| For some guys, this might actually be a fantasy.... |
2) ...and speaking of Cosplay Benedict Cumberbatch, I’m somewhat pleased that John Light has a) less screen time, b) isn’t made out to be a heroic figure and c) acts kinda sinister at points, starting with his first act in the film.
3) If I was irked by the way writer/director Joel Soisson tried to force his story into the continuity of the first three films, I’m not as annoyed here--but still annoyed. While I like the idea that angels can also be killed by shooting them through their third eye, there are other additions that bugged the crap out of me, particularly the hierarchy of hell Jason Scott Lee’s Dillon rockets through at one point and the revelation that the voices inside Alison’s head is a specific personage from the first film.
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| Sometimes in Heaven you need a neckband.... |
4) I’m sorry, but Kari Wuhrer’s Alison this time seems to be an entirely different person. Yeah, I’m pleased she actually displays more than one emotion this outing, but the way she goes on about her history as a theology student and faith and all this seems at odds with the broken girl we met in the previous film. And when the film suddenly decides she’s an action heroine, well...it’s a disconnect.
5) Once again, I appreciate how this film decides not to hide that it’s shot in Rumania, but even more so than the last one there’s no reason why this movie has to take place in Rumania. Hell, given the fact that our heroine is from Chicago, it’s to the film’s advantage not to be set in Rumania.
6) So we’ve got Jason Scott Lee playing a hitman named Dillon because...a supernatural thriller about warring angelic factions needs a hitman? It certainly does detract from the otherworldliness of the angels, as it reduces Stark to the same level as a mafia don.
7) You know, introducing these lesser angels called ‘drones’ doesn’t make the film scarier; it actually lessens the awe of the angels from the previous films. The only thing the angels needed up until this film were humans at the brink of death, and only then to operate technology they don’t understand. By having the angels here rely on what amounts to badly dressed zombies, Soisson doesn’t enhanced or open up the mythology. On the contrary, he diminishes it.
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| As if I needed more evidence that Twinkies are the devil's handiwork.... |
8) Soisson still hasn’t learned to avoid cliches. There are long stretches where I was able to predict both the action and the dialogue of the movie exactly. This extends to the ending, which is supposed to be chilling but ends up bland.
9) Given what we learned about the biology of angels, there is no way that Alison is what she is revealed to be. If she was, the back story revealed in the previous film (which is called back to here) could not happen.
10) I have to wonder if the idiots who made Legion saw, and was inflenced by it more than the earlier, better entries in the series. There’s a scene set in a seemingly abandoned church in the middle of a graveyard that mirrors that entire film.
Overall...marginally better because of Todd’s presence and a better performance by Wuhrer, it still stands as a pretty terrible film and a bad coda to what started out as a promisingly great film series.
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