Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Sept 26, 2016 9:26:10 GMT -5
I Am Legend
Dir. Francis Lawrence
Premiered December 14, 2007
Once upon a time, I was really excited about this movie. I was days from turning 18 and looking for a good movie to celebrate with. And here we have Will Smith, idol of nineties kids everywhere, returning to action adventure genre, tearing around a lushly rendered vision of an abandoned New York City reminiscent of Alan Weisman’s then-new nonfiction bestseller The World Without Us? What could possibly go wrong?
And then cinephiles everywhere raised hell over the film’s supposedly terrible ending. And I ended up not going to the movies for my birthday.
Watching it now, I am actually kind of heartbroken. The late 2000s and especially 2007 were decidedly light on science fiction, and in the right hands, this could have been nearly as good as Sunshine. Instead, I spent the movie’s first half enthralled with a flawed but well-constructed movie, and finished it in a state of righteous anger.
Based on the 1954 novel by Richard Matheson, previously adapted into several movies I haven’t seen, I Am Legend opens on the promise of a retroviral drug that can cure cancer. Smash cut to an abandoned, overgrown landscape three years later. It’s a startling introduction, if very obviously inspired by 28 Days Later.
In the year 2009, Dr. Alice Krippin (Emma Thompson) believed she had found a genetically-modified viral treatment that can cure cancer. However, most of the recipients died suddenly, and those who didn’t were progressively transformed into hive-dwelling vampire-like creatures. Army virologist Robert Neville (Will Smith) tried to find a cure, but was unable to do so before New York City was quarantined, his wife and daughter were killed in the evacuation, and the virus became airborne.
Neville, naturally immune to the virus, has continued his work for three years, hunting game in Times Square, harvesting corn in Central Park, and scavenging the deserted apartment blocks of Downtown with his german shepherd Sam. Seemingly close to a cure, but steadily losing his grip on reality, he kidnaps a young vampire for use as a test subject in his lab, provoking the hive into a conflict that may cost him what little he has left in life.
From there, the movie hits a brick wall.
The closest film I can compare to I Am Legend is Oliver Hirschbiegel’s The Invasion. Both 2007 films were based on 1950s science fiction allegories, both capitalize on a timely fear of pandemic disease, and both give us cop-out endings that trade a poignant conclusion for an easy out, and in so doing miss the point. However, The Invasion was already a shitty movie before it revealed that being a pod person was now curable; it was inconsistently written, miscast, and cheap-looking. I Am Legend, while far from perfect on a technical level, could have been a good movie. It almost was, but the studio’s insecurity over a tragic ending kept it from ever getting close.
I Am Legend doesn’t start out completely in that direction– in the detail-oriented language of film, it’s hard to balance the feral appearance of the vampires with their true nature. Nor is it visually perfect; the CGI, whether used to depict vampires, wild animals, or tracking shots of Neville driving around New York, is jarringly sterile and weightless. But the first half is expertly paced and edited, and Will Smith does some of his finest work in years. The intensity and buildup in the first hour should be the envy of filmmakers everywhere.
Indeed, the film originally ended similarly to the book, with Neville realizing that he’s basically their Mengele. But test audiences didn’t like it– and I personally would’ve preferred the whole package, trial, execution and all– so they went with noble self-sacrifice and fiery, characterless explosions. It doesn’t just clash with the book, it clashes with the tense fatalism of the rest of the movie. You can see the scars of reshoots when Smith suddenly seems to phone it in, or when his conversations with newcomer Anna (Alice Braga) run in hastily-written circles. Ironically, I Am Legend is tragic because it chooses not to embrace tragedy.
Sign This Was Made in 2007
Broadway shows on offer during the pandemic include Hairspray, Wicked, and Mamma Mia!
Additional Notes
The most bizarre part of this film is in the background: one of the ads in Times Square is a logo teaser for an upcoming Batman vs. Superman film, a film that wasn’t even in pre-production at that time. My theory is that Warner Brothers, which produced this film, expected 2006’s Superman Returns to be a bigger deal than it ended up being, and intended to cross it over with the Nolan Batman films.
Next Time: The Kite Runner
Dir. Francis Lawrence
Premiered December 14, 2007
Once upon a time, I was really excited about this movie. I was days from turning 18 and looking for a good movie to celebrate with. And here we have Will Smith, idol of nineties kids everywhere, returning to action adventure genre, tearing around a lushly rendered vision of an abandoned New York City reminiscent of Alan Weisman’s then-new nonfiction bestseller The World Without Us? What could possibly go wrong?
And then cinephiles everywhere raised hell over the film’s supposedly terrible ending. And I ended up not going to the movies for my birthday.
Watching it now, I am actually kind of heartbroken. The late 2000s and especially 2007 were decidedly light on science fiction, and in the right hands, this could have been nearly as good as Sunshine. Instead, I spent the movie’s first half enthralled with a flawed but well-constructed movie, and finished it in a state of righteous anger.
Based on the 1954 novel by Richard Matheson, previously adapted into several movies I haven’t seen, I Am Legend opens on the promise of a retroviral drug that can cure cancer. Smash cut to an abandoned, overgrown landscape three years later. It’s a startling introduction, if very obviously inspired by 28 Days Later.
In the year 2009, Dr. Alice Krippin (Emma Thompson) believed she had found a genetically-modified viral treatment that can cure cancer. However, most of the recipients died suddenly, and those who didn’t were progressively transformed into hive-dwelling vampire-like creatures. Army virologist Robert Neville (Will Smith) tried to find a cure, but was unable to do so before New York City was quarantined, his wife and daughter were killed in the evacuation, and the virus became airborne.
Neville, naturally immune to the virus, has continued his work for three years, hunting game in Times Square, harvesting corn in Central Park, and scavenging the deserted apartment blocks of Downtown with his german shepherd Sam. Seemingly close to a cure, but steadily losing his grip on reality, he kidnaps a young vampire for use as a test subject in his lab, provoking the hive into a conflict that may cost him what little he has left in life.
From there, the movie hits a brick wall.
The closest film I can compare to I Am Legend is Oliver Hirschbiegel’s The Invasion. Both 2007 films were based on 1950s science fiction allegories, both capitalize on a timely fear of pandemic disease, and both give us cop-out endings that trade a poignant conclusion for an easy out, and in so doing miss the point. However, The Invasion was already a shitty movie before it revealed that being a pod person was now curable; it was inconsistently written, miscast, and cheap-looking. I Am Legend, while far from perfect on a technical level, could have been a good movie. It almost was, but the studio’s insecurity over a tragic ending kept it from ever getting close.
In the original story by Richard Matheson, the vampires (and they are much more explicitly vampires in the book) are intelligent, and Neville is simply blinded by fear of the new society they have created. He’s arrested and sentenced to death for what is essentially genocide, and accepts this as just punishment, realizing that he is the monster that haunts their nightmares. He is legend. It isn’t Night of the Living Dead, it’s Falling Down.
I Am Legend doesn’t start out completely in that direction– in the detail-oriented language of film, it’s hard to balance the feral appearance of the vampires with their true nature. Nor is it visually perfect; the CGI, whether used to depict vampires, wild animals, or tracking shots of Neville driving around New York, is jarringly sterile and weightless. But the first half is expertly paced and edited, and Will Smith does some of his finest work in years. The intensity and buildup in the first hour should be the envy of filmmakers everywhere.
Indeed, the film originally ended similarly to the book, with Neville realizing that he’s basically their Mengele. But test audiences didn’t like it– and I personally would’ve preferred the whole package, trial, execution and all– so they went with noble self-sacrifice and fiery, characterless explosions. It doesn’t just clash with the book, it clashes with the tense fatalism of the rest of the movie. You can see the scars of reshoots when Smith suddenly seems to phone it in, or when his conversations with newcomer Anna (Alice Braga) run in hastily-written circles. Ironically, I Am Legend is tragic because it chooses not to embrace tragedy.
Sign This Was Made in 2007
Broadway shows on offer during the pandemic include Hairspray, Wicked, and Mamma Mia!
Additional Notes
The most bizarre part of this film is in the background: one of the ads in Times Square is a logo teaser for an upcoming Batman vs. Superman film, a film that wasn’t even in pre-production at that time. My theory is that Warner Brothers, which produced this film, expected 2006’s Superman Returns to be a bigger deal than it ended up being, and intended to cross it over with the Nolan Batman films.
Next Time: The Kite Runner
