Ridley Scott’s 1985 fantasy epic Legend is heading to Tubi. Fans of the dark fantasy adventure will be able to watch a youthful Tom Cruise take on the mighty Tim Curry for free, and relive a movie that was a box office bomb on its release, but has since become a cult classic thanks to some iconic imagery and special effects.

In 1985, Ridley Scott had already tasted success with Alien, and he attempted to repeat that with Legend, a movie that continues to be as visually stunning now as it was almost 40 years ago. While it is almost unthinkable to imagine Cruise and Curry starring in a movie directed by Scott and the film not becoming a success, all three were in the early years of their careers, and the initial release in theaters barely made back the movie’s $25 million budget.

While there were some who immediately loved the movie, with Curry’s incomparable performance as the demonic Darkness a notable reason to see it, there were a lot who called the film as a single and irreversible reason for Hollywood to back away from making any more fantasy movies – an opinion that would certainly change over time. Curry’s red-skinned, horned appearance (yes, we know those horns bend and wiggle when he runs, but who cares) would go on to inspire many other interpretations of evil personified over the years, and became one of the biggest reasons for the movie’s later success.

Although Legend was seen as a box office dud, it certainly didn’t impact its leading man’s Hollywood appeal, as Cruise went on to star in Top Gun the following year, and the rest on that matter is history. However, it is worth noting that as one of the biggest stars in the world, Cruise is still known to put out some box office disasters decades later, such as the ill-fated reboot of The Mummy, and his most recent Mission: Impossible outing.

Ridley Scott Made Legend with a Specific Audience in Mind

As a director, Ridley Scott’s misfire on Legend seemed to have a decided impact on his future movie choices. While the acclaimed filmmaker has made a mark in the world of sci-fi and horror through the Alien franchise and Blade Runner, he has never dipped his toe in the fantasy genre again.

However, Scott made Legend for a specific reason, and, more importantly, a certain audience – his children. After making movies that were very adult orientated, Scott wanted to make a movie that would have universal appeal, and he partially turned to Disney in order to achieve that. If it had been realized in animated form, Legend’s story of good and evil could very easily have been a Disney movie, and Scott leaned into that with several references to the House of Mouse’s classics. Last year, he explained to Cinefantastique:

“I could have taken this script and gone two ways. One would have been dark and Celtic, which would have limited it. The other was the Disney route, and as I made Legend primarily for children, my children to be precise, that’s the avenue I pursued. Having visual references to Snow White, Fantasia and especially Pinocchio were clear cut decisions by me.”

One of the biggest problems faced by Scott was the way the movie was handled by Universal, who forced him to cut the movie’s runtime and also replace an amazing score by Jerry Goldsmith with a synth-pop one by Tangerine Dream for the U.S. release of the movie. However, Scott would later rectify all of this in his Director’s Cut in 2002, which restored almost half an hour of footage and allowed some audiences to hear Goldsmith’s score for the first time (it was previously only available in European releases).

In the end, Legend is an influential and mostly underrated entry in the filmography of Scott and in the fantasy genre. While many aspects of it have become stereotypical tropes of the genre, in 1985, they were mostly new and previously unseen on film.

You can check out Legend on Tubi from October 1.