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- FX
- Feb 8, 2017
- FX
- Feb 8, 2017
Summary Diagnosed as schizophrenic and now institutionalized, David Haller's (Dan Stevens) routine at a a psychiatric hospital is changed with the arrival of a new patient named Syd (Rachel Keller) and the discovery that the voices and visions may be real.
Created By: Noah Hawley
- FX
- Feb 8, 2017
- FX
- Feb 8, 2017
Summary Diagnosed as schizophrenic and now institutionalized, David Haller's (Dan Stevens) routine at a a psychiatric hospital is changed with the arrival of a new patient named Syd (Rachel Keller) and the discovery that the voices and visions may be real.
Created By: Noah Hawley
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Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 40 Critic Reviews
82
83% Positive
33 Reviews
33 Reviews
18% Mixed
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 40 Critic Reviews
82
83% Positive
33 Reviews
33 Reviews
18% Mixed
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
[Legion is] produced like a cerebral art house version of a superhero series, thrumming with precision and emotion where the genre usually calls for shock and awe, and assembled with an entrancing period aesthetic (it seems to be set in the early 1970s, but that could just be a side-effect of David's fragile mental state) and stunning, occasionally horrifying visual effects.
The writer has taken key elements of his source material and applied them to a canvas of his own design. What’s here may feel familiar in singular moments, but it’s a breathtakingly original work when looked upon as a whole.
User Score
Universal Acclaim
Based on 582 User Ratings
8.4
86% Positive
499 Ratings
499 Ratings
6% Mixed
35 Ratings
35 Ratings
8% Negative
48 Ratings
48 Ratings
User Score
Universal Acclaim
Based on 582 User Ratings
8.4
86% Positive
499 Ratings
499 Ratings
6% Mixed
35 Ratings
35 Ratings
8% Negative
48 Ratings
48 Ratings
Visually stunning sci-fi feast. Perfectly cast and well written. Great set design and fantastic turns. delightfully confusing, with reveals stripped off two layers of the onion at a time, only to have one more layer added back on. The cinematography is excellent, the acting is great, and the characters are engaging. A hell of a lot is packed into a single episode, making it worth another watch. For its genre, Legion is as good as it gets.
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SEASON 1
Noah Hawley can do no wrong. The show is not only beautiful to look at, but is clever, imaginative, brilliantly written and very well acted, especially Stevens, Plaza and Clement. Although it can be a little bit slow to begin with, the payoff is fantastic. Cannot wait for Season 2.
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SEASON 1
An electroshock of striking originality, Legion seizes your imagination by blowing your mind and captures the high anxiety of reality-blur America. [Feb 3/10 2017, p.96]
Even if you barely understand a thing that’s going on (and be patient; chances are you will), Legion is a joy to watch, surreal and beautiful, with as many funny asides as frightening moments.
With all this world-building going on, Legion doesn't, at least in these early episodes, make the most of Hawley's talent for letting his characters express themselves in distinctive, individual voices. And the horror of David's situation hardly lends itself to Hawley's characteristic wit. But those are small problems, considering that Legion is a trippy explosion of creativity.
It’s handsomely shot, and smartly acted, and ingeniously constructed enough to suggest there’s something mind-blowing lurking at its center. But as Hawley pushes from jazzed-up origin story to psychodrama, it starts to feel like a show with a Rubik’s cube where its heart should be.
Stevens (probably best known as the handsome heir of Downton Abbey) is doing fine work at the center of all this, holding the camera’s focus even when Hawley’s dialogue feels like it’s going nowhere.
The perfect show if you want to turn your brain into mush. Most of the time I have no clue what the hell is going on but the cinematography, script and characters are all so intriguing that you can not look away. It's almost a psychological rollercoaster ride. Especially when you get a lot of answers near the end of a season but those same answers leave you with questions for future episodes/seasons.
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SEASON 1
The first result seems to me strangely. It begins in a lunatic asylum and one understands first nothing at all. Strange scenes one does not understand line up themselves.
Only at the end one notices, nevertheless, more lies behind. If the confusion was not to 2/3 of the episode this would be a good beginning.
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SEASON 1
The styling reminds me of The Royal Tenenbaums but with an Xmen plot. Not what I was expecting. I am in a holding pattern on this show. I love scifi and I am willing to give the artiness a try but it better come down to Earth by a lot.
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SEASON 1
The first season of Legion was, I thought, pretty good. The second season is dreadfully boring. Be prepared to suffer through several episodes with minimum dialogue or action. It is as if the writer is trying to convince us how clever he is. Please, writer, pick up the pace!
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SEASON 1
One can not deny the originality of the narration, but truth to be told this is the only speckle of light this show has to offer.
The script is tragically fragmented, distorted and bent to the point where one seriously starts doubting if it has been written indeed under the influence of psychotropic substances.
Whether or not this may be considered a “typical mark” for the show, abusing this type of construct only lead to an overall sense of “dizziness” and dislike that overgrow the spectator after a few episodes.
Characters could have been better portrayed and explored, but instead the overall approach - terribly resembling the one used for advertising psychiatric treatments in the 50’s - renders each character a mere mocking version of itself, trapped inside a story that is merely a “loop”.
A loop in which the viewer is caught for a while, expecting at first and then desperately hoping in the end for a “gran finale” that could somehow justify the endless loop he is been watching: but this cathartic moment never arrives, and after six episodes of “nonsense” merely describing the hallucinations of a schizophrenic patient it is too late to save the whole story.
The script stretches from a single idea, not even completely original, and then develops on a single plane exploring the mental illness **** of patients with some of the most known – for the public – psychiatric pathologies. On this background, we can assist at sporadic “active” events when the show seems to find again a plot aside from the loop and the narration seems to be proceed.
But in the end, nothing moves forward: each and every thread “loop back” to the initial contest of the story and the whole narration quickly becomes boring and futile.
Some of the actors made an incredible effort to portrait the assigned character, but they all sadly appear to be “left alone”, without direction and with a script who has only one page: the beginning, inside a mental hospital.
Photography follows closely this hackneyed and prosy script, conforming to all sorts of stereotypes already used (both on big and small screen) for describing psychiatric institutions between 1950 and 1960 with the sole exception of some horror influence.
The horror sequences are by far the better part of this show: sadly, they were probably intended as “minor sequences” intended to strengthen the hype of the entire story but ended up being the sole interesting parts.
“Legion” is a TV Show who can – and will be – appreciated only by the lovers of psycho-dramas tainted with a little bit of horror and wrapped with a thin veil of pseudo action.
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SEASON 1
