I Am Legend Review
After several colds and a rather noteworthy night of misfortune my mom offered to have my son overnight so we might catch up on some lost sleep. My girlfriend wanted to go shopping but I had yet to fully recover from my cold so we compromised and saw a movie. I figured sitting and being entertained shouldn’t be too strenuous an activity.
I had done a little research into the film prior to that day so I had some idea what I was getting into. I read a synopsis of the book and read the wiki article on the 2 previous attempts at adapting the work to film. I was very curious, since I first saw the trailer in fact, how they would end it. It seemed a very difficult challenge. How do you give the last man on Earth a happy ending?
Will Smith does his usual professional and very human and identifiable best; although I think Oscar comments are going a little far.
Spoilers follow.
After the film we overheard a rather pompous fellow comment, repeatedly, how he found the movie “unsatisfying”. I wouldn’t go that far although I found the ending a little uncreative let’s say. They had written themselves into an interesting problem but then just kind of short-circuited the whole thing. All of a sudden there are other survivors and a colony?
Robert Neville’s disbelief mirrored my own.
Why wouldn’t they have replied to his message? Or sent out messages of their own?
And they left a huge thread unaddressed regarding the trap the infected set. When it happened my jaw dropped. Neville had said all signs of human behavior were gone but I daresay setting traps with bait and cars is a uniquely human behavior. At the time I thought the movie was about to get much more interesting as Neville investigates this new behavior.
At that point I saw 2 potential outcomes: either the infected had begun to evolve into a planning, problem-solving community that was working together or this was a sign that they were naturally adapting to the disease such that they’d recover naturally given time. Either way a fascinating moral dilemma would have ensued.
If they were becoming a society the moral question posed by the book would have been relevant: if you’re the last man on Earth are you the cure or the disease? If they were recovering on their own how do you accept the morality of having spent 3 years experimenting on them and subsequently killing them?
But oh no, this totally aberrant behavior seems to have been nothing more than a plot device to kill his dog.
Or how about the fact that they had a leader? The would seem to indicate some organization, although pack animals have alpha males so I can see why this wasn’t pursued.
It just seems like sloppy writing. It somewhat reminds me of all the flaws in the Jem’Hadar seen in specific DS9 episodes that were never picked up again and conveniently solved the episode’s problem.
Now despite my minor bellyaching the film did a lot of things right like not explicitly tying the infected to vampires or zombies. For example the vinegar may have been to throw them off the scent or it could have been like garlic - it works either way and so the movie wisely chooses not to address this in exposition.
Apparently a sequel is being considered but without Will Smith would it stand a chance?
If I had written this movie I would have had Neville survive and make it to the colony. Find out they knew he was alive and what he was doing the whole time praying he was their salvation, or legend if you prefer. End of movie. Then a sequel could pick up on one of those threads I mentioned, like the infected followed him to the colony and he discovers they do have an emergent society and they see him as the devil.
The sequel would then redefine the legend and provide some interesting moral issues. But alas it is not to be, not as such anyways.
