Movie Review. I am Legend

Reader Comments

1. Kurt Halfyard 12/15/2007 @ 8:03pm

   Despite all the glossy graphics of an empty New York, this new version of I Am Legend has one of the all time most insulting endings ever. The Bullshit stank up the theatre. The last 20 minutes are enough to make you want to throw something at the screen. What an insult to the source material, and more importantly, at the audience.

   I hope screenwriters Akiva Goldsman and Mark Protosevich both opt for early retirement, because they fucked up what could have been a good adaptation with this drivel.

   And the CGI vampire men were pretty poor looking.  What was wrong with just using actors?  You know, those folks who are usually pretty good a acting and stuff.  Duh.  Whatever.  Save your Money and get the Vincent Price version, or better yet, download the copyright free (legal)version over at the Internet Video Archives....

2. Rhythm-X 12/15/2007 @ 8:41pm

   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.

3. Michael Guillen 12/16/2007 @ 12:48am

   Why did the ending insult you, Kurt?  You feel the story should have remained nihilistic?

4. Mike 12/16/2007 @ 1:08am

   Oh man, did they end up going for the cop out happy ending?

5. Ard Vijn 12/16/2007 @ 2:31am

   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.

6. The Visitor 12/16/2007 @ 3:55am

   all of the endings above are not Richard Matheson’s original ending!

7. Kurt Halfyard 12/16/2007 @ 7:37am

   ***SPOILERS***

   Will Smith Denounces God, Then Will Smith Finds god within about 5 minutes of ‘real-time’ movie.  Will smith commits suicide when there is no reason too, also his blood given to Survivor Camp happens to fix everything?  Why couldn’t / wouldn’t they have figured out something that rediculously simple pre-plague?  That solution is so basic it’s insulting.  And it all comes as a massive Deus Ex Machina in the last 5 minutes.

   Yea, I prefer THE LAST MAN ON EARTH with its reversal of heroes and villians, and revisionist take on Dracula mythology, and Vincent Price spitting in the face of his own obsolescence when the next step of evolution has more or less kicked in. 

   I had issues with Tom Cruise magically meeting up with his lost sun in a perfectly untouched corner of the Boston Suburbs at the end of WAR OF THE WORLDS remake, but I AM LEGEND made me want to fuckin’ strangle someone. 

   Society has to have its pat heroic/martyr Christian ending doesn’t it?  Bullshit.

8. Kurt Halfyard 12/16/2007 @ 7:38am

   Rhythm, yes, sadly the public domain version is cropped.

9. Momo the Cow 12/16/2007 @ 9:10am

   *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.

10. Kurt Halfyard 12/16/2007 @ 12:44pm

    Momo, good points all of those.  I think that is what made several of my audience members (myself included, quite loudly) boo the film at the end.  The same thing happened with the Kidman/Craig version of Body Snatchers.

    Unforgivable.

11. eDWeiRD 12/16/2007 @ 1:30pm

    Ahhh, studio suck. Isn’t it grand? I think I’ll wait until I can see it at home.

12. Congee 12/16/2007 @ 3:53pm

    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.

13. Kurt Halfyard 12/16/2007 @ 4:25pm

    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…

14. Pusheye 12/17/2007 @ 8:49am

    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.

15. thekinginyellow 12/17/2007 @ 9:29am

    this movie has a foul air about it that reminds me of “omega man”.  i’m not a huge fan of will smith so i will most likely not see this movie.

16. thekinginyellow 12/17/2007 @ 9:34am

    duh, posted without reading!  i despise remakes with a passion so...yeh...not supporting this.

17. TJ 12/17/2007 @ 9:13pm

    !!!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

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