I’ve read the original novella multiple times, and have both The Last Man On Earth and The Omega Man on DVD. I’m more than passingly familiar with this story. The vampires forming their own society is the crux of the matter. That’s where the title comes from. Neville is the monster in their world. That’s what the whole thing is about. If the mutants have no society, then this is just another run 'n gun zombie shooting fest.
Well put. At the end of the novel, Neville is the (probably) last remnant of the “old” humanity that destroyed itself, and the world belongs to a new society of survivors who are infected, but have found a way to live with the disease.
It appears that they did a modification of Omega Man, cast as a Will Smith vehicle. Omega Man was a Charleton Heston vehicle.
Matheson’s take on these matters was that The Last Man on Earth was a reasonably faithful adaptation, if badly done; and that Omega Man had little to do with the story. I can’t remember a hard cite for this, but I did find this, from the Old Master himself.
And they still haven’t yet, Richard. It’d be really nice, wouldn’t it? Maybe somebody could do it as a limited multi-part series.
So the Neville character dies - I’m surprised, but then again the Heston character died in Omega Man, but apparently not in the thrall of the emergence of a vampire society, where he is the monster.
Neville’s family dies, but not in a deeply personal matter, as in the book.
The movie pathogen was engineered, but not as a weapon. In the book, the pathogen was natural. They departed from Omega Man in that the Heston doctor benefited from a test vaccine. In the book, Robert Neville was naturally immune. And it was a bacillus in the book, not a virus.
No vampires, no vampire society.
There are survivors! In Vermont?!
Samantha the movie dog had a much better time of it than the book dog.
The “lone female with kid” thing is consistent with Omega Man, which has a similar set up. The book had a female, but she wasn’t really a survivor, technically speaking.
The ending is consistent with Omega Man, but without the 60/70’s hippy counterculture, and with considerably less cheese.
So, I guess it’s a good movie, if you like Will Smith movies, and can compartmentalize any knowledge of the book - in other words, use the same protocol if you liked I, Robot.
So I’ll probably see it, but I will use my I, Robot protocols.
I enjoyed the movie, as well as Smith’s acting, but the ending entirely killed it for me.
It was very obvious that the hunt for Neville began because he captured one of their own. They could have followed this thread to a really interesting ending but instead they dropped the ball.
Imagine-
Leader vampire guy is slamming into the glass, trying to break through, though his focus is clearly on the now cured member of his group. Neville realizes this, and unstraps the woman. Lead vampire stops trying to smash through the glass. As Neville pleads for them to accept the cure, cured female returns to her man, gets reinfected, and now that the member of their group has been released, they turn and leave relatively peacefully, all the while Neville continues to beg them to accept the cure and allow him to “fix them” as he is once again left completely and horribly alone.
Instead, Neville hears the voice of his daughter telling him to “look at the butterfly.” Oh great, the Signs ending. Now I’m one of the few people on this board who actually liked Signs, but there’s a time and a place. The ending of Signs worked for Signs. It did not work for I Am Legend, and the whole ending felt like a cop out to me.
Judging by that spoiler my guess is that it’s more of an “Old Yeller” kind of moment rather than a horrible death.
< hijack >
By strange coincidence, wile walking tow work the other day and was wondering if Disney could release Old Yeller today with that same ending or if they would have changed it because “preview audiences responded poorly”.
< /hijack >
Scumpup says it best. Without a vampire society, the whole point of the story is thrown out the window. I can just imagine the people who haven’t read the book, when walking out of the theater asking each other, “so, what does the title mean?”
Well, I saw it tonight. And you know what? It was really, surprisingly good! Was it exactly like the book? Of course not. But it was close enough that I am happy with it. And man was it ever suspenseful! Turns out they were able to do something with the title after all, so that it makes sense, even if the ending does vary somewhat. I highly reccomend this movie.
I’m glad you liked it even though it was different from the book. I’m curious what you mean by “turns out they were able to do something with the title after all” because I’m not sure what you’re referring to.
And as long as this thread is all about open spoilers, and you’re the first person to post who’s read the book AND seen the movie, how did Neville die in the book? What were some of the other major changes?
I liked the part where he was reciting the lines from Shrek. Most likely the only time you’ll go to a movie and hear both Will Smith and Eddie Murphy doing voiceover for a donkey.
The CGI/motion-capture mutants weren’t as distracting as I expected. There did seem to be an “alpha male”, but certainly no character equivalent to Zerbe’s.
On IMDB, that character is actually called “Alpha Male” (and the hyperventalating woman is “Alpha Female”).
They actually contrive a feel good explanation for the title which is a total betrayal of the book. They might as well have spit in Matheson’s face.
I saw it tonight. It works tonally well for a while. Will Smith being Will Smith, talking to the dog, quipping at mannequins, shooting deer by day, then the sounds of the vampires attacking at night. It makes a very token attempt to suggest the beginnings of a vampire culture when they show some mimicry of his methods.
Then it all goes pear shaped when the chick shows up with some stupid kid in a deus ex machina scene. Instead of being a partially cured vampire who’s being use as bait, this chick [shudder] is being directed by God to collect Neville and bring him to some stupid, lame-ass “survivors’ colony” in fucking Vermont. She only kniows about this colony because God told her, by the way. She has no other evidence.
At first Neville thinks she’s crazy and doesn’t believe her but then, in his heroic death scene, he gives her his new found cure and says “I think this is why you’re here,” (blech) and then he blows himself and the vampires up with a grenade to save the God chick and the pointless kid.
It gets worse. At the end God chick and the kid arrive at the gates of the dipshit survivors’ colony? How did she find it? We’re supposed to believe that God told her.
Then she gives a turgid, voiceover eulogy about how great the doctor was and how his noble efforts to find the cure and “die to protect it” have (gag) made him into a “legend.”
They might as well have raped Richard Matheson in the mouth.
As a popcorn movie, it’s ok to good with a mildly lame ending. As an adaptaion of the novella, it’s aggravated sodomy.
In the book, some of the infected have figured out a partial cure which makes them appear normal at night. This little vampire subculture is afraid of Neville because they still have to sleep during the day and look like regular vampires, and the novella’s Neville goes around smoking vampires during the day, so he’s killing the half-pires as well as the vampires. They think of him as a monster. They send a chick to be a sort of mole. She leads the other half-pires to him and they capture him and execute him. In the last line of the book he is called “Legend” because he is the same kind of monster to them that they are to him.
Worse.
There’s a very annoying voice-over at the end that lauds Neville’s heroism, and says he’s become a legend because of that. In the novella, of course, Neville was a legend like Grendel is a legend - now, he’s Beowulf. It’s very annoying.
Let’s reinforce the open spoiler mode of this thread.
The cure in the book was an actual cure - the cure basically let the early-stage infected hosts survive and remain sentient and basically human. These “cured” variants killed the late-stage and undead infected as gleefully as Neville did. The problem is that Neville was not aware these variants, and was indiscriminantly killing them as well as the other vampires.
As for the movie, it was good, if, a priori, one agreed to disconnect I am Legend from the movie.
It was more properly The Will Smith does the Apocalyptic Viral Smackdown Zombie Movie - this was something like 28 Days Later meets The Andromeda Syndrome meets The Omega Man.
Despite the forced, idiotic end-stage of the movie, the bits up to and including the Tragic End of Samantha, the German Shepard cum Surrogate Daughter were pretty much spot on (provided that one ignored the usual set of idiotic movie plot holes.
But the movie worked up until Samantha died and Neville lost it on the pier - the rest was forced and trite, and obvious.
The plot/logic problems were numerous and obvious, but the movie still worked, unless you actually expected anything besides an updated Omega Man, with Will Smith in the Charleton Heston role.
A partial list of the logic/plot holes:
The Army would have either secured LTC/Dr. Neville in a heavily fortified, secure lab, either in or near the hot zone. He wouldn’t ve working out of a civilian townhouse.
The idea of a universal cancer “cure” is laughable, and the idea that a retrovirally-mediated “cure” would be even momentarily considered for human use is even more laughable. A virally-driven vaccine, maybe. A fully-active virus, no.
If you’re “bugging out family,” and you’re key military personnel, you do it in a much more careful fashion. If you’re LTC/Dr. Neville, your family would have been “upstate at the farm” much earlier.
As for the trap, Neville would have been a bit more careful than that, and I don’t think that he’d be using Samantha as some sort of hunting dog. He’d be way more careful with his deceased daughter’s dog.
And the speed with which the virus causes physiological changes? Buuuuuuullllllshiiiiiiiiit. Then again, in movie land, when an Apple Computer can hack into an alien mothership, and USAMRIID can isolate Ebola and crank out vaccines in mere hours, what the Hell.
So the movie did work for me, as I went in using Omega Man as a baseline. However, as an adaptation of I am Legend, no fucking way, ever. This movie has but two things in common with the book: the title and the name of the lead character. I’ll put this movie in the same bin as I Robot.
I suspect that Richard Matheson will likely not live to see a faithful adaptation, and I suspect that his opinion of this movie will be no better than his refutation of Omega Man.
I saw it last night and I have not read the book. I do recall seeing Omega Man many, many years ago but I do not/did not recall any specifics of the story.
Without any preconceived notions based upon the book or the earlier movie(s), I really enjoyed the flick. I thought Will Smith did a fantastic job, he made me believe his character was isolated, afraid (at night) and alone. I got very watery eyes over the final scenes with Sam and my chest hurt for him in the following scene back in the movie rental store. “Please say hello to me…”
I also liked the way the presented the flash-backs (not too many) and used dialogue to give the viewer a little more of the backstory of what happened to the human race. They didn’t give you too many backstory scenes that would have taken away from the current story. The dialogue parts (when he was yelling at the woman about why there is no Vermont) also gave you more detail of what happened without detracting or over explaining things. I don’t know quite how to explain my point, only to say that I felt they balanced it pretty well.
Things I disliked:
Vampires were almost entirely CGI and they continually pulled me out of the movie. So much of the movie was believeable, from the streets being over-grown with weeds to the reclaiming of the city by wildlife/nature, etc. The CGI vampires just seemed completely out of place, a snippet of video game monster in a very realistic background. Also, the main zombie guy’s facial movements during a howl also was very irritating. I understand they are “infected” and have mutated but did they somehow develop jelly for jaw-bones? Really irritated me that every time he howled his jaw dropped/stretched what seemed like a foot. 28 Days/Weeks Later and Invasion of the Body Snatchers did a much more realistic (and frightening!) howl for communication with real actors and no CGI.
Chick & Kid - No backstory or reasonable explanation for their survival this long (…heard your radio broadcast…) and the God thing as for why she knew about Vermont. Just very weakly done in my opinion.
Vermont ending - Bleh.
That being said, overall I felt it was a VERY good movie and definitely an enjoyable ride. I would recommend it to friends but if they had read the book (from what I’ve read in this thread) I would probably add some caveats. 
MeanJoe
Looks like others have beat me to it, but I will answer anyway. The title “I Am Legend” takes on a whole different meaning in the book. The vampire creatures end up forming their own society, which Neville is of course unaware of. He has been killing their ranks during the days, and they seem to frown on this. Eventually he is captured by some of them and realizes that like the virus that caused all this, humanity itself has evolved. This new society has actually replaced us on Earth, and to them HE is the monster. Much like how we have legends such as Dracula, or Werewolves, or the Lost City of Atlantis…he is their legend. He is what parents will tell stories of to their children at night. He will remain a horror story in their literature for all time.
Like someone said above, in the book his legend is like Grendel, whereas in the movie, he is Beowulf.
As far as some superficial changes…in the book he is white (not that I care one way or the other, just pointing out a difference). Also, the setting is LA and not New York. There was a doggie, but not his personal pet. It was a strange dog that wandered by and he tried for a long time to woo. The vampires talked in the book, and there was a character named Ben Cortman that taunted Neville endlessly. He was either his former neighbor or cow-orker, possibly both, I forget. He and many other vampires would come to his house every single night and taunt him endlessly, pounding on the walls, moaning, calling for him to come out.
There was an absolutely fantastic scene in the book, probably my favorite part, where Robert is out during the day and looks at his watch. 3:30…good. He sees he still has plenty of time to get some things done. He goes about his business, searching for some soup, killing vampires, you know, typical day. Well, after a few hours, he looks at his watch again. 3:30, good…still plenty of time to-
Holy crap. The watched had stopped. It was starting to get dark. He maybe had a half-hour at best to get his ass home. That and the following chapter were pure genious.
That was his own house; all he had left of his family.
Just saw it; overall I was very pleased. No, it’s not an exact translation of the book, but that’s okay, really; there are a lot of different themes inherent to the story, and they just concentrated on different ones.
I wonder what liquid Neville was pouring on the steps of his house? In the book, it would have been essence of garlic.
Maybe we won’t hear anymore crap about Will Smith being just a comic actor now; he did a great job.
You know, I actually think the movie stayed good until a little after Anna and the kid showed up. When Neville comes down to breakfast, and his reactions to the other people in his kitchen are so “off” - it gives us a chance to see how badly damaged he really is. In his radio broadcast, he sounded strong, self-assured and sane - but now we see, even more than with his dog and the mannequins, that he’s slipping badly. It’s a neat scene.
To be fair about it, Samantha was his very last link to his family, and he had to put her down. And he had not encountered any normal people for about three years.
So he loses Samantha, and in a way, he loses his wife and daughter all over again, and so he loses it completely, and then these people show up, immediately after his loss. So, they were in the same city, alive and well after three years? Where the Hell were they all this time? Or did they just arrive? How did they get into NYC after the bridges were blown? I’m thinking that any other routes were severed also. So these people were just dropped in? I have to imagine that he’d been operating in some sort of low-grade PTSD state, with only his work and Samantha keeping him stable.
So he had just lost his safety net, and then he basically failed in a suicide/revenge attempt. It was blindingly obvious that he didn’t expect to survive the attempt. And then these people show up. And force him to survive, while yammering at him about God and Survivors and Vermont. His odd reactions were nicely done, and the Shrek scene was creepy as hell.
Pretty much everyone is hating on the ending, and deservedly so.
As for Neville’s demise in the book.
In the book, Neville had this ongoing campaign against the vampires, who were actively after him. The book vampires, however, were not virally-super-powered, and were inert during the day, even when safely in darkness.
At some point, people figured out a “cure” they developed a medication that fed the bacilli and kept the progression of the disease at bay. So at some point, we have vampire variants who are basically variants of humans. There are also hordes of late-stage infected and undead vampires in play.
So Neville is unaware of the difference, and is killing every vampire that he can. This makes him a monster among the variant humans, who send in a spy, an adult female (whose husband he killed at some point) to pose as a fellow survivor.
Neville sort of lets his guard down, but at some point, he determines that she’s infected. She conks him out and escapes, leaving him warning that, although she bears him no ill will and understands how he came to killing vampires, that he needs to leave.
He stays, and is captured by the variant vampire/humans, who are going to execute him. His legacy will live on in the emerging vampire society - he is their monster, their Dracula.
There is no kid, no original human survivors in the book. No god, no Vermont, no cure for vampirism (just a pharmaceutically-mediated remission).