fastidium

I saw the movie I Am Legend, starring Will Smith, yesterday. The movie loosely follows Richard Matheson’s short story I Am Legend. In fact, its been made into a movie two previous times, The Last Man on Earth (1964) and The Omega Man (1971), and it follows those adaptations more than the original.

In what follows, I want to discuss the plots and important story points of both the book and movie. So, if you haven’t read the book or seen the movie and you want to do either, don’t read beyond this point. Come back later and read what I have to say.

I enjoyed the movie but I have one central complaint and several minor ones. None of my complaints are enough to not call this the best scifi movie of 2007. It was very well made.

I Am Legend, the book, was a landmark in the history of gothic science fiction. It is the story of Robert Neville, the last man alive in 1973 Los Angeles overrun by vampires. According to Wikipedia, it was “influential on the developing modern zombie genre, in popularizing the fictional concept of a worldwide apocalypse due to disease, and in exploring the notion of vampirism as a disease.” The title of the book comes from the fact that Neville becomes the aberration - the legend - in a world where people with the disease are the norm.

The movie, taking place in New York 2009, takes a different slant on the idea of legend. Instead of Neville being the last of his kind, he is a scientist attempting to find the cure for the virus which has decimated the world. He is immune to the virus, just as he was in the book. He realizes too late, as he’s cornered by the creatures, that its his blood that is the cure (see update below). He gives a vial to the girl Anna, another person with the immunity, and she manages to get it to a colony of survivors in the mountains of Pennsylvania. Hence, he becomes a legend: the man who saves mankind.

So, that’s my central point. I said it was a complaint but its really not. I’m just a little concerned about the difference in the sense of legend being used. In the book, Neville is the last of mankind. In the movie, he’s the hero of mankind.

Other differing story elements exist also. In the book, the creatures are vampires. The disease turns people into vampires as well as reanimating dead ones. Neville kills the vampires with wooden stakes through the heart and they do not like garlic or sunlight. He learns through experimentation that there are scientific explanations for these weaknesses.

In the movie, its hard to tell if the creatures are vampires or zombies or something else. Its said that the virus killed 90% of the population while the remaining 10% were split into a minority that were immune and the rest that were turned into flesh-eating creatures. The flesh eaters “feed” on most of those who are immune. I’m sure it was for dramatic effect in the movie, but these creatures move with incredible agility and are able to climb up walls, they are able to make huge leaps, and they are completely bald (not to mention, very scary).

In the book, there is a group of vampires who are “still living”. That is, they have the disease but are not the undead and have managed to keep the effects of vampirism at bay. The female in the story is a girl named Ruth, a “still living” vampire, who tries to talk Neville into giving up. He has been killing both kinds of vampires and they have decided to stop him once and for all. Ruth’s equivalent in the movie is Anna. She, along with a boy named Ethan, saves Neville from the creatures as he attempts to commit suicide by making one last stand. How Anna saves him is never stated and it seemed puzzling that a woman and a small boy could do such a thing… unless they were vampires themselves which is what I was thinking during the movie.

But no, Anna is a human being with an immunity to the disease who just happened to find her way from Brazil, with small boy in tow, to New York City just in time to save Neville’s life. It was a very anti-climactic ending to the movie. Robert Neville becomes legend because he saves mankind with his blood.

Am I right that this sort of deflates the impact of “I Am Legend”?

UPDATE: It’s been brought to my attention that it wasn’t Neville’s blood specifically that saved everyone. It wasn’t his blood in the vial that he handed to Anna at the end of the movie, it was from the female creature that was starting to show signs of coming back to normal. Otherwise, the “antidote” could have come from any person who was immune to the disease (i.e., Anna or any one else at the compound in Pennsylvania). It was through Neville’s diligent work, which I think started with his own blood, that saved mankind. But still, my point stands. He’s a different legend in the movie than he is in the book.

I’ve already read rumors about a sequel.