I Am Legend [spoilers]

[JoeGKushner]

Got to see an advanced screening tonight over at AMC theater downtown Chicago.

For some nonspecific material, if you're looking for a faithful adaptation of the book, this is not it. It has numerous elements of the book including the crushing solitutde that the main character must endure and it has it's share of "dark seeker" as they're called here but it's a different beast.

Let me add that Wil Smith does a great job of acting. His various dialogs with maniqueins that he's set up across the city as well as his dog for early parts of the movie show a man out of his mind with solitute. His fierce dedication to his timed daily live shows that he takes the very real threats around him seriously.

First off, it moves very fast. It clocked in at about 90 minutes.

Second off, the liberties it takes with the whole issue is much more like 28 Days Latter in that the enemies, for the most part, are mindless and brainless, possessing vast superhuman speed and strength.

Special effects on them is fairly top notch. There are a set of plauge dogs we get to see and they're very well done. Some great stuff there.

The shooting of the movie is also strong. You get a vast sense of how empty the city is without people.

As far as the movie itself though...

1. The 'vampire plague' is a mutated virus that in essence gives 95% of the world rabies.

2. Much of the tale comes in the format of back flashes, giving us insight into the character.

3. One of the biggest crushing moments of isolation from the book, the death of the dog, is ruined in the fact that he has the dog from the get go and when he loses it, it's bad, but nothing as bad as the book.

4. His eventually encounter with other survivors, is just m'eh. He meets a woman and child who wind up saving his life when in anger he tries to take out the vampires.

5. His defenses for his house, where he's been shown to take all this great care of illustrating it's fortress like structure, is destroyed almost instantly. Sure, there are some explosions and some great action sequences here but it's weak.

6. While he dies, he cures the disease. It is his cure of the disease that makes him a legend. This is the biggest divergent for me and while it doesn't ruin the movie, it makes me think that no, like the Omega Man and Last Man on Earth, they should've picked a different title for this movie and said "heavily based on the novel, I Am Legend."

 

[RangerWickett]

Wow, when you say spoilers, you ain't kiddin'. I figured you spoil a bit, not the whole thing. For other folks, maybe you could put the big spoilers behind an sblock.

 

[Klaus]

Wow, when you say spoilers, you ain't kiddin'. I figured you spoil a bit, not the whole thing. For other folks, maybe you could put the big spoilers behind an sblock.

Dude, it's in the thread title.

Glad I ain't seeing this one in the theaters. I knew it'd be different. I think I'll run after the Vincent Price one.

 

[RangerWickett]

Man, the first two-thirds of that movie were great. This is definitely fodder for a "How it should have ended" treatment. I can see it now:

1. title card 'I Am Legend - How it Should have Ended'
2. city is empty; things are sad
3. flashbacks to family; things are sad
4. dog dies; things are sad
5. studio exec/director/script writer says, "This is depressing. Needs more 'Postman.'"
6. Richard Matheson appears, slaps the person with a copy of the book
7. main character is captured, tried, and executed; things are sad

 

[Darkwolf71]

Yep, this one falls into the 'Planet of the Apes' category. By making that film end not being on earth, they changed the entire story. Not a bad film, but changing it just because, 'Well, everyone knows the ending, so lets change it." is just a bad idea.

Yes, everyone knows the ending, and THEY ARE PAYING TO SEE THAT END! Like the additional bit at the end of The Mist, unnecessary and detracts from the story.

I am Legend is a great, enjoyable movie, but from the point where they introduce the female character, I just knew 'something' was wrong. They changed the entire reason for the title, "I am legend". This changes the entire story. The upbeat ending was a let down.

 

[RangerWickett]

I seem to recall a scene in the trailer where Smith is face to face with a monster. That wasn't in the movie, was it? There was a report that after they finished the movie they went back and filmed a different ending, so does anyone have an idea what they changed? Dare we hope that the DVD might have the real original ending?

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

For some nonspecific material, if you're looking for a faithful adaptation of the book, this is not it.

I just read the book maybe two weeks ago. A faithful adaptation of the original story to film would be a borefest of the highest order. It's a good read but it would not translate well DIRECTLY to film as it is heavily internal. Books are ADAPTED to film. They are different media that while they have much in common DO have different requirements for pacing, structure, character development, etc.

Second off, the liberties it takes with the whole issue is much more like 28 Days Latter in that the enemies, for the most part, are mindless and brainless, possessing vast superhuman speed and strength.

I would disagree in that the Infected from 28 Days Later do not have superhuman speed or strength. But the ones in this adaptation DO, and that IS rather a departure from the original story. On the whole it's as much a remake of Omega Man as it is an adaptation of I Am Legend.

I think it's a GREAT adaptation though and after leaving the theater I had absolutely no complaints whatsoever about its merits.

Special effects on them is fairly top notch. There are a set of plauge dogs we get to see and they're very well done. Some great stuff there.

It plays well, but I actually found things to still be a little too CGI-ish. If there is a criticism to be levelled it is that it may have been a mistake to make the zombies superhumanly strong and fast and thus the use of DGI for them all. It may have played better to hew closer to 28 Days Later and use live actors instead of CGI. I don't think the virus victims needed superhuman strength and speed to be scary - their sheer numbers would be sufficient.

2. Much of the tale comes in the format of back flashes, giving us insight into the character.

Yes the backstory is provided in flashback but the way you phrased that makes it sound as if there were too many flashbacks or they were very long. Just to be clear for those who might take it that way there were perhaps, 4 flashbacks, maybe 5, essentially in the form of abbreviated dreams to fill in the backstory and none of them were more than 5 minutes. They left as much to the imagination as they explicitly filled in and were terrificly executed.

3. One of the biggest crushing moments of isolation from the book, the death of the dog, is ruined in the fact that he has the dog from the get go and when he loses it, it's bad, but nothing as bad as the book.

First, I would disagree just up front with this, But secondly, here would be a great example of where written fiction and movies must diverge. In a book it's easy to devote a chapter or two to introducing a dog, going into great detail about the emotional investment the protagonist has in the dog and how crushed in spirit he is when the dog dies. Movies don't work that way. Movies are a VISUAL medium and you have to SHOW that sort of attachment. The internal narrative must be externalized in order to work (short of using non-traditional film techniques). In movies that takes TIME to show that developing and being reinforced or else it feels abrupt, unrealistic, unsupported, even poorly acted although it would actually be a fault in the script.

4. His eventually encounter with other survivors, is just m'eh. He meets a woman and child who wind up saving his life when in anger he tries to take out the vampires.

This, however, DOES seem faithful to the book. In the book when he meets the woman he is similarly distant, angry, also paranoid. In the film it serves to demonstrate that simply FINDING another survivor does NOT fix his mental state. It isn't just loneliness that he's been combating - it's the crushing loss of his family. In the book that can simply be stated. In a movie it must be SEEN.

5. His defenses for his house, where he's been shown to take all this great care of illustrating it's fortress like structure, is destroyed almost instantly. Sure, there are some explosions and some great action sequences here but it's weak.

This I would agree with. If the movie is too short it is here that more should have taken place, perhaps another instance of some trick that he'd used earlier against the zombies again used against him. Even something light-hearted like a zombie picking up a fallen handgrenade while standing at a window or the door and mindlessly pulling the pin.

6. While he dies, he cures the disease. It is his cure of the disease that makes him a legend. This is the biggest divergent for me and while it doesn't ruin the movie, it makes me think that no, like the Omega Man and Last Man on Earth, they should've picked a different title for this movie and said "heavily based on the novel, I Am Legend."

Nah. I don't see any reason to really complain. It's a terrific adaptation that is fantastically executed.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Yep, this one falls into the 'Planet of the Apes' category. By making that film end not being on earth, they changed the entire story. Not a bad film, but changing it just because, 'Well, everyone knows the ending, so lets change it." is just a bad idea.

Of course, the original novel of Planet of the Apes is quite different from EITHER of its adaptations to movies, but the ending of the book was much closer to the ending of the newer, more recent movie than the older Charlton Heston one. I therefore find this an... interesting complaint. No, everyone DIDN'T know the ending of the original story, though the ending of the original movie is now timelessly iconic. The accusation of "change just for the sake of change" doesn't apply in either case. If anything it DOES provide motivation to change it. Because everyone IS familiar with the ending to the original movie they would want to change it and do something they might not expect.

 

[Klaus]

I just read the book maybe two weeks ago. A faithful adaptation of the original story to film would be a borefest of the highest order.

Only if it's badly done.

It can be done well, as in The Last Man On Earth ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058700/ )

Here's Newsarama's review of it:
[sblock]The first film adaptation of Matheson’s novel was relatively close to the book. For some reason, there’s a change of the main character and his family’s name to Morgan instead of Neville, but all other names of the main antagonists and supporting cast remain the same.

This movie, starring the late, great, Vincent Price, definitely focused on the slow steady grip madness takes upon poor Robert. Like the book and GN, the story takes place in a medium-sized suburban town. Robert has boarded up his house, and has a daily routine of garlic, mirrors, and hunting vampires in their “day coma.” Price’s signature creepy voice doesn’t betray him often, allowing for a pretty wide emotional range from the horror star.

Only a few changes hit the back-story, the most prominent making Robert (Neville) Morgan a scientist of high caliber. In the original story, he dabbled in science, and definitely learned much more as the years passed, but he wasn’t an original fighter of the plague. This did not take anything away from the story, and helped move things along at a faster pace.

The movie holds this faster pace almost all the way through. There’s an extended sequence involving a dog that leads the most boring chase scene in film history, but aside from that, it entertains while making you worry about Robert’s fate. Having just read the GN prior to seeing the movie, the nuances stood out more, but really weren’t bothersome.

Overall, The Last Man on Earth is an entertaining flick, with pretty solid acting. Obviously low budget, and far from the effects that we’re all so used to now, they instead focused on the internal tension, which made the emotions of Robert a little more real. This is probably the most accurate book to film adaptation, based on the next one that was made, and what I know of the newest version (Ironically, the first to bear the actual name of the book).[/sblock]

 

[jaerdaph]

Well, I have to see it because I'm a non-credited extra with no lines in this (I played a vampire zombie in a scene filmed at night in a cemetary).

Hopefully, I'm not on the cutting room floor (or the scene). A friend and I answered a casting call for this on a whim. It was last February some time I believe, but I do remember the weather here in NYC was in the single digits so the cast and crew took to calling the movie "I am FROZEN".