The New movie I Am Legend is a remake of two earlier films, The Last Man on Earth and The Omega Man
What If you wanted to make a new end-of the-world movie and then you realized that the 2 previous actors to act in your new role were Vincent Price and Charlton Heston? This is what Will Smith had to deal with when he took on this role. To be very honest I did not think that he could follow those two legendary actors in that role. After I watched the movie, I am still left with the doubts and wonder did CGI kill what could have been a great film into merely a good one?
Will Smith does a good job in showing you that he is the last man on Earth. What I could not believe were his enemies, the infected. The more I watched the "infected", the more I keep looking for a reset button for my Playstation 3, I kept thinking that this enemy would look good on my PS3 and just did not look like any real foe would in the real world.
To be honest, if you saw the earlier versions of this film, then you have seen this version also. The only difference is that Will Smith is fighting super zombies. I kept thinking that, at any time, the "Men in Black" theme would play. To help Mr. Smith defeat the bad men.
The film is basically what I call a "POPCORN" film. Good action, decent story and definately worth a drive to see in in the "Imax" (If you see this film in Imax, there is a 6 minute preview of the next "Batman" movie. Well worth a look at on Imax)
Grade B
Opened in Korea. 12 December 2007
How I saw it CGV IMAX
More from I Am Legend:
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Is the version at the Internet Archives widescreen, because the one I got from publicdomaintorrents.com was pan & scan - the new MGM disc is in the proper scope ratio as far as I know.
Why did the ending insult you, Kurt? You feel the story should have remained nihilistic?
Oh man, did they end up going for the cop out happy ending?
Is this a remake or a new adaptation of the book?
Also if there is a "happy ending" this time, it wouldn't be the first. There are lots of hints in "The Last Man on Earth" pointing to Vincent Price being the monster, while the vampires are actually people successfully recuperating from the disease.
And in The Omega Man the end was slightly positive, antibody serum and all.
So this one just continues the trend.
all of the endings above are not Richard Matheson's original ending!
*SPOILERRIFIC*
Regarding the (truly Hollywood in the worst sense) alterations to the ending, the movie kept giving clues that it would retain some spiritual resemblance to Matheson's ending, such as a vampire/infected showing momentary rage and sadness at being robbed of a female companion (plus repeated focus on this single vampire, suggesting that it was to become an important character later), and a moment when a character stops to regard the horrific sum of Neville's experiments on the monsters: a wall mosaic of black and white polaroids of Neville's live experiments on infected humans that recall similar photos of victims of the Khmer Rouge at Tuol Sleng. Both times it felt that "I Am Legen" was asking us to recognise the horrific consequences of Neville's well-intentioned quest for a cure.
That 'I Am Legend' bothers to italicize these moments without attempting to answer or even acknowledge any of the troubling questions they raise make the chickenhawk 3rd act of the film all the more baffling.
The most frustrating thing about "I Am Legend" was that for two third of the film I was actually very satisfied with it, changes and all. It's only the last act that demolished my hopes of an approximately intelligent, rather than merely appropriately atmospheric Matheson movie.
Ahhh, studio suck. Isn't it grand? I think I'll wait until I can see it at home.
Apparently getting "infected" means turning into a jelly-skinned CGI monster complete with a dislocating jaw.
At least Will Smith's acting was decent. But for someone with a fully loaded pantry, he sure seems hell bent on bagging some deer.
Never could figure out the hunting thing? Some sort of comment that on a primal level, The Last Man on Earth can't live in peace (akin to Momo's comments above)? Of course, again the fuck everything with that ending...
I’m with Kurt on this one. The ending, or better, the last half of the movie was so frustrating and hurried there you could pretty much see everything coming from a mile away. The woman and the child were also two of the most vapid characters I’ve ever seen on a big screen. Now, the movie didn’t necessarily have to be nihilistic to be satisfactory (though it probably wouldn’t have hurt), but it definitely could have been a LITTLE more secular. I mean, the haven-community at the end looked more depressing than the zombie-infested Manhattan. Sure, it’s a “popcorn” movie, but it really didn’t have to resign itself to that.
duh, posted without reading! i despise remakes with a passion so...yeh...not supporting this.
!!!warning spoilers !!!
Just got back from the flick - really liked it overall. yea I've read the original novel and this flick is a more of a weird amalgam of Omega Man with 28 Days later's "vampires" than it is pure source material goodness
What I missed about the novel was the idea of the intelligent, talking vampires who had developed their whole vampire world with neville as the one remaining human stinker spoling it all and scaring their vampire children at night.
but since i soon realized the movie was veering off from canon I figured i'd just go with it..
1) cg animals were lame, but I've seen a lot worse.. and at least they kept the sequences sparse.. but i still dont see why they didnt get a real lion and a few real deer?
2) cg vampires totally took me out of the movie.. again - there was NO reason not use Doug Jones type lean actors with good prosthetics. no reason at all.
3) hated the dog stuff becuase we all new it was coming, yet it still depressed me and made me pissed off. heartstrings? sure, have a tug...
I'm a sucker for animal stuff and it just wasn't fair!
4) Glad they killed neville off - was worried he'd make it out alive or something. I'm willing to comprimise on an upbeat ending since they balanced it with a sad sacrificial/heroic act. It's totally plausible too since the sheer numbers of vamps menat that nothing short of a miracle would havs stopped them. I remember thinking. "shit.. how's he gonna get out of THIS?" once they retreated to the plexiglass room.. then it dawned on me "they AINT gonna get out of this.. damn!"
5) which leaves me thinking.. since he knew how dangerous they were, why the hell didnt he gut out a military base and have heavy weaponry on hand - like mounted 50 cals, M249 SAWs and shit. He has access to Claymores or something similar, so why not other weapons? And you'd think a soldier would have moved to a more defensible location as soon as he had decided to stay - like on the carrier or something.
6) I'm glad the ending ramped up quickly and he didn't really make any overtly stupid mistakes after being brought back home - they got attacked and swamped the very first night back, its not like he waited around for a week before deciding to leave or something. I still would have had a steel plating and concrete bunker built for emergencies - a "panic room" of sorts. oh well.. When Neville went upstairs and the woman/boy were seemingly missing, i figured the movie was going to veer off on tagent where he has to save them or something from the vamp leader who was using them as bait etc. But the ending veered off in a direction I wasn't exepecting, so that made me happy.
Overall I'd give it B+ assuming you can get over the fact that it strayed from the source. They should have named it "omega man" instead of "legend". It made my girl cry at the end, cuz she had bonded with Smith's likeable character, so i figured the movie at least did it's job of making you care about his fate, which is more than most movies nowadays.
As for issues with hunting.. why would you want to eat old food month after month when you could have fresh meat? it's really very simple. I dont think Neville was ever intended to be a tree-hugger vegan type.
I think Kurt is being way too hard on the film.
As for the optional suicide.. I took it to mean that they would have pursued them into the litle tunnel and there was truly no escape, so Neville had to stop them there.. I guess MAYBE he could have tried to hide inside as well and throw the grenade out into the room from the inside, but hey.. I can live with the ending as is. It's no Matheson, but it's a hell of a long way from Transfomers.
ps: please look past my lack of caps - tendonitis is killing my left hand