I Am Legend

I Am Legend (2007)

Directed by: Francis Lawrence
Written by: Mark Protosevich & Akiva Goldsmith, based on the film Omega Man written by John William Corrington & Joyce Corrington, based on the novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
Starring: Will Smith, Alice Braga, Charlie Tahan, Salli Richardson, Willow Smith

Went to the screening of this wednesday night, tickets courtesy of the Coast, as per usual (interesting experience, but I'll talk about that later). So this is the third adaptation of the novel to date, having more in common with Omega Man than The Last Man on Earth, with Vincent Price.

Anyway, it's about this guy who invents a sort of cure for cancer. The cure quickly turns into a highly contagious, airborne virus which kills 90% of the population in no time flat. 9% of the survivors turn into ravenous, blood-sucking zombie monsters and eat the remaining 1%.

I went into the movie expecting a real piece of crap, think I, Robot, and it was better than that (score!). A lot is better than that I, Robot movie, though...

But yeah, this one was actually pretty cool - Will Smith was really good (totally nuts but somehow likable) and it just sort of gets in to the ordinary day to day life of this guy.

Oh yeah, and the dog was really fucking adorable. It gets killed though, in a sort of nasty way, which is sad. It was a cool dog.

Anyway, on the downside, they go a little heavy on the sentimentality in the flashbacks, and I didn't really like the sort of almost happy ending (it ends bad for Will, but humanity wins out), much like the end of Omega Man. Last Man on Earth was a little more depressing, having much more in common with the book.

Still, they did think of a lot of stuff that didn't really ever come up in the other adaptations - the animals sort of move into the city, the animals from the Brooklyn Zoo are sort of running around (all CG, of course), the streets are grown over. Cool, cool, cool.

And there's even one relatively creepy scene, when he's wandering around in this dark tunnel, before we see the vampires.

That's other really major problem I had with it was the vampires. They didn't show them at all in the trailer (I was all like, where's the vampires at?), because they look like shit. They appear to be entirely CG, and they all look distressingly the same. Apparently all the people infected by the virus had the same body type and bone structure. I guess there was supposed to be a 'leader', but I couldn't tell him apart from the other ones.

When they start to get smart, start fucking around with him, though, they get a little interesting. They're not really as obnoxious as the ones in the novel, and they don't... upgrade.

But anyway, yeah. There's not a whole lot to the movie (which is kinda good in a way - it's nice and short, only like 1 40 or something), and if you go in without terribly high expectations, it's pretty engaging. It also helps if you dig that kind of story, and I do, very much.

END COMMUNICATION