‘Legion’: God is Tired of Your Bullshit, Man. Plus: ‘Battlestar Galactica’ 3.0?

I’m not afraid to admit that I think Constantine is totally underrated. I might go so far as to say it’s one of my top three favorite Keanu Reeves movies. There’s something fascinating about stories that take certain supernatural elements of the Christian Bible REALLY literally â€” without any lions or elves or metaphorical Jesus creatures. I’m talking demons in the streets of L.A., but not in the Left Behind sense (these stories are only interesting when religion is key to the worldbuilding, but not part of the lesson plan).

So I watched the trailer for Legion, even though the poster for it â€” a looming angel with a machine gun â€” was so absurd I didn’t think it was a real movie.

And I couldn’t stop giggling. This is the redband (i.e. “mature,” i.e. there’s swearing) trailer. In it, a shirtless Paul Bettany plays the archangel Michael, who’s standing up against a destructive God on the behalf of humankind â€” or at least one truck-stop waitress whose baby is humanity’s only chance for survival.

Also, I’m fairly sure Dennis Quaid explodes.

Don’t get me wrong: I will totally, absolutely watch this. It’s deliciously ridiculous and totally over the top. It begins with Doug Jones as an evil ice-cream truck driver. I’m in. I’m just not sure the movie can, er, be better than the trailer.

In other cinematic news, it’s been confirmed that Bryan Singer will direct a Battlestar Galactica movie. There are two immediate worrying things about this:

1. Singer hasn’t made a really good movie since X2. (And this is coming from someone who’s slightly fond of the oft-dismissed Superman Returns.)
2. This isn’t a film version of the brilliantly reimagined (if less-than-brilliantly ended) TV show that wound down earlier this year. This is a film version of the original series.

It’s not an inherently bad idea to look back to the original series â€” and it’s worth noting that it’s not the first time Singer’s gotten close to a Galactica revisioning â€” but the timing is pretty much terrible. The new BSG is still fresh in people’s minds, especially with the upcoming TV movie The Plan and the spinoff/prequel series Caprica coming next year.

(It isn’t helping that this looks a little bit like a greedy bid to relaunch the original BSG the way that J.J. Abrams relaunched Star Trek. As a colleague joked, we can probably blame Star Trek for a whole pile of crappy sci-fi* remakes in the next few years.)

“All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again,” indeed. I’ll hold out hope that Singer’s version will be as fresh and as different from the recent series as that show was from the original, but it’s a bit tough to quash the skeptic in the back of my head. Still, original series fans rebelled at the idea of BSG 2.0, and now those of us who cringe at the idea of Starbuck being played by anyone but Katee Sackhoff are having our cringe moment. We’ll see. Somewhat reluctantly.

* I’ve heard on too many occasions that REAL science fiction fans DON’T CALL IT SCI-FI. This is utter crap. Call it what you want. Call it SF/F, which looks like some kind of shorthand for a slash pairing. Call it SyFy, if you’re a network who needs a brand that conveniently distances you from your original fanbase. Call it whatever the hell you like. Just keep liking it.

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