By Maria Lewis
Everybody loves Paul Bettany. Think you hate rom-coms? Throw Paul Bettany in a rom-com and suddenly Wimbledon is your favourite movie. Don’t give a shit about evolutionary theory? BOOM, Paul Bettany is Charles Darwin and soon it doesn’t seem that strange that he married his first cousin after all. Hell, the love of Paul Bettany was so strong that Marvel had to promote him from Tony Stark’s Siri to one of the most powerful beings in the universe, Vision. Everybody loves Paul Bettany.
Yet when the British actor made the leap from quirky supporting characters to bonafide leading man in two unashamedly mainstream horror movies, the response was less than warm. For diehard fans, the stretch from 2010 to 2011 when he starred in Legion and Priest – released back-to-back over a 12-month period – is bittersweet. Both films were considered flops, with ‘blockbuster Bettany’ put on the bench as he was forced to divert back to what he knew: be the British Sam Rockwell aka that guy who pops up in what feels like every movie and steals the show. At the time, critics dubbed Legion as “celestial tosh” and Priest “an unholy mess” (to date, neither film has been able to rate over 20 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes). However, was Bettany’s two minutes as horror’s leading man actually as terrible as everyone makes out?
Legion was the first high-concept, supernatural scarer off the rank in 2010. It was the directorial debut of Scott Stewart, a visual effects producer who had worked with Bettany on Iron Man just two years prior. Based on his own original concept (Stewart also wrote the screenplay), it followed a rag-tag group of survivors holed up in a desert diner during the literal end of days. God has given up on humanity (again, honestly this guy) and Angels turn evil by following his command to exterminate mankind. Bettany plays the lone individual who goes against the Lord’s judgement, descending to Earth to help save the diner dwellers which include Adrianne Palicki, who’s preggo with a kid that – if born – could prevent judgement day. It’s a meaty concept, with so much material to milk from the Biblical backstory it’s not surprising that Syfy liked Stewart’s idea enough to give him another shot. A TV series based off Legion – called Dominion – ran for two seasons.
Bettany is the glue that holds everything together as Michael, the angelic looking tough guy who comes with a stoic stare, no-nonsense attitude and a trunk worth of automatic weapons. Also, abs. He’s the cool action hero and honestly? You believe it. Legion also packs some impressive scares, particularly the terrifying visual of an old lady eating a rare steak, blood dripping down her dentures, before dropping a bunch of curse words and literally scuttling up the fucking walls. You’ll never look at your grandmother the same. There’s also a NOPE-esque moment with modern monster man Doug Jones as an ice cream truck driver who has expanding limbs. The cast is packed with talent, from veterans Dennis Quaid and Kate Walsh, to Willa Holland and Tyrese Gibson (before he spent his days begging The Rock to return his calls on social media). Legion is a scary, stylish and suspenseful movie … that no one seemed to like very much. Rated R, it was made on a fairly modest $26M budget (the movie looks like it’s worth three times that) and grossed almost $68M worldwide. So not quite the OMG WORST BOX OFFICE FLOP EVER narrative it still feels like is circulating today. It made its money back, then probably a little more, but critics hated that movie like Mel Gibson hates … well, pick a minority. Any minority.
The working duo of Stewart and Bettany had another chance, though. The pair reteamed for an equally star-studded follow up in Priest, which dropped in 2011. The supporting cast ran deep in Lily Collins, Maggie Q, Karl Urban, Christopher Plummer, Brad Dourif, with Cam Gigandet and Stephen Moyer (both during the peak of their respective vampire fame).
Based on a Korean comic book, it’s set in a world where humans and vampires have been at war for a millennium, with both species practically wiped out in the resulting conflict. Yet an order of superhuman warriors – priests – manage to all but exterminate vampires and the church now rules a reality where there’s no separation between religion and state. When a series of vampire attacks drags the disbanded priests out of retirement, Bettany and his team are forced to hunt down the source of the resurgent evil.
Like its predecessor, Priest is a horror film with a big budget and even bigger balls. Conceptually ambitious, it’s a shame the film wasn’t actually successfully because it would have meant we would have seen more like it. The explainer of the world’s history through a stylish animated sequence, reminiscent of the graphic novel, is a particular standout. So too are the action set pieces and entire sci-fi Western vibe. Bettany persists as the melancholy, serious guy of few words and many fists. You know, like who Bruce Willis has spent his entire career playing but with actual soul. Priest was PG-13, hence not quite as brutal as Legion but still damn bleak. With a budget of $60M, its worldwide gross of $78M wasn’t a huge win. Yet it also wasn’t a disaster.
Both of the Stewart-Bettany films followed a similar path to Keanu Reeves’ Constantine, which managed to make $230M worldwide in 2005 – on a $100M budget – despite utterly savage reviews (“entirely beyond redemption“). By the time Legion hit cinemas and Priest came shortly after, the mood for that kind of movie had only soured more. Yet does that mean either film is bad and deserves the ass-kicking into obscurity some seem to so desperately want?
Art is subjective, of course, but both films are… actually… well, good. Neither movie sacrificed scares at the expense of action or vice versa: the two elements were balanced perfectly throughout both. Stewart created a duo of unique, diverse and fascinating dystopias with a wealth of world building put in place. Bettany was more than believable as an avenging angel in Legion and a helluva holy man in Priest. Heck, he was so good in the latter that it almost erased the fact the last time he played a priest was as the murderous albino who (most likely) jerked off in confessional booths in The Da Vinci Code.
Legion and Priest both stand up as horror movies. They both stand up as action movies. And maybe that’s the problem, as they straddled a line so unique neither genre community seemed willing to embrace them. In an even tougher box-office climate than it was in back in 2010 and 2011, it’s hard to imagine either film faring better at the cinema in 2017. However, maybe that was never the home for them. In the age of streaming and on-demand services, horror has found new life with a direct route into people’s homes. Hell, if Netflix were willing to make Max Landis and David Ayer’s version of Training Day with orcs and elves for $90M, what’s to say that Paul Bettany’s time as a leading man of horror couldn’t have lasted more than the two minutes it got?
Maria Lewis is a journalist and author previously seen on SBS Viceland’s The Feed. She’s the presenter and producer of the Eff Yeah Film & Feminism podcast. Her debut novel Who’s Afraid? was released in 2016 with the sequel – Who’s Afraid Too? – out now. You can find her on Twitter @MovieMazz
