But when he set a trap, he made sure that the victim was cloaked from the sun; UV light is not just painful but appears to be fatal. The trap that Neville fell for offered no such protection.
This is an urban legend. There are exceptions to the laws that prohibit impersonating a member of the military, including for theatrical purposes.
A much simpler reason is that they’re just stupid. :rolleyes:
Anyway, I’m very familiar with military insignia, and I could have sworn that the oak leaves on Neville’s shoulders were silver. However, the scene was dark, and I may have been predisposed to see silver since they were all referring to him as a [lieutenant] colonel…
All I have to say is that it’s really odd that you’re so dedicated to this position.
It’s true that it’s generally illegal to accurately portray a U.S. armed forces uniform; ISTR hearing that the way that’s generally skirted is to keep the tape that says “US ARMY” or whatever off the uniform. I doubt that’s enforced in movies, though–although it is for any, say, cover of a magazine that’s not put out by the federal government itself.
I think it’s odd you seem to care so much about my position.
Maybe you read the book and know more than I do. I see the movie as a work of art and I’m free to interpret it how I wish, within reason. I see it as a psychological exploration of what’s going on in Neville’s head, you see it as zombie evolution. Be my guest and have at it. I’m not saying you’re wrong. It’s a discussion of the movie, is it not?
Why do people keep coming back to the deer? It makes perfect sense that there’s at least one bridge still intact, and we’re certainly not told otherwise. Consider that at the same time we saw two bridges blown up, there was another bridge in the immediate area that was chock full of people trying to evacuate. The plan would have been to evacuate uninfected people (although the screening device didn’t seem very reliable) before sealing off the island. They were leaving at least a bridge or two intact for people to evacuate on foot; and that’s when things really started falling apart, as we saw when the helicopters crashed. I think they just never got to finish the job of blowing up all of Manhattan’s many bridges.
There were several things that it would have been nice to make clearer, or that are actual plot holes, but not this.
I was just reflecting that, of all the movies with the “last man on Earth” theme, he’s never really the last. It could be fascinating to do a movie about the last survivor who was truly alone on the planet – no vampires, no zombies, no freaky albino creeps, no pockets of survivors, nada. Of course, it might be just a little downbeat.
I read a story of that sort once—I can’t recall the title or the author, but I think it would have been from the first half of the century. The protagonist is a physicist who inadvertently kills every living thing on earth except himself and his dog, who later goes mad with hunger and turns on him.
I recall that it did sound rather lonely. (I think the point was that delusions were prodding him forward so that he would die in the ocean, allowing new life to come forth from him.)
Of course there is a bridge intact somewhere. I mean look how they were destroyed. They were taken out with fighter jets. In real life the army core of engineers would have done it with C4. The fact they used jets just shows how fast it was done without regard to safety. They probably didnt get them all taken out.
That was a great story. I remember it with great affection although I must have read it over 40 years ago. The man and his dog had been put into orbit, as I recall, something going wrong with their rocket set fire to the atmosphere and they returned to an Earth that was a sphere covered with ash. I probably have it somewhere upstairs along with the other story I mentioned earlier.
Maybe I’ll have time to look for it next year.
I came to this thread to make this exact comment. A quick check on wikipedia says that gasoline lasts 1-2 years if you put in a fuel stabilizer. Gasoline - Wikipedia
And admittedly I don’t know much about cars, but surely a car like the sportscar he was driving would need much higher grade fuel that would destabilize quicker?
FWIW I’m in the camp of people that thinks Neville set the trap himself and got caught in it. I don’t buy the vampire/zombies are that resourceful, but I’d just like to give props to cinehead. After reading through this thread he cuts through the crap and makes succinct points that clear things up. Welcome to the dope.
Also, I don’t think its in this thread, but I could be wrong, could someone outline the ending of the original novella? Considering this is open spoilers and all. I have no intention of reading the story, and would like to know what I missed out on that could have been in the movie.
I thought the Emma Thompson scene at the beginning was WAY off. If cancer had been cured, it wouldn’t be casually announced in an interview on some cable news station. The whole tone of that bit just seemed so wrong.
The video game CGI took me out of the movie every time, including the deer and lions. Lions for gawd sakes! You can’t rent a few real lions for the afternoon? And I saw it on a television screen (don’t ask, don’t tell) so I imagine it looked much worse in theaters. I was surprised to see actors listed as the monsters. I don’t remember any shots that looked like real people in make-up except the chick on the table in the basement and even she looked wonky in some shots.
Still, I enjoyed watching it because it’s just a dumb, big-budget scifi/monster B-movie and those make me feel like a kid again.
I haven’t read the whole thread but have spotted several mentions of “The Omega Man” and “The Last Man on Earth.” Two other films come to mind in this genre, “The World, the Flesh and the Devil” (1959) and “The Quiet Earth” (1985). The former even features a deserted New York. Both have the ‘last man on earth’ discovering he is not alone.
I should also mention a guilty pleasure of mine, along the same lines, “Night of the Comet” (1984) which is a better movie than it seems to be, if you know what I mean.
Just finished it last week.
Neville’s sexy interlocutor is a vampire in disguise, with dark makeup all over her body to look like she’s alive; she’s been munching new vamp-society pills that make her able to withstand the sunlight. She was sent as a spy to find out how Neville’s been holding out so long and soften him up for his capture. She falls in love with him, warns him to get out, and tries to stall the (very fledgling) vampire society–which, BTW, only started once these pills were developed near the end of the novel–until he can escape.
He doesn’t heed her warning because he’s too attached to his house and too hooked on the rush of hunting Ben Cortman, his best friend in life and most bitter rival in undeath. (Now that I think about it, I think the movie’s Neville hunting deer is an allusion to this–neither Neville actually wants to win, because that would mean the game would be over. I get the feeling that they really wanted to put that in the movie, but they couldn’t have him hunting Alpha Male because the movie Neville isn’t the vicious hunter and killer of vampires that the book Neville is. The book Neville is a troubled man, too, but in different ways: he’s an alcoholic plagued by painful sexual fantasies who was forced to watch his baby daughter burn and kill his wife twice.
Which brings us to the ending. Book Neville is hunted down by the vampires, who finally catch him after a gunplay-filled struggle in his home and give him the death sentence. He’s beaten badly and wakes up in a hospital-type setting, bloody and broken, to find his vampire lady-friend. VLF gives him a suicide pill and tells him that’s his best option, then leaves. Neville gets up and walks painfully to a window overlooking a lobby-type area where vampires are resting; the vampires all show him a look of sheer terror, as if they were Odysseus’ men looking into the eye of the Cyclops without their leader. Neville is the fearsome vampire slayer that haunts their nightmares and stories. Satisfied (as much as he could be, anyway), he takes the pill and tells himself:
I am legend.
Why don’t you buy it? The lead zombie was at the trap at dusk restraining two dogs that he unleashed as soon as it was dark enough to do so. He wasn’t overcome by rage by being near Neville and he didn’t rush out and put himself in jeopardy. He was using the dogs as tools.
Plus, if you think about the way Neville’s last trap was set in comparison to this one - in this trap, there was no way for Neville to easily subdue and get the captured zombie down.
Not only that, but there was no rug or blanket to protect the zombie from being exposed to the UV Rays that would kill it.
Why would we assume that some bridges were still intact? There aren’t that many of them and they don’t move around. I’m sure the Air Force could destroy them all and blow the tunnels as well.
The deer hunt is stupid because deer hear and smell really well. You have to hide, downwind from the deer. You would never be able to sneak up on it the way Neville did in the film. Hell, they even added SFX of him crunching gravel and such.
I believe the name of the Bob Marley album he was talking about was “Legend”. Which is really a greatest hits compliation anyway.
Again i point out that if they bridges were destoryed correctly they would have used explosvies, and not jets with people all around. Its also possible that they just decided to stop once they noticed the whole world was getting infected.
It took us five pages to mention this?
The meaning of the title can not be the same as the book, because in the Will Smith version, he is not the legend to the vampires that he was in the original. The Bob Marley reference, and the whole discussion he has with Anna over Marley’s music is, as far as I can tell, the best attempt to inject such a meaning into the title – so much more so than Anna’s banal voice-over at the end.
It’s the new Shelby Cobra GT 500, a modern re-imagining of my dream car (the ’67 Shelby Cobra GT 500). You don’t need premium gasoline for a car like that, but you probably wouldn’t get the horsepower the manufacturer claims you will without it, either.
I definitely think the Alpha Male and his cohorts set the trap for Neville. Neville dismisses their animalistic behaviour, including the Alpha Male’s roaring at him in rage when he captures the Alpha Female, as a further descent into barbarism, but it should be obvious to the audience that there’s more at work than Neville suspects:[ul][li]Fred moved from his post at the video store to the trap site. Not only should it seem obvious that the Dark Seekers moved Fred there, but more importantly, they’ve figured out that Neville is frequenting the video store![]The trap is fairly simple, but appears only after he used the exact same kind of trap on the Dark Seekers first. Since they fell for the trap, they probably weren’t watching when he set it, but they saw it go off and must have then studied it afterwards.[]Hi, Opal![*]As mentioned before, the Alpha Male is ready with his dogs to take Neville in the trap as soon as the sun drops below the level of the skyline. The two important implications here are (first) that the Alpha Male knew Neville would be in the trap to begin with, but that he has also “domesticated” (if that’s what you want to call it) infected dogs in a ghoulish caricature of Neville’s own relationship with Samantha.[/ul][/li]I also noticed the magazine cover on the refrigerator. The resources at Neville’s disposal are more likely than not the by-product of his being the best chance we have against the spread of the virus, and the government’s (and military’s) granting much or all of this to him before things really went south.
As to Anna, Ethan, and the religious messages, I didn’t think this was as overtly preachy as some posters above state. The (hypothetical) existence of a survivor’s colony in Vermont could well be public knowledge to the uninfected. It’s not unreasonable to think that both Neville and Anna knew there were plans to evacuate northward at one point; it’s just that Anna, being so devoutly religious, has put her faith in God that the colony was a success, whereas Neville - given the devastation he has witnessed first hand and the subsequent events of the past three years – is firmly convinced that all such efforts surely must have failed.
With the exception of the final assault on Neville’s home, we’re never treated to any scenes of hordes of the Dark Seekers running/shambling/careening through the streets in search of prey, but it seemed to me that they must be out there, as Neville is either hearing them or imagining them outside his home as he cowers in the bathtub. He baited his trap with blood, so it seems the Seekers can smell blood (not necessarily human, either!) and will come to get it. He conjectures at one point that they’re even losing or even abandoning what’s left of their higher survival instincts because dwindling food supplies must be starving them (there’s certainly a shortage of uninfected humans to eat by now…) into desperation. I guess there aren’t that many deer around to eat after all!
I have been skimming this thread, and was completely assuming that this obvious (and frankly blasphemous, imho, as I use “Legend” as a binary litmus test. I usually simply do not understand the people who do not love that compilation of music, as I do) attempt at title/meaning synergy had already been pointed out. I wanted the reference to Marley to help me like the film, but I ended up disliking it more because of this. Especially when I found out that the title reference had nothing to do with Bob Marley in the book.
That wouldn’t be as cinematic. If the president ordered Manhattan to be shut off, why would they stop at two bridges on one tunnel? It is far more likely that the film makers simply showed the most famous bridges being blown up real good and seeing the entrance to one of the tunnels flooded to imply that the island had been shut off. It would be a bit boring to show every bridge getting blown up. It is far more reasonable to assume that all the bridges were blown rather than just those two.
How many deer would have to be wandering around to sustain the lion? If the deer swam over to Manhattan then someone still had to let the lion out of the Central Park Zoo. (do they have a lion? It’s a small zoo.)