Seven Lessons from "Legion"

A full review of the film Legion is forthcoming, but in the meantime, viewing the film has prompted me to write the following list of "don'ts" that storytellers and filmmakers can learn from the film.

• Don't go into a story without a coherent sense of metaphysics.
  Whether it is ghost story, an epic fantasy, or a science fiction piece, a story must establish what reality is and stick with it, not make things up as it goes (i.e. your possessed husband explodes and his bodily fluids are suddenly acidic.) Even The Lovely Bones followed this one.
• Don't throw around religious iconography with no respect for what that iconography means.
  Using images or symbols ironically is fine, but realize the meanings of a cross (or an inverted one) and who would use them or why. It's not that this misuse of religious symbols is blasphemous, the problem is that it's lazy, thoughtless, and confusing.
• Don't expect to get away with delivering the same old cliche-ridden story with cosmetic changes.
  Audiences are usually smarter than they are given credit for and will realize when they've seen something before. Just as Avatar is Pocahontas with name changes, Legion is Tales from the Crypt Presents: Demon Knight without Billy Zane (and it's worse for the lack).
• Don't swap out traditional good guys (i.e. angels) for bad guys unless you're prepared to address the political implications.
  Making villains out of characters in "heroic" roles can work just fine; police dramas do it all the time. But the successful ones also address the relationship between the cop and the criminal and how the distinctions are greyed. A movie about angels facilitating mass genocide is not necessarily a bad idea but the story must deal with what that says about the disposition of god and angels.
• Don't use prophesy in a story about free will unless you plan to play on that tension.
  Prophesy and messiahs are popular in epic science fiction fantasy from Star Wars to The Matrix but they risk putting on the veneer of false significance. And who made the prophesy? Should they be trusted? And if the prophesy is true, is it self fulfilling or are greater hands at work? And if so can the heroes really work under their own volition? These are important story questions that, although not absolutely necessary for the film to answer explicitly in the course of the story, the answers should at least be known by the storyteller.
• Don't use possession as a solution to the free will problem.
  This goes for demonic possession or "secular" possession (mind control devices, chemicals, etc.). These devices can be used in a story but they cheapen the drama. If no one has a choice in their actions that ruins the ethical imperative of the characters.
• Don't pretend that just because the story is about god that you can get away with a "deus ex machina" ending.
  Occasionally a deus ex machina ending works; Spielberg has done it a few times (Jurassic Park, Raiders of the Lost Ark) and gotten away with it. But it is still a cheat that robs the hero of his or her heroism.