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I Am Legend
By James | December 26, 2007
Two weeks ago I saw I Am Legend, the movie. Last week I read I Am Legend, the novella.
After reading the book, I was surprised my the dissimilarities between the stories. The movie is so different from the book that it may as well have had a different name. There are some common elements, but not many. In both stories, the main character is named Robert Neville, and in both stories Neville must hide from humans infected with a disease at night so that they don’t kill him. And that’s pretty much it.
The movie was good, though I found it disappointing. In essence, the story was a good one that could have been told better. There were too many too-obvious special effects. People in makeup would have been far scarier (and realistic) than the slightly over-the-top and over-stylized CG creatures with super-human powers. A more gritty approach would have brought out more intensity and emotion, which seemed dulled. At several points in the movie I felt “almost but not quite” happy or sad or otherwise empathetic for the main character. Additionally, I felt like something was left out of the film - like some subplot had been eliminated in editing that would have given the film a boost. The movie is rated PG-13, which makes me think that an R rated Director’s Cut would make an excellent DVD purchase, if there ever is one. We’ll see.
The book was also good, but also disappointing in that it gave away the ending way too soon. I’ll go ahead and summarize (err, spoil) it: Neville, out of necessity, kills the infected during the day and sleeps at night only to discover in the end that he himself has become the “vampire” of a new nocturnal society; thus he becomes “legend.” This is a good theme that emphasizes perspective and necessity, but half way through the reader is all but told the “moral of the story” straight-out and given little room to think about it for himself. The second half therefore had me thinking “yeah, yeah, get on with it…” since I pretty much knew the ending and was reading out of self-imposed obligation.
February 16th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
This movie made me sick to my stomach. Try watching it on an IMAX. By 3/4ths of the way in I had to get up and walk outside for a little while to get my vertigo back to normal. And as much as I wanted to see Cloverfield, I just couldnt subject myself to such torture. I remember how hard it was to get through “The Blair Witch Project” without projectile vomit. With that said, I diddnt read the book and I thought the movie was clever and kept me interested (mainly through tension). Had I read the book I am sure that I would have felt differently.