Legion (Movie Review)

Imagine for a moment a musician watching a movie about musicians. In the movie it is assumed that all musicians can play the piano. I suppose that the piano is a very common instrument that many musicians do play, so I can understand how someone might make that leap if they weren't a fan of music. A man on the street might see this movie where all musicians can play the piano and enjoy it very much. He might even compliment how well it was thought out and written. But a musician would walk away from the movie and say that it was very poorly written and not very though out. Hopefully, you and I can agree that the musician is not uptight or acting like a "know-it-all" because of this opinion. He simply has some information that the man on the street does not. The man on the street isn't stupid. He just hasn't spent any time looking into what it means to be a musician.

Why am I saying all of this when I'm supposed to be reviewing the movie "Legion"? Because I am the musician, and "Legion" is about a world in which all musicians can play the piano.

The premise of "Legion" is that God has finally lost faith in humanity and is just plain sick of us, so he is going to wipe us all out. But the archangel Michael rebels and comes to earth to defend an unborn child that will change God's mind about humanity if it lives. (Although why this is the case or the significance of the baby is never explained.) The mother works in a remote truck stop on a desert highway and it is here that the battle for the fate of mankind takes place.

Now, before I spend time evaluating the logic of the script (easily the film's weakest point) I'll tell you what I liked about this movie.

Visually, this flick is exactly my cup of tea. Dark and dirty. Even the angels have dark gray armor and silvery black wings. It's also deliciously creepy, taking innocent ideas like children, sweet grandmothers and ice cream truck drivers, and turning them into nasty cruel monsters. Brrr! I get a shiver and a grin just thinking about it! The atmosphere of this movie is great!

The special effects are pretty good and sometimes even wonderful. Of particular note is a fight scene between two angels near the end. I sometimes couldn't make up my mind if the wings were CGI or practical, which means they looked pretty good! Visually exciting but not groundbreaking or even very original.

Nothing particularly good or bad about the cast performances. They all get the job done but nobody's winning an Oscar.

Yep, all around a very cool movie... if I leave the sound off. This script falls apart to the point of being nonsensical almost from the get go.

The first image we see is Psalm 34:11 on screen, which reads: "Come, ye children, hearken unto me: I will teach you the fear of the LORD."

There are also several Christian references to the film. A crucifix around the neck of a character who is a self-professed Bible reader, a man tied up and tortured in the pose of an upside down crucifixion and several smaller references throughout the film. This is a script clearly pulling inspiration and frame of reference from the Bible, both Old and New Testament. And though I may be mistaken, it seems as though the writers simply scanned the Bible and took a few bits that, out of context, would support the reality they wanted to create, rather than using the text as a resource to determine the realities set forth in their story.

In the opening narration, it is suggested that God once loved us, but no longer does because he got tired of our behavior. But in the Bible we see that God has always been angered about our behavior. God's sense of justice and wrath are clearly evident in both the Old and New Testament. Jesus actually talked about hell more than he did about heaven. God's view of our sin has been consistent. The Bible also teaches that God does not change, lie, or change his mind. (Numbers 23:19,1 Samuel 15:29, Malachi 3:6, James 1:17)

We also hear about the idea of God losing faith and hope in humanity over and over again in the script. But God does not have faith in anything. God does not hope. Faith and hope both require someone to have incomplete knowledge. Michael also claims to be serving God in the way he needs, but not in the way he wants, as though Michael knows better than God. But God knows everything about everything, whether past present or future. (1 John 3:20, Isaiah 42:8-9, 46:9-10, Matthew 6:8, Psalm 139:4, 139:16) God knows exactly how badly we have failed and how badly we will fail long before we make the choice to be selfish or unloving. Our lack of goodness never surprises him. He doesn't become "tired" of us in the way "Legion" suggests because God's existence is not composed of a number of successive moments in which God, were he not all powerful, could "become tired". He is timeless in his being. (Psalm 90:2, Job 36:26, Revelation 1:8, 4:8. God's eternality is also suggested in the very construction of his name, Yahweh, as introduced in Exodus 3:14) Although he interacts with us in time, he is not limited to four dimensions.

God has zero faith in our ability to make up for our mistakes. Our ideas of what actions are sufficient to make up for our mistakes fall impossibly short of God's standard. God knows we are hopeless. That's why he entered the world as Jesus and voluntarily paid for the sins of everyone who ever chooses to trust in him for that purpose. Romans 5:8 says "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

Early in the film, Michael warns that God has sent his angels to exterminate all of humanity. One character asks Michael how this can be the case when the Bible portrays angels as "the good guys". Michael replies, without any explanation: "The truth is not that simple." This is an example of what we might call "assumptive language". Michael does not come out and say: "The Bible sometimes misrepresents the truth." His version takes the edge off, but you still have to buy this assumption, slipped under the radar, if you are going to accept Michael's statement. The same is true of statements like, "God lost his faith in humanity." This statement slips the statement "God does not know everything" under the radar. I'm not suggesting that the writers are trying to deceive viewers, but we should still realize that these are the worldview statements that drive their dialogue in its final form, and we are asked to accept these worldview statements if we want to suspend disbelief and enter their story through our imagination.

Probably the most critical of these worldview statements is the one connected to the Bible. In order for "Legion" to be possible in any form, the Bible has to be considered unreliable as a representation of the truth on some level, set aside and mostly ignored.

At this point you might ask, "What's wrong with picking and choosing what you want to believe from the Bible?"

Well, in a fictional story world, it's not catastrophic unless someone allows that story to influence their thinking about reality. This happens more easily than you might think. On more than one occasion I've talked to people who've told me that their very ideas about what might be real in the supernatural world came from TV shows like "Supernatural" or "Buffy The Vampire Slayer". Fiction is meant to excite our imagination and allows us to consider the possibilities of the universe. This is a great thing, although we need to do our homework and see which ideas presented in fiction are based on fact and which are fiction. It's dangerous to assume that the storytellers did a perfect job of collecting and applying research to their story.

Picking and choosing what we want to believe from the Bible in real life is nonsensical. If the Bible is not trustworthy, we ought to throw the whole thing out the window. Otherwise, how can we know which parts are reliable and which parts are not? We have to become our own ultimate source of truth if we believe we have the ability to choose what is true in the Bible and what is not. And if we know perfectly what is true and what is not, we don't need the Bible to begin with, do we? So why even reference any of it as true in this flick?

It would have made much more sense to present a modern world where the Bible does not exist and pagan polytheism is the truth. The god's of ancient Greece (and your average fantasy role-playing game) are very much like the god portrayed in "Legion": Petty and prone to changing their minds frequently as they fight among themselves. This would have been much easier to swallow and more internally consistent.

This movie fit very well with the philosophy of someone who is angry at God or Christianity. In this movie, God is a petty bad guy who needs to learn his lesson, and his creations are there to teach it to him. For someone with a tendency to reject anything to do with God or "religious stuff", this movie will speak to them strongly and affirm their belief. For someone who is interested in the Bible and is making an effort to understand what it teaches, this movie will likely make no sense and feel like a movie about musicians who can all play the piano, or about a world in which all Doctors are qualified to perform brain surgery. Logically, this movie falls apart from beginning to end.

All that said, my advice, Christians, is not to boycott this movie or raise a big stink over it. Controversy breeds interest in any case. It's not an awesome flick, so you won't miss much by passing on it. But if you know someone who is interested in watching it, take advantage of the opportunity to go and see it with them and exercise your ability to discern the truth. There is tremendous opportunity to have meaningful discussion after viewing this movie and have a much more positive impact than refusing to see it if someone you know is going. Hopefully the car ride home will be interesting and lead to a mutual exploration of truth.

Rated R for strong bloody violence and language.

Quality: 7.5/10

Relevance: 10/10