Synopsis: Tom Cruise stars in this visually-stunning fantasy adventure in which pure good and evil battle to the death amidst spectacular surroundings. Set in a timeless mythical forest inhabited by fairies, goblins, unicorns and mortals, this fantastic story has Tom Cruise, a mystical forest dweller, chosen by fate to undertake a heroic quest. He must save a beautiful princess, Mia Sara, and defeat the demonic Lord of Darkness, Tim Curry, or the world will be plunged into a never-ending ice age. Co-starring Billy Barty and Alice Playten and directed by Ridley Scott, famed for his remarkable settings and unparalleled imagery, the incredibly realized fable is the stuff movie legends are made of.
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Legend: US Theatrical edition 4.5

Still not a great movie, but they cleaned up the original version by removing some of the ghastly cheesy bits and by adding some overdubs to explain things here and there (sometimes as narration, sometimes in additional dialogue). They even changed the score and, with all due respect to Jerry Goldsmith (one of the greats!), Tangerine Dream replaced his classical score with something with a more exciting pace.

The editing that they did to cut it down by 20+ mins is pretty bad, though, and they added some footage that was ill-conceived, but the original version is so gawd-awful that at least this version improved the experience somewhat. The US Theatrical edition may not even be as good as ‘Conan the Destroyer’ (which is very ungood!), but at least now ‘Legend’ is a couple of notches above ‘Flash Gordon’

Well, maybe it’s my North American sensibility, ’cause the movie was released in Europe in its original version. Mind you, it was also panned there – so no cut was critic-proof