a satyr king. The film has grown up now; this is a bedtime story peopled with creatures of enticement and desire. Though Jack comes to the rescue, and Lili comes to her senses, their victory rings hollow. For the erotic legend that brings Legend alive is older than King Arthur, let alone Luke Skywalker. It is as old as the Eve in every woman and the snake in every man.