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The best thing I can say for the new I am Legend movie is that it made me aware of Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel of the same name. I decided to give it a read before the movie came out. If you haven’t read it yet and plan to see the movie, don’t read it until after the movie. It will ruin the movie for you. Not in how much it gives away of the movie, but in how much the movie doesn’t give you anything.

Spoilers will follow for both the book and movie. If you are interested in either, just bookmark this and come back after you have read/seen one or both. You are warned.

I’ve never been a big fan of the horror genre, because they just always seem silly to me. I am Legend is in some parts silly as well. It is a decent popcorn movie, but not much more. The times where I wished it would follow some of the inspired twists in the book, but I was disappointed.

I am Legend opens with newscast audio playing over the traditional logos. Video cuts to some doctor, played by Emma Thompson, discussing a new method of battling cancer: a mutating virus. It is odd that she isn’t happier about discussing this discovery. You wonder if the director was trying to foreshadow or just let the viewer guess that the doctor knows there are problems with her magic solution.

We then cut to 3 years later with overgrown vegetation filled New York City and Will Smith’s character tearing down streets in a Mustang. Here the movie starts straying from the book and from believability. Robert Neville of the book realized that he was on his own. If he got hurt, he would die. Robert Neville of the movie (Will Smith) seems happy speeding through town, dodging parked cars, armored personnel carriers, and other cement and steel to hunt deer at 50 mph. I don’t see that happening in a place where if you crash a car badly, you die. There are no paramedics.

The most interesting part of the book was the growth of Neville as he learned to survive and learned about the infected. He traveled to the library to learn about bacteria and microscopes and how to investigate the situation. The “monsters” were two types of vampires: the infected living and the dead reanimated. The dead were more like traditional zombies and the living were intelligent and capable of learning. They did not possess super human strength and were feared because of their numbers, not power and intelligence. Neville’s location was not a secret and they haunted and taunted him outside his home.

In contrast, the movie involves Neville living in a classy, well decorated home. He has generators under the counter. (I guess he pumps the exhaust outside.) With a future where electricity is hard to come by, Neville does his research in the basement, using technical toys that would be annoying even in modern day. He video logs his research with a lipstick camera eyeglasses, just to record pass and fail on test subjects. All recorded to 6 backup hard drives. Seriously, how hard is paper and pen? It isn’t like hard drives are good backups when they are all stacked on top of each other to be destroyed in a fire. Run a low power copier and distribute the paper copies a few places. I guess that wouldn’t be visual and flashy. it would just be a smart use of limited resources.

The monsters in the movie are super-human terrors. Once they find out where Neville lives, his steel shuttered residence, armed with stadium lights and perimeter explosives, is no match for the creatures who just tear through thick plastered walls and ceilings. The make up effects and probably tons of computer effects made the infected into scary, bestial creatures. What made them interesting in the book was their human qualities. I was glad that this wasn’t a gore fest, but it might as well have been. Any qualities that existed in the book that made it more intelligent than a standard horror fare were almost gone in the film.

While there have been other adaptations of the book, The Last Man on Earth (1964) and The Omega Man (1971), none have come close to capturing the book. Matheson was involved with Last Man on Earth, until the script was changed and he asked for his name to be removed from the film. I guess I have a naive belief that if a movie takes a books title, it should bear some semblance to the book.

This movie is saved somewhat with the fine acting of Smith, but is nothing more than a popcorn action flick. The cinematography showed some beautiful vistas of post apocalyptic New York, but lacked inspiration at times. One high point in visuals involved infected dogs wanting to attack Neville, held at bay by a slowly shrinking line of sunlight.

The Neville of the film is a much more interesting person BEFORE the virus hits, but not near so much after. In fact, it falls into the movie cliché of being one of the few people that could fix the problem being left to fix it. He is obviously important, being a possibly savior from the virus and on the cover of Time magazine. If it is explained how one of possible 10,000 in the world that could find the cure, is somehow immune to the virus, I missed it. In contrast, Neville of the book is the average man that just happens to be immune. Any knowledge he has to learn for beating the virus (or bacteria in the book) is hard won. He is a person with many faults. He drinks too much. He isn’t nice. Not a Hollywood hero. He is real.

The biggest problem I have with the film adaptation is the perversion of the title: I am Legend. It has lost the sad irony of the book. Neville is not a legend among the infected, to be dealt with. He becomes a legend among the survivors. In the book, Neville determines the bacterium that causes the infection. He doesn’t realize that the living infected have created a drug which allows them to deal with the effects. They have formed society. Neville has become a legend by killing the infected when they rest, during the day.  He is feared as the last old style human. He is captured by the new society and sentenced to death. The kicker is that he is infiltrated by an infected agent, an infected woman acting as a human. This is what made the seeing the woman and boy in the film, with no twist, so frustrating. In the film, Neville finds a cure and proceeds to die in heroic Hollywood fashion, passing the cure on to save the few humans left. Hurrah, hope for survivors. It seems that irony is not a good enough ending. Everyone must be happy when they leave the theater, even if the ending stinks.

In reading books about writing fiction, I was recently exposed to deus ex machina, a latin phrase meaning literally “god out of a machine.” It is often used to describe when the resolution of the story just happens without proper setup or reason. It is talked about often, because the audience needs to believe in the motivation of the characters to not lose their suspension of disbelief. The ending to the film is just a very bad example of deus ex machina. It helps make a mediocre movie only more so.

I am Legend has enough special effects to do well at the box office, but why does film have to be dumbed down this much for people to consume it? I might have to read the book again to get this bad taste out of my mouth.

I Am Legend ISBN: 0765357151 at Amazon
I Am Legend DVD at Amazon