Posted in: Movies, Review, TV | Tagged: fx, legion, Review, tv

Bill Reviews FX's 'Legion': It's So Eccentric And Good You Won't Believe It's Not David Lynch

We've been looking forward to FX's Legion ever since the trailer was first shown back in July at San Diego Comic-Con. As it turns out, the partnership between FX and Marvel Television has resulted in yet another innovative take on the superhero genre. Just as when they took to Netflix with Daredevil, they went for something more more edgy rather than fluffy.

Where the novelty with Daredevil and later Jessica Jones and Luke Cage was with the superheroes existing in storylines with more dramatic storylines rather than fantastical. They were set in cities with more corruption than straight up good vs. evil dynamics. Now Legion comes along and gives us a quirky hybrid of 60's style with modern elements. It has the vibe of a millennial taking acid and then trying to describe what they think the 60's must have been like.

The series centers around David Haller, played by Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey, The Guest), and is battling severe paranoid schizophrenia. It's through his challenged mind that we see the story unfold – the colors, the scenes, the dialogue with other characters. It's the idea of the unreliable narrator taken to an entirely new level. Not only can we not rely on what our primary character tells us, we can't trust what he shows us either.

Watching it unfold as it struck me as something very much of the quirky vibe from the school of Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet creator, David Lynch. I made the joke that all it really needed was a dancing backwards-talking dwarf; not a few minutes later we are introduced to Haller's bugaboo, a Yellow Eyed Devil, which is a dwarf sized creature, and kind of bounced like a dance. Now I'm just waiting for him to start speaking backwards and I'll be certain Lynch wrote part of the script.

What is real and what is just fragments of a very broken mind is something that's only just really starting to come together for the audience by the end of the first episode. There have been other series that play with the viewer's perceptions of reality (Lost comes to mind), but never really in this way in the construct of a superhero series.

The story does exist within the X-Men mythos, though the exact connections have yet to be drawn in. It's unclear if some of the "name" mutants will wind up making appearances. In the original comics, Haller's superhero identity is Legion, and relates to the multiple personalities that can surface, each with their own abilities and powers. He's also the son of the X-Men's Professor X, so that gives an idea of his power level (which as his researchers say in the episode, "is one of the most powerful mutants they've ever measured."

Around Haller are a range of other similarly damaged characters, including Syd Barrett (played by Supernatural and Fargo's Rachel Keller) as a love interest to Haller with haphephobia (the fear of being touched), Lenny Busker (played by Scott Pilgrim vs. the World's Aubrey Plaza) as a kind of external editorial commentary on the world around Haller.

The acting nearly all around is really strong, but Plaza all but runs away from every scene that she's in. Steven's presents as an incredibly gifted actor being able to portray someone with a mental illness, and is a suitable lead. But every time Plaza's Aubrey is in the room, she pulls the eye, even when she's just rocking out with headphones on, as you wait to see what she'll say next.

The end of the episode does exactly what you want of any new show – the viewer is looking forward to seeing what the heck happens next. If this has been mapped out with a near and long term arc, then this could be one of the best series to come along since Marvel discovered Netflix (and arguably even better). However if the showrunners start out but then lose their sense of direction or pull back into a more traditional narrative, then the shine could quickly fall by the wayside. This is the kind of show where if the writer's room or director falters the audience will smell the blood in the water. Think of how strong Heroes started off in their first season, but then after the first story arc was complete, they never had anything equally strong afterwards to follow it up with.

So as with many of these characters, the biggest challenge is that now that they have the audience's attention at such a high level, they've set themselves a very high bar to keep it going. Personally I really hope they pull it off.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!