Friday, October 23, 2009

Legion (2010): Prophecy and Stolen Property


Hollywood's idea of originality is knocking off a well-known older film (or in this case, a series of films) and throwing a lot of CGI on top of it, giving it a new name and reselling it. This is the trailer for the original Christopher Walken film, The Prophecy. Not a masterpiece by any means, but a fun little romp.

  The sequels were the usual diminishing returns, but back when I was paying by the month for rentals (35 bucks, unlimited) I believe I watched the whole series one weekend. The original also stars the great Elias Koteas, who somehow found himself in Lost Souls, in which Winona Ryder played the world's sexiest exorcist. He probably changed agents around that time.

 

 Here's the remake of The Prophecy, now called Legion. I have no idea about the provenance of all of this and to tell the truth, I don't much care. Even in 1995, The Prophecy was a retread, here's it's just Constantine redux. 

Apparently the same team is doing a vampire spin on the concept called Priest. Boy, they'll beat the Preacher adaptation to the screen, those clever chaps. Me, I'll wait for the non-knockoff version, particularly since John August is writing it. 

Plus, the only Legion I want to see onscreen is The Legion of Super-Heroes. My recommendation for the weekend is you skip all of this nonsense, and watch Atom Egoyan's Exotica, starring Elias Koteas, Bruce "Cap'n Pike" Greenwood and Mia Kirshner.