It’s perfectly okay if you don’t remember given how fleeting the failed experiment turned out to be, but at the turn of the 2010s, filmmaker Scott Stewart seemed completely and utterly determined to turn mild-mannered English gentleman Paul Bettany into a badass action hero, with Legion trying to get the ball rolling.
The high concept genre-bender did admittedly have an intriguing premise, with patrons at a remote roadside diner finding themselves plunged into the middle of a battle for the very fate of humanity after the man upstairs suddenly decides the now is the perfect time for the apocalypse, and Bettany’s archangel Michael takes it upon himself to protect the dwindling band of survivors.
Furthering the biblical connotations, a pregnant waitress also coincidentally happens to be carrying the unborn child prophesized as the human race’s last hope of survival, leading to the fallen angel rebelling against both his brothers and the big man with the power to bring about the end of days. In the end, though, Legion came and went with barely a whimper.
Trashed by critics, the fantasy/horror/action maelstrom didn’t catch on among paying theater patrons either, but it somehow still conspired to launch sequel series Dominion, which was set 25 years after the events of the film and lasted two seasons before being canned Syfy.
Stewart would then cast Bettany in Priest the following year – which was arguably even worse – as well as Blumhouse’s Dark Skies, but he hasn’t helmed a feature since. Had the Marvel Cinematic Universe stalwart held up his end of the bargain, then maybe Legion wouldn’t be reduced to making miraculous appearances on the streaming charts every now and again, just like it’s done this weekend on Netflix, per FlixPatrol.
