Who says they drove out? They could have taken their boat back to the mainland and heisted a car from a dealership once they got there.
Well I do remember that they said they came from Maryland. I only remember though because I’m from Maryland and was happy to think that I might survive. She said they docked at Baltimore and drove up. It’s very possible that not every bridge was destroyed, we only saw the two get blown up, things could have gone bad quick and they didn’t get a chance to blow them all up. It’s also possible that she learned how to drive a boat after the three years on ship and found a ferry. I personally didn’t see anything wrong with it.
I read the book after I saw the movie. While I liked the book, I didn’t see anything great about it. I can see why people would like it, but I didn’t see a big part about the vampire’s society.
We had a bit of a lousy audience–loud, laughing at inappropriate times (e.g., when Neville had to put Sam down) and so on. But there was definitely a murmur of appreciation that went through the crowd when he was doing pull-ups–a reaction I can completely understand. 
I had the same experience at the theatre. It seemed to be young people, and I’ve encountered it often before; some viewers don’t seem to know how to react to any kind of strong emotional content – terror, pathos, tragedy, anger – except by laughing at it.
They appeared to be driving the same vehicle with the same rack on top to me. Perhaps they got another one exactly the same…it’s at least theoretically possible. Still, I think the implication was that they DID drive out.
Again, I don’t necessarily think it’s a plot hole…they COULD have driven out after all, at least in theory.
-XT
Oddly enough I didn’t have this problem at all. When I first got there there might have been 20 people. Before the movie started a bunch of teens came in and I was worried. I didn’t hear a peep out of anyone the whole movie.
No, she said she had survived in the first place because she was on a boat off the coast of South America (Sao Paolo? I can’t remember), but when she said that she had come up from Maryland to New York (like Edward The Head, i remember this part because i live in MD), she gave no indiciation that this was on a boat.
But say we give them the benefit of the doubt and say that she arrived by boat.
When she saved him from the infected who were trying to kill him, she was driving a large SUV fully tricked out with all her traveling needs. This was not, as far as i could tell, just some car that she picked up on the streets of New York, but one that she had come with.
So, if she arrived by boat, the boat needed to be big enough to carry that car, and i’d be surprised if she and the kid could control a boat that size by themselves on the open ocean.
Further, say we accept, for argument’s sake, that she arrived by boat and got her SUV in New York. How, then, did she get the same SUV off the island in order to drive it to Vermont?
As Edward The Head says, i guess it’s possible that not all bridges were destroyed, although rather unlikely, given how quickly those fighter planes brought down the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, and how little time it would have taken them to blow up the other bridges around the island.
There’s also the tunnels, but even if those hadn’t been bombed and flooded, they would have been choked with cars, and would also have been a perfect place for any infected folks to hang out.
Again, as Edward The Head suggests, it’s possible she was able to bring her car across on a ferry, but if that’s what the producers had in mind, they should have taken the time to have her explain it in the movie, rather than having half the audience go “WTF? I thought Manhattan was cut off?”
Yeah, i get really annoyed by this. It’s especially bad in action/adventure/thriller type movies, where many in the audience seem to come only for the fast/loud/scary stuff, and are just too fucking immature to cope with more emotional content. And if they don’t start laughing, they just start chatting away.
My I Am Legend audience was actually pretty good in this regard, and everyone stayed quiet during the emotional scenes.
62% at Rotten Tomatoes, FWIW.
Perhaps she didn’t take the car with her from the shore to Manhattan, just transferred the possessions. Perhaps there was a small rowboat or sailboat they used. (I have no idea how feasible this would be.) The inside of the car she was driving when she rescued Neville seemed more like a station wagon or a sedan than an SUV.
What doesn’t make sense here, again, is why she would have stayed at the dock after dark instead of finding a secure place for her and the boy to stay the night. Furthermore, if she were at the dock all afternoon, wouldn’t she have seen him setting the trap for the zombies and approached him then?
Haven’t seen it but, why did she go to Manhattan at all? Did she hear Smith’s broadcasts?
However she got on the island is how she could get off. She could have driven up through NJ and then pulled the car on a ferry and took that across the Hudson to get to NYC.
I’ll concur with the general consensus here that the move was 2/3rds great with absolute crap for an ending. Well, the parts where Neville showed that he’d forgotten how to interact with people were also great.
I didn’t pick up on the relationship between the Alpha Male and the test subject. Perhaps too subtly played that. I do wish the critters were a bit more consistent in their intelligence. Hard to believe something that could build a pretty good trap and keep dogs wouldn’t have a better plan for getting through a wall than headbutting the thing.
Well…my take on that gets back to what this mutation was doing to them. They mentioned several times that they would go into uncontrollable rages in the proximity of unaffected humans. Obviously they didn’t go into similar rages when around each other or there would BE no hive like groupings.
So…the alpha male was able to think and reason out, at least in a rudimentary way, a trap and a plan…but once in the proximity of unaffected humans he went totally nuts and into an uncontrollable rage. Thus attempting to batter his way in using his head.
Just my thoughts on it.
-XT
I don’t remember any mention of an uncontrollable rage. Besides, when we saw the Alpha Male and Neville fighting in the house, it seemed clear to me that he was able to think - he recognized the gun and dodged the bullets. Plus he left instead of risking himself further, I think to regroup the zombies outside. Also, I didn’t get the sense at the end that he was headbutting the door because he couldn’t think of something else to use. It seemed to me, from the look in his eyes, that he was doing it to show his Alpha Maleness to Neville. When the door broke, the AM didn’t have the typical horror movie response of immediately sticking his arm through the hole to try and grab Neville. He recognized the weakness in the structure, grinned (or tryed to) and resumed battering the door even harder.
They mentioned it several times through the movie. The best instance I can think of off the top of my head is when Neville and the woman (who’s name escapes me) are looking at the captured female mutant, and the woman says something to the effect ‘I’ve never seen one calm like this’.
I just saw it as one of the many inconsistencies in the movie but what you say is true. If the mutant alpha male could fight like that then he obviously wasn’t in an uncontrollable rage in the presence of an unaffected human…though later when he was butting his head against the wall it sort of goes the other way. Just one of the inconsistencies of the film IMHO.
-XT
I think they had more in common with Reavers than zombies.
I just saw it last night and I think the old saying is true, people will find any reason to bitch about a movie on the Internet.
I thought it was fantastic and while I had read the book a few years ago, I guess I don’t hold it up as the sacred tome most do. I actually thought the book had a few large gaping holes: Neville’s just some schmuck that becomes a virologist at the library? The vampires stand outside his house at night yelling at him, why wouldn’t they ever set a trap?
But of course, the ending is ridiculously awesome and that’s why the book endures as the classic it is. Although, I’m of the opinion that the book could never be faithfully filmed because it just wouldn’t make a good movie.
That said, the underlying story would make a great movie and Will Smith’s I Am Legend is that movie. There’s plenty of little touches that are obviously based on parts of the book and Will Smith is a badass even when he’s a mentally unstable everyman. That’s an awesome quality.
The Stand geek in me was also thrilled the survivor’s colony was in Vermont because that’s where they sent Stu Redman and company to try to isolate the virus.
Justin_Bailey, I agree with you about the book being overrated. But that fact doesn’t improve the movie. Separate issues. Both the movie and the book have plot holes. Just different plot holes.
(To clarify: I Am Legend is an important, influential book. Just not a particularly good one.)
Except for how Anna and the kid got into New York (which, as has been shown in this thread, can be handwaved away), I can’t think of a single major plot hole. I was entertained for two hours and left the theater happy, you really can’t ask for anything else out of a movie.
I’m glad that the movie was not a strict adaptation of the book. It would really have been a terribly dark and horrific film. Will Smith, I think, has the acting ability to do that type of film but I don’t think he’s at a point in his career when he’d be willing to.
(I cannot believe I’m posting this much about this movie.)