12 Movies Studios Tried (And Failed) To Fix After Fan Reactions

While Ridley Scott doesn't quite have the auteur-driven filmography of a Kubrick or a Lynch, he nonetheless has a very strong track record with only a few straight-out duds (looking at you, A Good Year).

Perhaps none, however, is more perplexing but also more straightforward than the Tom Cruise and Tim Curry dark fantasy epic Legend. For this, Scott's fourth film, he decided to break away from a strong sci-fi run (Alien, Blade Runner) and delve into fantasy, which, on paper, ought to have been a small step rather than a blind leap.

At just over two hours on the initial edit, Scott thought he could afford to trim some fat and decided to cut Legend down to an hour fifty before screening it to audiences (surprising, for the man who brought us the 194-minute Kingdom of Heaven director's cut).

Following a mixed response, where it was determined the audience had to work too hard to unpack the film, it was trimmed to 95 minutes for the UK release and then, in close coordination with Universal, 89 minutes for the US release, on the basis that American audiences could only be expected to cognate and ingest the bare minimum.

With the story now an incoherent mess, the film was a critical and commercial flop. Whether the studio or the director was ultimately responsible for this confusing and far from engaging feature remains uncertain, but Scott's 2002 director's cut suggests it might be the former.