Legion: We Are The Stories We Tell Ourselves
“Roses are red, violets are blue, I'm a schizophrenic and so am I.”
- WHAT ABOUT BOB?
There’s that old parlance popularized in American politics (also in pro-wrestling, connect the dots yourself) that perception is reality. Well, there was no way some Reagan-era machiavellian nincompoop could have conceived in 1981 of the reality-altering power and peril perpetrated by one David Charles Haller introduced just four short years later in the spring of 1985 issues of The New Mutants under the moniker of Legion (kiss my grits, ghost of Lee Atwater). Contained in the pages of those now classic Marvel Comics is a merry mutant misadventure into the mind of a suffering superbeing with powers beyond their control or even comprehension sporting a Kid ‘n Play style high top fade. Pretty standard funny book fare, but at the time it was a tale only found on musty stapled newsprint. Before your Twitter follower “Boner4Psylocke” diagnosed themselves with inoperable stage four hero fatigue, stories like this were deemed too outlandish and, dare I say, too “comic-booky” to work as a live-action adaptation. That’s right, true believers: There was a time, not too long ago, where comics were thought of as too niche for film and television aside from some Saturday morning cartoons.
That would all change with the critical and financial success of Richard Donner’s SUPERMAN (1978) and Tim Burton’s BATMAN (1989) as big budget star-studded feature film adaptations. There was also a glut of movie adaptations in the ‘90s to coincide with a financial boom period in the comic book industry, but probably not the intellectual properties you were expecting. While the X-Men, Spider-Man, Iron Man, The Hulk, and The Fantastic Four were crushing it as cartoons, the movie marquees featured pulp from the past like DICK TRACY (1990), THE ROCKETEER, (1991), THE SHADOW (1994), and THE PHANTOM (1996), smaller press opuses like THE CROW (1994), THE MASK (1994), SPAWN (1997), and MYSTERY MEN (1999), and who could forget that little indie comic turned merchandising monolith when martial arts Muppets take Manhattan in the major motion picture adaptation of TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES (1990)?
Quite the diverse filmography, but what these movies have in common is approaching the comic book source material with measured realism. Even with their use of bright colors and cartoony characters, filmmakers tried to tell their tales through conventional story beats putting these radical creatures in a real world context. When you look at the cinematic actualization of X-MEN (2000), gone are the blue and yellow spandex, the more fantastical super powers and character designs in favor of black leather and a more grounded representation of mutation. But times change, audiences evolve, and ergo so must our fiction. On February 8th, 2017 Legion premiered on FX helmed by creator and showrunner Noah Hawley who endeavored to push the boundaries of what viewers could expect from a comic book adapted property visually and narratively.
If it's been a while since you immersed yourself in the compelling psychedelic palette of the show or you’re looking for a quick primer may I suggest my esteemed editor Rob Dean’s piece “10 Ways ‘Legion’ Is The Most Accurate X-Men Adaptation?” Check it out, excelsior!
Based on his previous artistic output in novels, the series Fargo, and openly finding superhero stories “hard to relate to,” Hawley might seem like an odd choice to helm a comic book adaptation about super powers and mental illness. But siphoning creative sensibilities from Syd Barrett and Salvador Dalí instead of Stan Lee is what makes this story so uniquely compelling while simultaneously staying true to comic books as an artistic medium. Hawley shines in terms of adhering to graphic novel form in his use of splash page styled set pieces, light and color, and utilizing the perception of our characters to inform the audience’s interpretation of on screen happenings. Closing in on the fifth anniversary of the show’s series finale now seems as good a time as any to reexamine what I enjoyed about the program and how it handled elements from an artistic medium I love.
Have you ever turned the cover open on a comic and saw that giant and ornate image that sometimes traverses two whole pages? It’s a singular representation of what sort of epic action we can expect in the subsequent sheets. A stunning snapshot to sell readers on the story set to unfurl. Hawley fashioned scenes reminiscent of these big splash pages of visual splendor. Without recreating specific splash pages from the comic, Hawley fashions scenes reminiscent of that visual apparatus to elicit that same kind of emotional response from viewers while adhering to the visual language and style of the program. Overloading the frames with detail to be poured over like a comic fresh off the presses and into your grubby little hands. The kitchen explosion (stunningly done with practical effects) where David’s telekinesis is on full display, David battling soldiers and drones only to be sliced in twain by Kerry Loudermilk, and David channeling Kali to fight the Time Eaters, all feel ripped from the pages of a graphic novel and rendered in lush and lovely live-action.
This next one is an easy lay up for you sports fans. The use of light and color, more specifically red and blue, act as an nonverbal emotional barometer for good and evil within the confines of David’s mind. Throughout the series we see the lighting change to indicate Haller’s emotional state as well as his level of control over his own consciousness as he battles the Shadow King’s parasitic psychic infestation. This is a classic comic trope and an easy and evocative way of demonstrating a change in mood for the reader. Flip through any number of books and you’ll see it a million times but few instances will invoke the level of dread Hawley is able to incite with a flash of red heralding the unnerving appearance of the yellow-eyed demon or world’s angriest boy to demonstrate the Shadow King wrestling control of the mind of David. Conversely the calming blue is present in David’s drug of choice, Vapor, and Oliver’s astral plane ice fortress. The two colors even appear concurrently like the red and blue light of the police car during David’s teenage arrest or when the assaulting red light pierces the serene blue of the astral plane demonstrating the dueling dichotomy of the opposing sides within David’s conflicting consciousness and gives the audience a primordial pathway into that deliberately disorienting headspace.
Then there’s the powers of perception I prattled on about in the preamble paragraph. Not only is David Haller a reality altering mutant who very much has to question his own understood existence but Noah Hawley utilizes this ultimate unreliable narrator to play with what the audience sees and how we process what’s happening on screen. From anachronistic wardrobe and set design to the film reel style childhood memories, each is intentionally curated to invoke feelings in the viewer rather than convey accurate information. Neofuturist technology mixed with nostalgic gadgets and furnishings make time and place impossible to determine and we see this all the time with comics. Are we viewing a window to a future yet to occur or the present on an alternate timeline? Maybe everything we’re witnessing is contained in the subconsciousness of David Haller. Hawley plays with this feeling like a kid kicking over the toy box and putting a gaggle of disparate pieces together for the game they’re inventing. Writers and artists in comic books often do the same thing, altering characters appearances and alliances in service of the story they endeavor to tell rather than canonizing the work that other creators did before them.
Philosopher Donald Davidson avered “a picture is not worth a thousand words, or any other number. Words are the wrong currency to exchange for a picture.” While it’s not lost on me that I’m using words to analyze two visual mediums, you gotta give me that even if it’s not apples to apples, then even apples and oranges are both fruits and when ripe for the picking can be peeled and eaten. Noah Hawley got the flavor of the funny books without attempting to concoct the same sweet salad recipe so even if it's not one to one that currency exchange of visual storytelling is still convertible. Ultimately the show plays less like a standard superhero yarn and more like an ephemeral flipped-out fable while still capturing the feel of kicking back with a comic book while listening to Dark Side Of The Moon. Is David an insane man in a sane world or the only sane man in an insane world? If time is a hallway does that mean life is a highway? Is Legion brilliant or baffling? Is that soap or cilantro? I guess it’s all a matter of taste.
