Envisioned as a big-budget spectacle that would resurrect the sword-and-sorcery genre kick-started by Conan the Barbarian in 1982, Legend had a lot riding on it in 1985. Despite featuring both rising star Tom Cruise and stage legend Tim Curry, and coming from the visionary director of Alien, the surprisingly dark fantasy underperformed at the box office, not even making back its staggering cost.
After 41 years, though, audiences can still see Legend‘s DNA in virtually every popular dark fantasy film, television show, and arguably even video game. There’s good reason for that: Legend remains an astonishingly beautiful film, with fairy-tale landscapes and torturous hellscapes that laid more visual groundwork than most box office disappointments ever manage. And whether as a slice of 1980s nostalgia or a visual skeleton key for all popular dark fantasy since, Ridley Scott‘s sole entry in the genre is still well worth a watch in 2026.
Ridley Scott and Tom Cruise’s ‘Legend’ Baffled Everyone in 1985
Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert gave Legend the dreaded two thumbs down on their weekly program, with Siskel going as far as naming it one of the year’s worst films. While Ebert acknowledged the incredible technical craft on display, he said the film needed a lighter touch akin to Errol Flynn‘s adventure films in the 1930s and 1940s. Siskel said that Cruise was clearly “just cashing a paycheck” and, bafflingly, deemed the look of Legend generic. “This genre has been beaten to death … doesn’t it all look the same, doesn’t it all blend together?” Siskel said. “It bores me to tears … this is dead meat.”
Cruise himself even trashed the picture in a 1986 interview with Rolling Stone, vowing to never appear in another film of its sort, following a grueling production schedule beleaguered by a devastating fire on set, and general lack of creative input from the star. Cruise said his role as the valiant hero rendered him “just another color in a Ridley Scott painting” — and Rolling Stone concurred, calling the film a waste of audiences’ 89 minutes.
‘Legend’ Pioneered a Visual Style That Still Thrills Fantasy Fans Today
Even in 2026, it’s hard to find fault with the film as pure visual spectacle. From the elaborate sets to the grotesque practical makeup effects by the legendary Rob Bottin, almost every frame of Legend has something worth drooling over for dark fantasy enthusiasts. Bottin reportedly worked himself to the bone, with multiple makeup shops required to bring a variety of goblin-esque bit players and the principal antagonist to life. In a contemporaneous interview with Cinemafantastique, Bottin said he’d been called to produce the “Vegas show from hell.” Curry’s transformation into the baldly Satanic Darkness required over five hours in makeup and for him to sport a massive, three-foot set of horns that challenged his balance — astonishing, especially given his physically expressive performance.
When it comes to ethereal forests and hellish torture dungeons in popular fantasy, Legend is undeniably the prototype. Its depiction of unicorns and fairy grottoes can be felt in The Lord of the Rings trilogy’s Hobbiton and hero Link’s hometown in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. And despite its PG-rating, an early scene laying out Darkness’s lair showcases a flailing victim apparently being dissected alive, while flame-lit torture devices and scuttling demons frame the scene. Even today, Scott’s vision of a “family-friendly” hell still resonates in dark fantasy series like Game of Thrones (with its harrowing torture sequences featuring Ramsay Bolton and Theon Greyjoy, AKA “Reek”) and some of the hellscapes players explore in Hidetaka Miyazaki and George R.R. Martin‘s blockbuster open-world game Elden Ring.
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“Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.”
Watched in 2026, it’s clear that Legend influenced decades worth of cinema and video games, and its practical makeup effects, elaborate sets, and hellacious, psychedelic colors can still drop jaws today. Whether it’s Tim Curry in the most elaborate “devil” makeup cinema has ever seen, Tom Cruise lopping the head off a grotesque bog witch, or the sheer majesty of a world tree enshrouded in fog and rendered in beautiful 1980s matte style, it’s still a marvel. The whole theatrical cut is also wrapped in an ethereal, pillowy all-timer of a Tangerine Dream synth score that makes the movie feel like a half-remembered dream.
While Ridley Scott never returned to the genre after the film’s reportedly nightmarish production, and Cruise has distanced himself from it, Legend is an audiovisual feast — warts and all. Anyone watching today with an open mind is in for a genuine trip that will feel like a visual prototype for much of the fantasy media they now enjoy.
- Release Date
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August 28, 1985
- Runtime
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94 minutes
- Writers
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William Hjortsberg
- Producers
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Arnon Milchan
