Legion

Legion is a horror movie released in January 2010, starring Paul Bettany's abs.

So You Are Making an Apocalyptic Horror Film

Important Scenes

Make sure you formulate one scene with a lot of surprise, tension and originality. This scene will be used in full in all the trailers promoting your movie. By the time the audience figures out that it's the only interesting scene in the film, they will already have given you their money, so it doesn't matter.

Setting

Your film must be set somewhere rural and isolated enough so that a total lack of contact with the outside world is believable, but still populated enough to be filled with your motley, multiracial group of characters. Preferably, the isolated location should include a medium-sized building that the characters can barricade with anything they have on hand. No matter how powerful or unearthly your apocalyptic monsters, they will be unable to break through the impenetrable planks of wood and bits of furniture moved against doors.

This isolation will allow your characters to interact with each other and form relationships and tension that the audience can all relate to in their own lives (rich vs poor, bravery vs cowardice, etc). This makes for good filler between the parts when your biblical monsters decapitate one of them and eat their spine.

Characters

Be sure to include the following among your small group of characters:
  • A young, scared white girl for the other characters to give their lives protecting. No matter how exceedingly incompetent or annoyingly sassy, other characters will gladly give their lives for her without complaint.
  • At least one black character to sacrifice themselves for the young, scared white girl and, if necessary, the other white characters.
  • At least one 'fish out of water' character, possibly from the city (see 'Setting') who will betray the salt-of-the-earth country folk due to their lack of small-town values. They will use this betrayal to attempt to bargain their way out of death, which will lead to them dying in interesting and ironic ways.
  • At least one seemingly harmless character, such as an old lady or small child, who will suddenly turn evil in a shockingly unexpected scene. This juxtaposition of innocence and evil will give the white characters an interesting moment to debate their consciences before shooting them in the face.

The Plot

Legion is about God deciding to destroy the human race, probably because he is pissed off at them making violently exploitative horror movies about His favorite book.

Although he could presumably make planet Earth simply wink out of existence, God decides instead to try to attack humanity. In His infinite wisdom, He chooses to do this with a bunch of possessed feral humans who are even easier to destroy than zombies, because at least you need to actually shoot zombies in the head. His other main weapon in the movie consists of a large swarm of flies. God does not seem to notice that if either of these things actually succeeded in killing humanity, there would be nobody left in Australia.

As well as an incompetent deity, humans have the further advantage of Paul Bettany, an angel who has rebelled against God in order to save mankind, apparently turning into a Terminator in the process.

At the beginning of the film Paul kills a few cops, as angels are wont to do, and then heads to the epicenter of the divine attack: a young woman in rural California who is shortly due to give birth to 'the last hope of humanity'.

Luckily for her, the woman lives near the location for the 2009 Annual Standing Around In The Desert Holding Guns Convention.

Nobody actually knows or asks what is special about her baby or what he is meant to do. The only remarkable thing about the child is that late in the movie he is somehow able to make his mother go from suffering her first contraction to actually giving birth in approximately 30 seconds. Maybe he is destined to grow up and teach women how to give birth quicker than most of us can brush our teeth, but we don't really get why God would be interested in that.

The expectant mother of this child just happens to work in an isolated diner filled with the adult equivalent of the Breakfast Club: a stranded rich urban couple and their slutty daughter, a mysterious stranger, and a father and son with relationship issues. The place is only lacking a nun and a desperately sick child who urgently needs insulin to stay alive.

Totally unexpectedly, the group members are picked off by God's minions one by one in a way that is meaningful and ironic and gory. This leaves only a battle between Angel Paul Bettany and another angel, Gabriel, who is evil because he is still following God's orders. Or something.

This turn of events brings up the deep moral paradox of the Divine Command Theory, which theorizes that because God is the basis of all morality, a seemingly unethical act is in fact ethical provided that it is commanded by God.

However, any exploration of this theory is shoved aside in favor of a long fight scene between the two angels, involving guns and lots of explosions. Apparently, powerful supernatural beings are as vulnerable to physical harm as humans are. It's really a miracle that no zealous Christian ever simply thought to shoot Satan a few times in the head, or even just try to give him really bad food poisoning.

"Wait... wait... I'm getting a cramp."

In the end, Gabriel is the victor, but just as all hope seems to be lost, God brings Paul Bettany back to life in glorious angel form, maybe because he really enjoyed the Da Vinci Code.

The Archangel Michael, in one of his earlier, more badass forms

It turns out that God's faith in humans has been restored through the example of Paul Bettany and his gun-toting friends. See, God just gets really bad moodswings and unleashes the genocidal armies of Hell every now and again, but once He has a sit down and does some relaxing scrapbooking, He always feels better.

Biblical Characters

Legion gives the Archangel Gabriel back his original Biblical weapon: a spinning electric mace. It also arms the Archangel Michael with his traditional arsenal of an M16 rifle with a grenade launcher, an MP5, several pistols, and unlimited ammunition. This is much more accurate than the portrayals endorsed by the later repressive medieval Popes, who just gave these angels flaming swords or some shit, probably because they hated cool stuff.