Richard Matheson’s classic 1953 sci fi novel I Am Legend
deserves its reputation as a great read, and it is surely the best
thing the man ever produced; as others of his novels and short stories
are rather generic (save for a few The Twilight Zone television
adaptations). That book is the granddaddy of modern undead cinema and
literature- from vampires to Carnival Of Souls and the George Romero
Dead films, to their parodies and updates, like 28 Days Later. It also
was a successor to Daniel DeFoe’s Robinson Crusoe, in its handling of
human loneliness, and precursor to Pierre Boulle’s Planet Of The Apes
novel and films, in its post-apocalyptic tones. Twice before the 2007
Will Smith take on the film it was released as a Vincent Price vehicle,
in 1964, and titled The Last Man On Earth. Seven years later Charlton
Heston, that Apes film franchise alum, essayed the role in The Omega
Man.
So, flashforward four decades and one gets the wisecrackin’, vanilla
wiseass Negroisms of the former Fresh prince, Will Smith, in
directorial hack Francis Lawrence’s version. To say that he is miscast
as the lone survivor of the tale, Robert Neville, is an understatement
as vast as the film’s budget. While the novel was set in Los Angeles,
the Smith film is set in New York- specifically Manhattan. Why pick
this most trite of settings to show loneliness? Because, claim the
film’s producers, because it’s always so busy that to see it empty
would be a shock. Well, no, not if one has seen the Harry Belafonte
post-apocalyptic film from the 1950s- The World, The Flesh, And The
Devil. Not if one had seen Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, or John
Sayles’ The Brother From Another Planet, or at least four to five dozen
other lesser known films. But, then again, this is a Hollywood film,
and the collective memory in that industry is about 18 months.
The actual story is simple: Neville believes he is the last man in New
York, possibly the world, after a cure for cancer, made by Dr. Alice
Krippin (Emma Thompson, in an unbilled role) mutates with a rabies
virus to become a virus that causes most humans to become cannibalistic
ultraviolet light-avoiding superstrong zomboid things. It’s not so much
that the science is implausible (hell, even Romero’s zombies moved only
until their flesh rotted away- their shelf life was only a few months)
but that the special effects in this film are absolutely dreadful. The
zombies are all CGI, and as expressive as Shrek (whose film is pimped
in a few background scenes where Smith does his Happy Negroisms), and
there are many pointless scenes, such as the film’s opening that shows
Smith and his dog hot rodding down Manhattan in chase of totally phony
looking deer. Neville spends his time trying to cure the zombies,
occasionally catching and treating them. They all fail, until a female
zombie seems to get a bit better. By that time, however, the head
zombie has been able to find out where Neville lives because, after he
barely escapes a trap set for him (which mirrored the trap he set for
the female zombie- a nice touch), and his dog is attacked by zombie
dogs and dies, Neville tries to suicide.
Then, comes the deus ex machina that almost all bad fiction has, or at
least, that signals the viewer (already not savvy enough to pick up on
the prior Dumbest Possible Action tropes) that this is bad fiction.
With his car overturned, and about to be overrun by zombies (or drown
him in the Hudson River), Neville is saved by a blinding flash of light
from a South American woman, Anna (Alice Braga), who believes she is an
agent of God, and child, Ethan (Charlie Tahan), who have heard his
radio message and sailed into New York. How they do this, aside from a
flash of light, is never shown nor explained, but this rescue
eventually leads to the zombies following the trio back to Neville’s
home, where, the next night, they attack. Neville and the other two are
forced into his laboratory, behind some superstrong glass. Here is
where we get two versions of the film. On the two disk DVD set, from
Warner Brothers, we get the original theatrical ending, and an
alternate version. Neither is good, but the alternate ending is a
little bit better. In the original, the girl and child are sealed in a
vault until morning, and as the head male zombie tries to bash his way
in, Neville detonates a grenade that kills himself and the zombies. The
girl and child make it to a Vermont retreat, filled with unaffected
humans, and spread the legend of Neville, who made a serum to save
mankind from the female zombie he was trying to cure. In the alternate
version, Neville gives the female zombie to the head male zombie, for
they seem to be mates, and the zombies retreat. There is no cure, and
the trio head out of New York to search for the Vermont retreat-
presumably in a car waiting on the Bronx or New Jersey mainland since
all the bridges and tunnels in and out of Manhattan were destroyed in
the island’s quarantine.
The alternate ending is a bit closer to the original book’s ending,
save that Neville survives, whereas the theatrical version is more
typically Hollywood in its ending. But, neither is worth a damn.
Smith’s acting is atrocious- his typical mugging. This works in
lightweight crap like Independence Day or Men In Black, but I Am Legend
is a far deeper and richer work whose essence has been raped in this
adaptation. Like Tom Cruise and Leonardo DiCaprio, Smith has absolutely
no range as an actor- and don’t give me that, ‘He was great in Six
Degrees Of Separation,’ crap. It is interesting to note that with each
successive version of Matheson’s work the films get farther away from
the source novel and consequentially worse. The Vincent Price version,
at least, had Matheson write parts of the screenplay, although
uncredited. The rest of the acting is just as bad- both human and CGI.
The screenplay is, as if you had not guessed, even worse than the
acting, and the cinematography is almost nonexistent, in terms of
aesthetics.
The DVD features are as bad. The second disk, with the alternate
ending, has nothing, while Disk One, with the theatrical release, has a
few bad cartoons inspired by the hour and forty minute long film. Other
than that, one has to put the DVD into a computer to see two rather
pallid featurettes. One is a pretentious bit trying to tie the film
into modern pandemic viral threats like AIDS, Ebola, and assorted flus.
The second one is standard making of fare. There is no audio
commentary, and overall, for such a big budget film, the bonus features
are sheer garbage. Both versions of the film are shown in 2.35:1 aspect
ratios.
All in all, I Am Legend is even a disappointment if one went in
expecting disappointment. There is no deeper examination of loneliness,
just shots of aloneness. The threat to Neville has been dumbed down- in
earlier versions he is the threat. In this film, he is the threatened.
The female he meets is a religious bubblehead, rather than a plant from
the semi-zomboids that are looking to start a New Breed. And on and on
goes the watering down. The film fails as both an adaptation, and if
seen without knowledge of its forebears. But, aside from its
Hollywoodization stripping the tale of its relevance and depth, this
film version even fails its low Hollywoodized standards of success-
it’s dull, poorly made, and has not a second of suspense. It is a
retard’s retard. But, as I always seek to give credit where it’s due,
let me state to that grandfather of Hollywood dumbing down, ‘Thanks for
nothing, Mr. Spielberg!’
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