I Am Legend
January 29th 2008 01:24
Category: Movies
Director: Francis Lawrence.
Producers: Akiva Goldsman, James Lassiter, David Heyman & Neal Moritz.
Screenplay by: Mark Protosevich & Akiva Goldsman.
Starring: Will Smith (Robert Neville), Alice Braga (Anna), Charlie Tahan (Ethan) & Dash Mihok (Alpha Male).
Produced by: Warner Brothers in association with Village Roadshow.
Running Time: 105 minutes. Rating: M.
There is a novel by Richard Matheson called “I am Legend” which I have heard about but I’ve never been able to get my hands on a copy. Naturally when I heard about this film starring Will Smith I wondered whether or not the novel would have any significant impact on the feature film, after all often a film is named for a novel but bears very little resemblance to the original work. According to what little information I was able to glean about Mr Matheson’s work it seemed to be a post apocalyptic future where vampires are the dominant life form upon the world and the bulk of normal humanity is either dead or simply cattle that the vampires feed upon; all except for one solitary man who wages a lonely war against the new race, becoming something of a bogeyman to vampires and thus reversing the relationship of vampires and humans as traditionally used in fiction and the silver screen. As I say this is only what I had managed to gather about Mr Matheson’s novel through second hand information culled from various sources, certainly the movie is nothing like this. If anything Warner Brothers “I Am Legend” could be regarded as something of a post apocalyptic tragedy.
So what exactly happened? How could everything go down hill so quickly? Remember that miracle cure for cancer that was developed by Dr Krippen, well it had some severe and unforseen side effects, drastic ones. Somehow the cure mutated and became a virus, Krippen virus to be exact and in a short time it eliminated 90% of the world’s population, approximately 5.4 billion people, in one hit. Of the surviving ten percent only one percent of that remaining total was completely immune, the rest of the surviving population were mutated into the Darkseekers; blood thirsty animalistic zombies. Sound familiar? There are some fairly obvious parallels between this film and Resident Evil: Extinction as well as with Day of the Trifids. So by 2009 the bulk of the world’s population seems to have become blood thirsty zombies and it looks as if Robert Neville, a former US Army officer and medical doctor, is the only normal living human being left alive.
Truly it is a harsh existence and if anything this is the actual charm in this film, depicting the slow decay of Robert Neville’s psyche as the days pass. Despite his focus on survival and his obsession with trying to find a cure for the disease that his afflicted his fellow human beings he is not holding it together. His only companion is a female German Sheppard called Sam, he keeps broadcasting on the radio channels trying to get in touch with any other survivors, listening to Bob Marley on his stereo and getting DVDs from a local video store filled with shop window dummies that he tries to strike up conversations with. But despite all his efforts he just isn’t holding up well to the relentless drain on his character, when he eventually is discovered by some survivors in the most traumatic of circumstances he is unable to cope with the situation, in fact he can’t cope with it at all.
And this is the tragedy of Robert Neville’s last three years; in all that time he has worked tirelessly to do something about this virus and also make contact with any other survivors yet his isolation and his obsession have effectively meant that he is unable to operate in any kind of ‘normal’ society. In fact when Anna, one of the survivors who eventually finds him in New York, tells him about a colony of survivors he just can’t believe it; it doesn’t sink in. It’s almost as if the disease may not have affected him physically but mentally, for even though he has moments of upbeat resolve the darkness is never far from the surface always ready to rear its head. In his own way he has become something of a monster as a result of his isolation. There is a very poignant reminder of this via the medium of the first Shrek movie where Shrek is talking to Donkey about how he likes being alone and solitary in his swamp and isn’t looking for company.
“I Am Legend” was an enjoyable film to watch, filled with pathos and tension but as I made my way from the cinema and back into the hurly burly that was everyday life there was the feeling that this film had something of a ‘there are some things we shouldn’t do with science’ kind of vibe about the story, a sort of warning not to delve into the Pandora’s Box that is genetic engineering and research. And then there is the brief instance of divine conversation, only slightly less annoying than MAS (Mad Astronaut Syndrome). Combine these with the questions of how can a virus that is meant to focus on curing cancer suddenly turn everyone into psychopathic/sociopathic zombies? And why are they mutated into zombies in the first place? And why is it that they feed on other people when there seems to be an abundance of plant and animal life around to eat? Unless a film is specifically about the divine frankly I don’t see why any movie needs an instance of divine conversation to drive its plot along and it certainly doesn’t need any loose ends within its back story. Still loose ends seem to be a feature of any zombie style film, the rationale behind such creatures is never truly realised. They are there to provide a convenient field of antagonists against which the protagonists can focus their energies on..
Despite these inconsistencies “I Am Legend” is an enjoyable film and one I do recommend catching at your local cinema if the opportunity presents itself.
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