#legion

cityhalloween:

anyway it’s monday afternoon and i’m mentally checked out at work so here are some more legionthoughts.

dan stevens brings this boyish, desperate vulnerability to the role of david haller that is often missing from the source material, from what i’ve seen. i don’t think he receives nearly enough serious critical appreciation his work in legion, and i feel like his acting is a kind of afterthought in analyses of the show. but adapting a comic book character from one-dimensionality into the four-dimensional fever dream that is legionis so, so impressive and hugely undervalued.

for example, his heel turn is deeply convincing despite some pretty weak writing in much of season 3; dan makes the audience buy it through the sheer force of his personality. he is so compelling, so terribly convincing in all his manic rages, depressive episodes, and naive puppy love. he feels like an actual person you take a journey with, and it’s heartbreaking to watch him gain ground and backslide repeatedly. when he fucks up, it’s hard to watch because you want him to succeed–even when he’s become a monster you almost want to protest, but this really isn’t him. which is, of course, the thematic center of the show.

you’re forced to empathize with his cruel, selfish, immature man and that empathy humanizes him so it’s more difficult to actively cheer for his demise like we do with more typical antagonists. some of this success is indeed in the writing; credit where it is due. but dan brought this character to life in a way that i doubt others could have, because he didn’t prejudge the material. it wasn’t “this is a comics thing so let’s take it less seriously.” watching dan act in legion is like watching a man fight for his survival, and if the show has any reputation a decade from now it should be for that. and, perhaps, as an argument for the artistic value of these stories.