Ten thoughts about Legion.

Last updated on: February 3, 2010 at 9:31 am by Peter T. Chattaway

Ten thoughts about Legion. 2010-02-03T09:31:00-08:00 Peter T. Chattaway

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

What a mess this movie is. When I first heard the premise two years ago, it raised certain questions for me — questions that I raised here and elsewhere — and I was curious to see how the movie would answer them. Well, in a nutshell, it doesn’t. It doesn’t even raise them. In a few cases, it even ignores the basis on which I asked them.

First thought: How can anyone make a movie about a rebel angel — in this case, Michael, who turns against God and his fellow angels to protect humanity after God decides to wipe us out — and not bother to make even a passing reference to Lucifer? Y’know, even just a line of dialogue to the effect that “This has happened before, but for a different reason”, or something like that?

Now, what would have been really daring would have been if they had featured a scene in which Lucifer showed up and offered to team up with Michael against God — not because Lucifer has any interest in saving humanity, per se, but simply because Lucifer wants to stick it to the Big Guy — and then you could throw in a few extra complications down the road as Lucifer tries to stab Michael in the back, too. I mean, c’mon, there’s a rich back-story here, and if they’re going to play around with it and subvert it in some way, the least they could do is demonstrate some familiarity with it and, I dunno, make it interesting.

Think about it. Not only would Lucifer want to oppose God just for the sake of opposing God, but Lucifer, I think, would also want to guarantee that humanity survives on some level, if only so that he can torment humanity. So he and Michael could have forged an interesting alliance, kind of like how the democracies under Churchill and Roosevelt teamed up with Stalin’s totalitarianism to defeat Hitler; there would always be this question hanging over their alliance, regarding what the allies might do to each other if and when they win the current battle.

And just think, the humans fighting alongside Michael might have had to decide whether to team up with Lucifer, knowing that he intended to do them harm once he had helped to ensure their survival. If Milton’s Satan could say that it was better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven, perhaps these humans could have decided it was better to suffer and live in the world as it is (under Satan’s influence) than to be wiped out entirely (under God’s orders).

I’m not a big fan of this movie’s premise, but now that it’s out there, the simple fact is that there are so many things that could have been done with it which this movie simply doesn’t do. Doesn’t even think of doing.

Second thought: Where the heck is the “legion” referred to in the movie’s title? We only get a good look at two of the angels: Michael and Gabriel. We hear about others, but they seem to do all their work through the human beings that they possess. (Note: these are angels, not demons, possessing the human beings. Just as there is no Lucifer in this film, so too there are no demons.) So Michael, who is rebelling against God because he believes in humanity even when God doesn’t, spends a lot of the movie killing human beings that have been assimilated by the heavenly collective — but with the exception of Gabriel, none of the other angels are even remotely put in harm’s way. What cowards.

Third thought: Are we supposed to believe that angels are just like human beings, except for the wings? Pretty much the very first scene shows Michael landing on Earth and cutting off his wings. He then goes into a bathroom and reaches inside the cabinet for a first-aid kit. And I immediately wondered if angelic anatomy and/or physiology was really all that similar to ours. (Does their blood clot the same way ours does? Etc., etc., etc.)

Fourth thought: There’s an obvious Mary-and-Joseph thing going on here, with the pregnant woman whose child is the ultimate hope for humanity, and the man who pines for the woman and is prepared to help her look after the baby even though it isn’t his. I confess I even got a kick out of the fact that, the first time we see the woman, she sits down wearing a red blanket over her blue whatever (thus echoing the traditional colour scheme in icons of the Theotokos, where blue symbolizes Mary’s humanity and red symbolizes her divinization; compare that to traditional icons of Jesus, who wears blue over red, symbolizing the humanation of his divinity).

But c’mon. Why is God trying to wipe out humanity only eight months after this child was conceived? Is this child the Son of God? If so, why is God suddenly pulling the plug? If not, then why does the child matter in the first place? (Side note: The movie never says who the child’s father is, but there is, shall we say, no indication that the mother is a virgin. And no indication that there was any sort of annunciation. Though the man who pines for the woman does admit to being kept awake by “dreams” he’s been having lately…)

And that’s another thing: Is this supposed to be the First Coming or the Second Coming? The director has reportedly said that this film acts as though the New Testament never happened. But if that’s the case, why do the characters use words like “Christ” as a curse-word? How did that word get into their language? (It’s kind of like how The Invention of Lying depicts a world in which no one has ever believed in God or religion, but they still say they live in the “21st century” or whatever even though they have presumably never believed in Christ, without whom we wouldn’t have a division between B.C. and A.D. in the first place.)

Sixth thought: There is, one must admit, some sort of basis in the Old Testament for a characterization of God as one who gives up on people and prepares to wipe them out, but can possibly be persuaded to change his mind (or, if you prefer, to un-change his mind). The movie refers to the example of the Flood, and I would also point to Exodus 32, where God threatens to wipe out the Israelites after they have worshipped the Golden Calf; Moses quickly persuades him to let the Israelites live (well, most of them, anyway), partly on the basis that it might harm his reputation among the pagans if he were to kill the Israelites so soon after saving them from the Egyptians.

But here’s the thing: in both of those examples, God always makes room for a remnant; when he sent the Flood, he saved Noah and his family, and when he threatened to destroy the Israelites, he promised to make Moses into a “great nation” in their place (so, strictly speaking, God wouldn’t have been destroying all of the Israelites; he just would have been doing a lot, lot, lot of pruning). But there is no such allowance for a remnant in the scenario envisioned by this film.

Seventh thought: This movie seems to draw a weird kind of parallel between God and the government. Suffice it to say that we hear talk of “militias” that have begun to fight back against the angels. Between that and the fact that this movie’s very premise is bound to offend a lot of conservatives, it would seem that the movie’s politico-cultural sensibilities are kind of all over the place.

Eighth thought: What exactly does “death” entail in the world of this movie? Is there an afterlife? If so, what is it like? Is it possible for angels to “die”, with or without their wings, and if so, what happens to them when they do? (This, obviously, connects to my earlier question re: the physiology and anatomy of angels, and how closely it resembles that of humans.) If we’re dealing with ultimate supernatural issues here, then I’d like to get a better handle on what the stakes are. Is the soul merely annihilated at death, or does it continue in some form? Etc., etc., etc.

Ninth thought: In a similar vein, I’d like to know what an angel’s powers are. It’s hard to get a handle on Michael, because he cuts his wings off at the beginning and seems, for all intents and purposes, to be just another human from that point on. But what about Gabriel? He swings a giant mace around, but if he didn’t have a tool in his hand, what would he be capable of? If angels can possess people, then what else can they do? Read minds? Make things levitate? Use the Force? I’d like to think that there is something more to being an angel than simply being able to fly and lift heavy objects. (Yes, they can apparently possess people, too, but I don’t believe we ever see Gabriel or Michael do the possessing, so it’s unclear just how an angel does that sort of thing; do they do it with nothing more than their minds, or do they need some sort of object/device to get inside someone’s head? Just where are the angels when all this possessing is going on, and what are they doing, exactly?)

Tenth thought: Why are some people possessed but other people never possessed? There is a throwaway line of dialogue to the effect that angels can possess people who are weak-minded or weak-willed — I forget the exact term — but my friend and I agreed that some of the characters who never get possessed don’t seem particularly strong in the mind/will department. So that throwaway line of dialogue only went so far, for us.

Bonus thought: Legion has a lot in common with some of the other movies showing at the multiplex right now. Like The Book of Eli, it has strong religious and/or apocalyptic elements. Like Avatar, it features a warrior who turns against his boss and his former colleagues to save the natives of some planet or other. Like Creation, it stars Paul Bettany as someone who parts ways with God partly because of the impending death of a child. Like Tooth Fairy, it features a protagonist who has wings, at least some of the time. And like A Single Man, it features a woman named Charlie (or Charley).

Truly, I ask you, has any single movie ever brought together so many other contemporaneous movies at the same time?

Uncategorized

Previous Post

February 2, 2010

Canadian box-office stats -- January 31

Next Post

February 3, 2010 Never mind the Titans, what about the Gods?

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Anglican Planet Articles BC Christian News BC Report Bible Movies Bible Review Blog Books & Culture Campus Times CBC Radio Christianity Today ChristianWeek Essays Faith Today Festival Cinemas Guide Film Journals Georgia Straight Interviews MB Herald National Catholic Register Salvationist Today's Christian Two Chairs Ubyssey Uncategorized Vancouver Courier Vancouver Sun

Select a Month August 2025 April 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 May 2024 February 2024 December 2023 May 2023 March 2023 November 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 September 2019 July 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 April 2012 January 2012 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 November 2003 October 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 March 2002 January 2002 December 2001 November 2001 September 2001 August 2001 July 2001 June 2001 April 2001 March 2001 February 2001 December 2000 November 2000 October 2000 September 2000 August 2000 July 2000 June 2000 May 2000 April 2000 March 2000 January 2000 October 1999 August 1999 May 1999 April 1999 February 1999 January 1999 December 1998 November 1998 October 1998 August 1998 July 1998 June 1998 April 1998 March 1998 January 1998 November 1997 September 1997 July 1997 June 1997 April 1997 March 1997 February 1997 January 1997 December 1996 October 1996 September 1996 June 1996 March 1996 February 1996 January 1996 April 1995 November 1994 September 1994 September 1991

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which king of Israel reigned the longest and led Israel into great wickedness?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Joash Manasseh Ahab Jehu