I also caught the movie Legion at a midnight opening last week. The film had its interesting moments but overall it wasn't very well made and I definitely could have waited for it to appear in the bargain DVD bin at Blockbuster.
Legion is a dark and twisted Christmas card on film. The premise: God has lost faith in humanity so He orders the angelic hosts to bring on the apocalypse. We see darkness, swarms of insects and other phenomena, but mostly we see angels possess other human beings (e.g. the foul-mouthed, wall-crawling old lady prominently featured in the commercials).
God has created a special child who will possibly be born to a pregnant waitress in a diner and could somehow oppose and counter-act the apocalypse. But then in a spectacular example of logic, He also orders the archangel Michael to kill this self-same child before it is born.
The interesting thing is that Michael ends up being almost a perfect inversion of the Islamic concept of the devil by refusing this command. At one point he even announces that when God made mankind he was the first angel to bow down to the the crowning glory of God's creation (as opposed to Iblis in the Quran who refuses to bow down to Adam). And to add another level to the inversion, just as al-Hallaj suggested that the commandment to bow was more a test of the purity of the devil's monotheism than a straightforward order, in Legion, the commandment to bring on the apocalypse was really a test of compassion (which Michael passes) by holding on to his faith in humanity.
see also:
the devil and al-hallaj
Unfortunately, this one interesting aspect is outweighed by the film's various flaws including: 1) There is way too much violence given that the film is ultimately a fable on compassion. 2) Unlike the film The Prophecy which was able to portray angels with a dark side with the right amount of tension, most of the "angels" in Legion just appear creepy and demonic. 3) More specifically, the angel-possessed crowds basically made Legion reminiscent of a zombie movie. But then the massive crowds clearly could have overwhelmed the heroes in the dinner and it isn't plausible that our heroes would last as long as they do.
Legion is a dark and twisted Christmas card on film. The premise: God has lost faith in humanity so He orders the angelic hosts to bring on the apocalypse. We see darkness, swarms of insects and other phenomena, but mostly we see angels possess other human beings (e.g. the foul-mouthed, wall-crawling old lady prominently featured in the commercials).
God has created a special child who will possibly be born to a pregnant waitress in a diner and could somehow oppose and counter-act the apocalypse. But then in a spectacular example of logic, He also orders the archangel Michael to kill this self-same child before it is born.
The interesting thing is that Michael ends up being almost a perfect inversion of the Islamic concept of the devil by refusing this command. At one point he even announces that when God made mankind he was the first angel to bow down to the the crowning glory of God's creation (as opposed to Iblis in the Quran who refuses to bow down to Adam). And to add another level to the inversion, just as al-Hallaj suggested that the commandment to bow was more a test of the purity of the devil's monotheism than a straightforward order, in Legion, the commandment to bring on the apocalypse was really a test of compassion (which Michael passes) by holding on to his faith in humanity.
see also:
the devil and al-hallaj
Unfortunately, this one interesting aspect is outweighed by the film's various flaws including: 1) There is way too much violence given that the film is ultimately a fable on compassion. 2) Unlike the film The Prophecy which was able to portray angels with a dark side with the right amount of tension, most of the "angels" in Legion just appear creepy and demonic. 3) More specifically, the angel-possessed crowds basically made Legion reminiscent of a zombie movie. But then the massive crowds clearly could have overwhelmed the heroes in the dinner and it isn't plausible that our heroes would last as long as they do.
