Just saw the trailer for I Am Legend (Here)and thought it looked pretty interesting until about halfway through. Or, the part where the people who made the movie make it blatantly clear from where the stole the idea. Here’s one of my questions: Can I call the police about this robbery? Who do I call?
I really like survival movies, despite how bad they usually are. I thought this movie had a lot of promise until the ubiquitous Hollywood monsters and explosions started showing up. Admittedly I don’t know much about this movie, but doesn’t it seem embarrassingly and maddeningly similar to 28 Days Later? How is this okay? I expect someone will correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that I Am Legend is about a virus or disease that wipes out all of humanity, save for one man. He’s hunted at night by the monsterized remnants of humanity, until he somehow improbably finds a cure whilst struggling to survive. That’s too remarkably similar to be coincidence.
I still really want to see this movie when it comes out, but since I’ll be directly supporting the sodomy of a movie series I like a lot, my second question is thusly:
Does the blood wash off my hands easily, or should I invest in a good loofah?
If anything, 28 Days Later is the thief. I Am Legend is a remake of a remake. The Omega Man was made back in 1971, and the original story was published in 1954.
The first film version was the cheapo Italian-made B-movie **The Last Man on Earth ** [1964], starring Vincent Price. That one makes **The Omega Man ** look like a Hollywood blockbuster by comparison.
Yep, what he said. They’re meant to be vampires as I recall, but they act more like our present day zombies. (Or zombies as they are presently understood to act.)
The vampires in “Legend” were afraid of the appropriate religious symbol, though. (Formerly Catholic vampires feared crosses, formerly Jewish vampires feared the Star of David, etc.) So they were sort of vampirish in that regard.
Okay, I can totally understand not knowing about the Richard Matheson novel, because it’s not like he’s a big name these days. And the two previous adapations of his book changed the title, so full pass on not knowing about either of those movies, either. Even then, I still can’t figure out how the OP thought 28 Days Later was original in any way. Mysterious plague turns normal people into ravening monsters? He think’s that’s an original concept? How the hell do you go through life missing every single zombie movie ever made?
I can only assume the OP is a little joke, intended to kick off a discussion of the upcoming movie. I recently re-read Matheson’s classic novel from half a century ago, and would love to see a good movie version. (I actually like The Omega Man, but it doesn’t really capture the tone of the book.)
While I don’t think that I am Legend is a rip-off of 28 Days Later, this genre has been done to DEATH! I’m not saying that with a negative connotation. I think it’s GREAT that they are remaking Omega Man. I’m just saying that ALL movies like this are going to have similarities.
It’s hard to take an apocalyptic premise such as mutants (zombies, vampires, etc) and have it be unique. Anyone who watches a fair amount of these movies (and believe me, there are a few of us on here that do :D) can pick out similarities and differences along the entire length of the genre. It’s just they way it happens in books and movies.
But just because it isn’t as original as say, Night of the Living Dead, I still think it will be GREAT!
Bumping this just we can continue with a discussion of the upcoming movie (if anybody wants to), having established a couple of things:
The new movie, I Am Legend, is not a remake of a previous movie. It’s a new filmed version of a 53-year-old novel.
Obviously, I Am Legend isn’t a ripoff of anything. If anything, it’s been tremendously influential in both written and filmed science fiction and horror over the past half century.
The trailer I’ve seen looks pretty good. Over on the IMDB message board (where the OP of this thread would shine as an example of mature, well-reasoned, remarkably literate posting), there are any number of threads based on the premise that Will Smith can’t play the part because the character in the novel isn’t black. That’s the level of discourse over there, so let’s all take a moment to be grateful for the SDMB.
Well, one way might be to concentrate on the collapse of civilization rather than the aftermath of the collapse. That is, set your film on the first few hours or days, perhaps ending with your main characters barely escaping a major population center just as total breakdown comes. Best part is, you’ve automatically set up the premise for a sequel.
I don’t think Will Smith is good for the part. I really do not think he has teh gravitas or skill to pull off the lonely first part. I don’t want to see him smirking and joking when he is supposed to be a man barely holding onto his last bit of sanity and using routine to keep himself going.
Agreed. Also - his character is legend because, at the end of the novel, we learn he’s been mistakenly killing humans who’d adapted to sleep like the zombies. Humanity has survived, and the main character is the monster who stalks them while they sleep.
This is a dark, dark novel. Will Smith doesn’t do dark, so far as I know.
I thought not either, but I saw him in an early 90s role, in the film “Six Degrees of Separation” where he really impressed me. This was over ten years ago, and I haven’t seen much of his other work. But I think he’s more capable of gravitas than people often give him credit for.
