I saw I Am Legend this weekend. It was the first movie I've seen in the theater in nearly a year. I've been eagerly awaiting this movie since I'm a rabid fan of The Last Man on Earth and the trailer had me convinced that this version would be incredible. It was amazing for the first 3/4 of the film. After that, it began emitting a climatic stench that was akin to the last twenty minutes of Spielberg's remake of War of the Worlds. It had so much grisly and bleak potential, but ended with a half-ass, candied climax that would please the ignorant masses, but leave those true seekers of horror's jaws slacked in disgust. We were robbed.
If I could splice the ending of The Last Man on Earth into I Am Legend's it would be one of the best horror movies to come out recently with a profound commentary on fear and humanity that would leave the viewer's soul stained.
Francis Lawrence, how could you BLOW IT!?! After glancing at your next project, I guess I understand. Someone more worthy should have been given this project.
From KBPS Movie Reviews:
For one, this new version of I am Legend completely perverts the meaning of the title, losing the clever, dark irony and turning it instead into something heroic rather than something tragic. In the book, the infected hordes are not animalistic beings with no trace of humanity but rather vampiric humans. The literary Neville tries to offer a scientific explanation for vampirism as opposed to the usual supernatural one. So Neville discovers a germ that causes people to become averse to sunlight, thirsty for blood and resistant to bullets but vulnerable to wooden stakes. Neville goes out on daily hunts to kill these creatures but what he doesn’t realize is that there are some that have managed to control their disease and who have created a new society, a society that sees Neville as a monster that comes in the night to kill them (not unlike the mythic vampires of legend). In the end of the book (which is very different from the movie so don’t consider this a spoiler for the movie), the new vampire society captures Neville and sentences him to death. Neville realizes that in this new society he has become like the vampires of old–a legendary, horrific figure that kills indiscriminately. But this new film adaptation avoids the bleak irony of Matheson’s book to turn Neville into a heroic figure to be celebrated in “legends.” Plus I personally miss the vampire overtones and was disappointed to find the vampire angle essentially gone.
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