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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 3942649" data-attributes="member: 32740">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.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.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.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.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.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.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.Nah.  I don't see any reason to really complain.  It's a terrific adaptation that is fantastically executed.</blockquote>

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