An Honor To Be Nominated: Legend

THE CONTENDER: Legend (1986)

Number of Nominations: 1 – Makeup (Rob Bottin and Peter Robb-King)

Number of Wins: 0

There are a handful of filmmakers who make the concept of a column like this somewhat difficult. It’s a problem I discussed when I wrote about Star Wars. Namely, the version of the film that is widely available today is not the same movie that was nominated for ten Academy Awards. The movie won Oscars for its visual effects and editing but today, thanks to George Lucas’ tinkering, those elements have been radically altered.

The Star Wars movies are extreme examples since Lucas literally removed the original versions from circulation. But there are other filmmakers who are arguably worse when it comes to making post-release changes. And yes, I am looking directly at you, Sir Ridley Scott. His filmography is so cluttered with extended, unrated and director’s cut versions that it’s almost difficult to think of a movie he hasn’t continued to fuss over. Even Gladiator, a movie that most people liked just fine the first time around and won Best Picture, received a superfluous “extended edition” on DVD. Some people are never satisfied.

So what are we talking about when we talk about Scott’s fantasy epic Legend? If it were up to him, he’d probably prefer that we only discuss the 113-minute director’s cut released on DVD back in 2002. If that’s not an option, then he’d likely steer us toward the 94-minute version released in Europe in 1985. That at least includes the original orchestral score composed by Jerry Goldsmith. But neither of those variants nabbed an Oscar nomination, so we’re going to focus exclusively on the 89-minute version released in America in 1986 with the synthesized musical stylings of Tangerine Dream. Sorry, Ridley.

If you read Starlog or Cinefantastique magazine back in the 80s, you were very, very excited to see Legend. I subscribed to both so I’m speaking from experience here. At the time, Ridley Scott seemed like the savior of science fiction cinema. He had blown everyone away with Alien and while Blade Runner had been a commercial flop, a cult of devoted fans was already beginning to form around it. Just the idea of Scott tackling the fantasy genre was enough to build anticipation. Given that track record and with pre-release publicity photos centered squarely on Rob Bottin’s spectacular makeup effects, Legend seemed like it should have been a home run.

Well, it wasn’t. Sure, Legend looks spectacular with its jaw-dropping sets and lush cinematography. But you could say that about any Ridley Scott movie. The man seems to be incapable of crafting a bad image. But looks ain’t everything and Legend has a whole raft of problems, starting, unfortunately, with its script. The idea to make a fairy tale came from Scott and he developed the story with the man who would write the screenplay, the late novelist William Hjortsberg (he’s probably best known for Falling Angel, which became the basis for the film Angel Heart).

The story they came up with would seem to have all the basic ingredients of a classic fairy tale. Good vs. evil. Light vs. darkness. Goblins, unicorns, fairies, elves, magic pixies…it’s a fifth-grade girl’s spiral notebook cover come to life. But what it doesn’t have is much of a point. Our heroes, forest dweller Jack (a woefully miscast Tom Cruise) and vaguely-defined “princess” (of what is never quite clear) Lili (Mia Sara), remain blank slates throughout. Cruise and Sara have zero chemistry as an on-screen couple, so there’s no reason to care whether or not they live happily ever after. Sara, at least, is given more than one note to play as she falls under the corrupting influence of Darkness (Tim Curry). But Cruise is simply out of his depth, unable to make the florid dialogue sound even remotely natural.

Tim Curry, on the other hand, bites into this kind of thing like a rare steak. His Darkness is easily the most compelling thing about the film. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Rob Bottin’s makeup is that Tim Curry’s essential Tim Curry-ness isn’t buried beneath all that red paint, rubber and fiberglass. You can still see him in his eyes and his mouth and you can definitely hear him in his voice, despite the addition of kind of chintzy vocal effects. In fact, almost all of the characters have some kind of weird, distracting video-gamey voice. Curry actually gets off pretty easy in this regard.

The makeup work by Rob Bottin and Peter Robb-King is nothing short of extraordinary and more than deserved its Oscar nomination. Darkness is obviously the marquee piece that gets all the attention but all of it is quite remarkable, from Darkness’ goblin toady Blix (Alice Playten) to Meg Mucklebones (played by Joe Dante regular Robert Picardo, of all people), a swamp-dwelling creature that deserved more screen time.

So how is it that makeup this great didn’t win? Well, Legend was released everywhere in the world except America in 1985. In this country, the release was delayed until 1986 so that Jerry Goldsmith’s score could be replaced by Tangerine Dream. And hey, I like Tangerine Dream a lot. But this is a bad score that screams 1980s even more than Giorgio Moroder’s music for The NeverEnding Story does. Anyway, that delay put Legend in competition with David Cronenberg’s The Fly for Best Makeup. As great as the makeup is in Legend, Chris Walas and Stephen Dupuis’ work on The Fly is arguably even better. Certainly the Academy would make that argument. They gave the award to Walas and Dupuis.

Not that an Oscar would have been a foregone conclusion if Legend had come out in ’85 like it was supposed to. In England, Legend was nominated for a BAFTA Award in the makeup category. Its competition included not one but two Oscar winners: Mask and Amadeus (which won). So no matter where they went, Bottin and Robb-King were up against some heavy hitters.

Rob Bottin is retired now but his work in special make-up effects has made him a legend in his own right. Movies like The Howling, The Thing, and RoboCop are classics today, thanks in no small part to his work. Remarkably, he never won a competitive Academy Award. He did eventually get one, as part of the visual effects team on Total Recall, but that was a Special Achievement Award presented in one of those weird years when the Academy can’t be bothered to nominate films and instead just hands it to you. And sure, I guess it doesn’t matter how you get your Oscar, just as long as you get one. Still, it seems like an odd injustice that one of the acknowledged masters of make-up effects never received an Academy Award for Best Makeup.

Legend is available on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital from Universal Studios Home Entertainment.