Legend

I recently (June 2010) watched this fantasy film with Tom Cruise from 1986 again. I remembered it as being visually cool but generally weak. My memory proved correct. Jack (Tom Cruise) takes Lili (Mia Sara) to see the unicorns. This allows the goblins to poison one and lop off its horn. Winter falls upon the land, freezing the very residents. It is up to Jack and a ragtag band of fairies to save the day. Among his forces are Gump the elf (I'm guessing he's an elf), Oona the Pixie (she seems a lot like Tinkerbell), and a pair of gnomes - Screwball (Billy Barty) and Round Tom. This is the best the forest folk could do when the fate of the world was in the balance? Very sad. Darkness (Tim Curry) is the villain though he seems to be very lonely. Once Lili is in his lair, he spends an inordinate amount of time trying to seduce her. He convinces himself that he has succeeded, leading to his ruin. A strangely credulous Satan. During the grand finale of battles, Jack's chosen technique is to dodge until his opponent loses; works every time.

Apparently, Ridley Scott cut nearly an hour from the film and it shows. Many times it seemed as if some important bits were missing. Lili chases after the surviving unicorn and next you know she and the unicorn are captive in the underworld. Jack needs equipment and, with amazing ease, finds a cave with armor, shield, and sword. What was that about? Not that the sword was much good. He fought a swamp hag with it then lost it while tumbling into the underworld. The chief goblin, Blix, simply vanishes from the film. So, the world is frozen and most inhabitants seem to be frozen too but not a select few. Why are these few not frozen? It isn't explained. To my surprise, there is no Director's Cut with the missing material restored, even as Deleted Scenes on a DVD.

Definitely worth seeing once every 20 years or so.

It turns out that there is a director's cut though it doesn't fill in the gaps either.  In the trivia on IMDb, it says that after a test screening, Scott cut the film from 150 minutes to 98 minutes.  The director's cut doesn't restore 52 minutes worth of material.