I Am Legend

(at least one SPOILER)

I avoided this movie for many a month, certain that they had botched it. Certain! I'd seen enough trailers, read enough reviews to discern that Richard Matheson's classic 1954 novella had been bastardized, possibly beyond recognition. Another Hollywood case study in how to muck up great source material. I was (mostly) correct. I AM LEGEND takes its title from Matheson's story but is pretty much an in-name-only affair. So much of the basic story is reworked that well into it I just threw up my hands and wondered aloud why they even kept the original title. 

To be fair, this is not merely Will Smith versus the undead, as I would've expected. This could have been far worse, with Smith's take on scientist/general Robert Neville a gross re-imagining, an amped up wiseass who blasts those zombies with his arsenal and then knocks off a one-liner as their sinews land on the ground in a smoky, bloody pile. No, Smith is appropriately solemn as the last survivor on earth, a physician who had assisted in the development of a cure for cancer. The "cure" instead caused the mass extermination of the human race, leaving survivors as a mob of flesh craving mutants who come out at night (sunlight will fry 'em). Each night, Neville barricades himself in an apartment, his old family dog his only companion. By daylight, he trolls the empty landscape of Manhattan, foraging for food and supplies, and even working his way through a video store's alphabet for something to do during his limited downtime. What sort of life is this? Survival, pure and simple. 

Each day, he airs a broadcast across the AM airwaves, calling out to anyone who may hear him, to see if there are any other survivors who have remained uninfected. He waits in the city each day, occasionally seeing a stray deer that he attempts to bag for dinner. Neville also has a lab in his basement. A dead mutant lies on a gurney, an experiment. The doctor tries different serums in order to reverse the strain that had erased mankind. His trials on rodents so far a failure. Survival is the goal, yes, perhaps for mankind beyond him. Then one day, someone answers the radio call. Being a fan of a printed work virtually guarantees that the movie will disappoint. I have experienced this several times over the years, with adaptations of classic literature and potboiler alike. When a story with which you are intimately familiar is reduced to actual images, how could it possibly satisfy? Exceed? Very rare. 

I always try to approach the movie as a separate entity, art with its own life. It's difficult. After seeing SIMON BIRCH, a very loose adaptation of the wonderful John Irving novel, A Prayer for Owen Meany, I was depressed.  It almost sullied my appreciation of the book. But the key words are "very loose."  Think of it that way.  The source lives on.  Much like the original film does when a terrible sequel is produced. Matheson's I Am Legend is one of the most taut, devastating stories I've read.  His science fiction is well plotted and airtight; logic is never forsaken for plot turns. The same cannot be said for the movie. I don't usually get too hung up on implausibility in movies, but if the story sets ground rules and the film keeps changing them, we have a problem. 

For example, how do these undead mutants, victims of a debilitating plague, have superhuman strength? They leap from 4 story windows and heave Smith through the air as if they have creatine in their bloodstreams. Hmmm, maybe they do, though screenwriters Akiva Goldsman and Mark Protosevich never explain. rather, they just make a host of unfortunate changes from an already perfect novella. Such as? The undead are just, I don't even know what here. Zombies? In the book, they were vampires, which certainly made sense in terms of the search for an antidote blood serum. These undead, in Matheson's story, also pounded on Neville's door nightly, their unbearable shrieks so horrifying that Neville eventually soundproofed his house. 

These undead were also once people the doctor had known, lending a real poignancy to the scenario. In I AM LEGEND, the undead are an anonymous CGI mass.  We don't care about them and barely about Neville. The locale was also changed from Los Angeles to New York City. An interesting choice for such an end-of-the-world tale, but the abandoned city landscape is only peripherally explored. It would've been far more interesting to have the protagonist wander the ruins of more familiar landmarks, with the potential of post-911 statements to be made. Director Francis Lawrence and his production designers-cum-computer programmers do not exploit the location for any real interest. The one change that does work is the presence of Neville's dog. He is the only lifeline to sanity remaining in Neville's existence, the one thread from his former, happy family life (which we see in flashback).

One day, Neville ironically gets snagged in one of his own traps (designed for the mutants) and blacks out, hanging upside down. By the time he awakes, it is sundown, leaving him just minutes before the armies of the night will stalk. The dog circles on the ground, barking up to his master. A pack of mutant dogs gets loose, carefully running around the last patches of sunlight. Neville finally escapes, but not before he and his pup tangle with the evil canines. Neville races home with his injured pet, frantically trying to nurse him to health once back in the lab. No inoculation will work. He falls on the floor, dog in his arms. He looks down to see the horrible redness in his dog's eyes, the same to be seen in the sclera of those marauding hordes out there. The dog has one last sad whine before he attempts to infect his master. The camera stays on Smith's face as he strangles the animal. The sadness of this scene is very powerful.   It is unfortunate that when the finale of this film comes, in its unwisely reimagined resolution, the power of the dog scene could not be duplicated.  I just felt cheated.