Film / Legion

Legion is an action movie starring Paul Bettany, Dennis Quaid, Lucas Black, and Charles S. Dutton about what happens when God sends down an apocalypse and all that's left is an archangel that defected and a diner full of people. Oh, but it's the pregnant woman who's important, since she's carrying the one who will be the second Christ. The film was loosely adapted into the Syfy Channel series Dominion.

Not related to the 1998 scifi B-Movie Legion.

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This film provides examples of:

• And Starring: Dennis Quaid, since his name is the most emphasized name in the cast and his name is listed as "And Dennis Quaid" on the back of the DVD cover.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Jeep and Charlie at first. Jeep loves Charlie but Charlie does not love him back. Subverted later on since as the movie progresses, Charlie starts to reciprocate.
• Anyone Can Die: Considering that Gabriel, Charlie, and Jeep are the only characters that survive to the end of the film without being resurrected...
• Anti-Hero: Michael. Especially since nobody trusts him until about an hour into the movie.
• Archangel Michael: Is the main character.
• Archangel Gabriel: As the Final Boss.
• Armor Is Useless: Averted all to hell with Gabriel; his wings can deflect just about anything, and he uses them constantly.
• Bad Humor Truck: The truck itself seems innocent enough. The driver however...
• Big Brother Mentor: Jeep, who is constantly worried about everybody in the diner, not just Charlie.
• Big Damn Heroes: Plenty of instances, from Percy saving Sandra and dying because of it to Michael rushing in to save Jeep at the absolute last minute after being resurrected.
• Big "SHUT UP!": The angel-possessed old lady tells a woman to "SHUT THE FUCK UP", because she's tired of her "bitching".
• Bilingual Bonus: Those tattoos Michael is covered in actually say things in Enochian, supposedly the language of the angels. According to Paul Bettany, one of them says, "If you're freeze-framing this film, you're really weird."
• Bittersweet Ending: God regained his faith in humanity but he caused the deaths of countless people who are not shown being revived (except Michael).
• Body Horror: Angelic Possession causes their hosts to become insect like in form.
• Bond One-Liner: "Sorry... We're out of business." Right before Bob makes the diner go kablooie.
• Brought Down to Normal: Michael voluntarily cuts off his wings, the source of his angelic powers, at the start of the film.
• Car Fu:
  • A guy gets hit by a car driven by a possessed person at one point.
  • Jeep also sends Gabriel flying through a windshield towards the end when the angel grabs on to their car and almost manages to kill the baby.
• Catapult Nightmare: Jeep catapults up from a nightmare in his introductory scene.
• Chekhov's Gun: Bob's cigarette lighter and Bob mentioning that he's glad the gas is still on have the logical conclusion of Bob blowing up the diner after flooding it with gas to buy the others some time.
• Children Are Innocent: Given that much of the movie is spent protecting a pregnant woman...
  • Also subverted with a Creepy Child that kills Kyle and nearly succeeds in killing Charlie.
• Dark Is Evil: Invoked with Gabriel (though he is more of a Knight Templar than genuinely evil) whose wing feathers and armour are black.
• Dating What Daddy Hates: Audrey seems to like dating people her parents disapprove of—she mentions to Kyle that she knows how to use a gun because she once went out with an ex-Marine her parents absolutely loathed, and earlier she gives him a flirtatious look after he enters the diner and her parents stare at him suspiciously (though it goes nowhere). Given her conversation with Kyle about being bad for attention, it would seem her main motivation is to get Sandra and Howard to notice her.
• Demonic Possession: Except it's angels, though you wouldn't believe it at first considering how foul mouthed and unnatural they are.
• Desperate Object Catch: Bob catching the dropped baby.
• Diner Brawl: Most of the action takes place in and around a small diner.
• Disney Death: Michael's surprise resurrection.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: Jeep's nightmares. Gladys knows it.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: When the car crashes, the baby survives but Audrey died. And is quickly forgotten.
• Dwindling Party: Killed off one by one.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Gabriel and Michael treat each other like brothers before their big fight scene.
• Faux Affably Evil: The possessed grandma engages in pleasant small talk with the diner folk, even when telling Charlie her baby will burn with the F word.
• Feet-First Introduction: Played for laughs with the old lady exiting the car with her walker.
• Fingore: The Creepy Child attacks Charlie with a knife. She blocks his blows with a metal pan and, as the knife has no guard, he ends up accidentally cutting off his thumbs.
• Finger Gun: One of the cops does this while paroling the streets of L.A.
• Frying Pan of Doom: Wielded as a ranged weapon by Percy, making it a Flying Pan of Doom.
• Gas Station of Doom: A group of strangers hold up in a lonely diner/gas station out in the desert to stage a gun battle for the survival of mankind.
• Good Bad Girl: Audrey, although her sexual history is never touched on throughout the movie.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Subverted. Bob, Kyle and Charlie all smoke. They all have their issues with hard luck and drama in their lives, but none are truly evil. However, there is the Anvilicious bit about Charlie being a pregnant woman who smokes.
• Harbinger of Impending Doom: The old lady at the beginning. She casually comments that Charlie's baby is gonna burn, proceeds to say everyone else in the diner will burn, bites a guy in the neck when told to apologize for that, and runs on the ceiling before finally getting shot by Kyle. She even tells the guy's wife to shut up and hates her complaining.
• Heel–Face Turn: Done before the film took place. Michael used to be one of God's generals until he defies his order of wiping out humanity, believing that there is still hope for humankind. Instead of the harbinger of humanity's end, he becomes humanity's protector.
• Hell Is That Noise: Gabriel's trumpet, which sounds like a gigantic subwoofer and shakes everything in the diner as it begins to blow.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Lots. Percy dies saving Sandra from an acid attack, and Kyle dies trying to save a Creepy Child who turns out to be possessed and which tears his throat out. Michael stays behind to fight Gabriel, and when he loses, a mortally-wounded Bob blows up the diner to by the escapees some time. Audrey shoots Gabriel in the face with a flare-gun and winds up thrown out the windshield of a car doing 90 down the freeway, trying to strangle him. Really, among those who die, only Sandra and Howard don't sacrifice themselves for something.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: Kyle; it's implied early on that he was involved in criminal activities prior to getting stuck at the diner with everyone else.
• Humans Are Bastards: The sole reason why God sends his angels to exterminate them.
• Humans Are Special: Michael still believes this.
• Idiot Ball: Passed around a bit, mainly by people who can't tell that someone being outside in danger is an obvious trap. Examples being:
  • Sandra runs outside to save her husband Howard, who is tied up, pulsating and pleading for help. Her love for him probably blinded her to the danger, but to anyone else, it was obviously a trick, and Percy ends up being killed rescuing her when Howard explodes and coats him in acid.
  • Kyle tries rescuing a little boy from the Angels. This isn't that obvious at first, but when it's revealed that the boy is an Angel who bites Kyle's jugular, you remember that Michael said the weak minded are affected, and that they shouldn't have fallen for such easy bait.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Gabriel's fatal attack against Michael
• Incongruously-Dressed Zombie: Several examples, including an ice-cream truck driver.
• Jerkass Gods: God's regarded as good (at least by Gabriel, so consider the source) and is suggested to just be "tired of all the bullshit," but most of the angels' victims we see really don't deserve it.
• Karma Houdini: God, Gabriel, and possibly all the Mook angels went unpunished, despite attempting genocide on humanity.
• Kick the Dog: After Howard and Percy die, Sandra tells Audrey that all the bad things that happen to their family over the course of the movie are all Audrey's fault, because they wouldn't be in the diner if they hadn't decided to move because of Audrey's bad behavior. (Of course, Sandra conveniently ignores that if they hadn't come to the diner, they'd probably be possessed or dead.) It seems to be an angry remark said in the heat of the moment, as she does apologise to Audrey for it later on, insisting that she really does love her daughter.
• Kung-Shui: At one point the battered old television is used as a weapon.
  Percy: "One of these days that thing is gonna hit you back."
• Manly Tears: Percy, when speaking of his father's nightly admonishments to him.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": Everyone left alive at that point when Gabriel storms into the diner.
• Madonna Archetype: Charlie is the pregnant waitress at the Paradise Falls Diner. When the angels begin invading and start the end of the world, Michael explains to her that her baby is destined to be the savior of mankind.
• Mood Dissonance: The first of the sieging on the diner begins with an ice cream truck playing a merry little version of Turkey in the Straw.
• Mr. Fanservice: Just look at that poster, and see Ho Yay on the YMMV page.
• Nice Guy: Jeep
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Charlie seems to forget she's supposed to have a southern accent after the first ten minutes or so.
• Our Angels Are Different: Ironically, they possess and distort people's bodies like you would expect demons to do, and they swear on top of that. Oh, and their wings are also made of razor sharp metal. Apparently, the angels are also tired of humans complaining about even the smallest things. As shown when the possessed old lady telling a woman to shut her "bitching".
• Out Giving Birth, Back in Two Minutes: Played straight as an arrow with Charlie's delivery (and recovery).
• Outrun the Fireball: Michael and the young girl escaping from the exploding gas station.
• Outside Ride: Gabriel on top of the police car.
• Parental Abandonment:
  • Jeep has a Missing Mom who left when he was 15, and Charlie's own father was a Disappeared Dad who left when she was a kid; then there's the "out of sight, out of mind" father of her own unborn child.
  • And there's a subversion. Kyle is on his way to his child, to be a not disappeared dad.
• Plot-Driven Breakdown: Everything goes down during the course of this movie. Phone lines, cell phone reception, TV signal, radio, power, it all goes down. Lampshaded by Bob when he mentions that the only thing still running is the gas. It's inverted briefly when the radio is able to pick up one station and the lights go back on for a brief period of time. It's also subverted for much of the film, given the fact that calling for help wouldn't really do a whole lot given that all the people in the nearest towns are crowded around the diner trying to kill them.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Gabriel.
  Michael: "You were always so eager to please him."
  • Given a touch of bitter irony after Michael is resurrected and tells Gabriel that he's failed when he points out he wouldn't have spared Michael's life.
• Razor Wings: Gabriel has very sharp wings.
• Rule of Fun: Bettany has said he did the movie largely because the idea of playing an archangel with a bunch of guns was just too much fun to pass up, especially since if he's in an action movie he's almost always the bad guy.
• Running on All Fours: The angel-possessed.
• Sanity Slippage: Sandra. Not a huge problem for the group until she decides to give the baby up to Gabriel, thinking that if she does, they can just leave.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!:
  • The Archangel Michael defying the orders given to him by God and choosing to save Charlie's unborn child.
    Angel-Possessed LAPD Officer: "What are you doing Michael? These weren't your orders."
    Michael: "I'm following my own orders now."
  • Also Charlie, who threatens to save Audrey from being torn apart by a mob of angels if Michael won't. He relents and proceeds to kick ass.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Subverted. Howard, Sandra, and Audrey attempt to drive back into town after the experience with the old lady in the diner, but when they realize the road is covered in a locust horde that attacks them in their car they're forced to turn back.
• Secret Test of Character: This is what God's plan was for his angels. To see if any of them would question the plan, or would they follow orders without question. As Michael was the only one to disobey, he was the only one who passed the test.
• Self-Surgery: Michael sews stitches into his back after cutting off his own wings. It's his second scene in the movie, as if they wanted to establish right away that he's a badass.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Percy. In case the shot of the dog tags didn't cue you in, he also uses a prosthetic hand.
• Shout-Out:
  Bob: "All right, Rambo, you mind telling us what we're fightin'?"
• Shown Their Work: The trumpet sound used before Gabriel's arrival is of the shofar kind. You know, the one present in the Bible and also the sound we hear today in the skies in many places of the world?
• Shut Up, Hannibal!:
  Gabriel: "Why do you do it? Why do you keep on fighting when you know all hope is lost?"
  Jeep: "Fuck you!"
• Single-Stroke Battle: Between Michael and Gabriel near the end.
• Slow-Motion Drop: The wife gets shot by Michael and drops the baby in slo mo. Bonus point for Bob for catching the little thing.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: The opposition gets increasingly stronger: Old lady > an ice cream man (bummer) > about 100 angels > another 500 angels > an archangel.
• Symbol Motif Clothing: Charlie wearing the colors of the virgin Mary in her first appearance. And again at the end.
• Tears of Remorse: From both Gabriel and Michael. It's played much more prominently with Gabriel, though.
• Terminator Twosome: Non-time travel example. Two men appear; one is here to protect a waitress whose child will save the world, and one is here to destroy said waitress to prevent said child from being born.
• The Chosen One: Charlie's baby boy is considered to be humanity's last hope.
• This Cannot Be!: Gabriel says this word for word.
• Title In: December 23
• Too Dumb to Live: Sandra. Oh dear lord, Sandra. Even if she gives them the baby, they'll STILL kill them! Predictably, Michael shoots her.
• Triple Shifter: Michael doesn't sleep once during the two days the movie takes place. Partially justified in that being a former angel, he's got more stamina than the average human.
• Tracking Device: Word of God states that the collars Michael and Gabriel wear are used to keep track of their whereabouts.
• Wall Crawl: Gladys, and a Creepy Child.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Kyle gives Sandra one for her Kick the Dog moment at Audrey.
• Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: Who names their kid "Jeep"?
• Zombie Apocalypse: Well, more like Angel Apocalypse, but same basic principle due to the angel-possessed people acting very zombie-like and because of the idea of a chaotic event caused by a huge army composed of supernatural beings, mostly comprised of possessed people that act rabid.

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