Mmm… They are trying to use a virus as cancer treatment. Not quite like in the movie, but since I go to school there, I knew of this and it was on the back of my mind during the explanation.
And if that is going on at LSU, I’m sure they are investigating with viruses and cancer treatment elsewhere… It is not as far-fetched an explanation as it once was.
If you criticize this movie because the disease isn’t plausible, you can give up complaining because it’s not more like the novella. It would be hard to create a more implausible disease than the one in Matheson’s story. Doesn’t really matter.
Tell me about it.
Like the “glue” that heals their skin when a bullet enters, making them impervious to shooting. Or the aerobic/anaerobic bacteria that is “activated” by letting air into the body.
On a more general note, i must say that while the novella itself is clearly an important work in the history of science fiction, i actually found it a little disappointing. I thought it would have been better as a full novel, with another 100-200 pages fleshing out Neville’s day-to-day life, delving further into his psyche, and dealing in more detail with his interactions with the vampires and with Ruth and her people.
I realize that criticizing a 50-year-old book for what it leaves out is a rather pointless exercise, but the release of the movie has initiated so much raving and hyperbole about the iconic status of the book, and about how Hollywood ruins everything it touches, that i thought it worth noting that the movie would not be perfect even if it followed the book as closely as possible.
I do think the ending of the book is definitely better, though, and that the movie would have been much better with a different conclusion, and without the “God has made a safe place” stuff from Anna.
One cancer. That’s my point. And it’s not “genetically engineered”.
I never complained that the movie isn’t like the novella. I thought it had a good story that stood on its own and was hampered by an awful (final) script, not by its dissimilarity with the book.
Yeah, it’s silly, but shooting some other kinds of vampires (like, again, the World of Darkness vampires, which are the closest to the movie darkseekers here in a lot of ways) doesn’t do much, since (like zombies) they don’t rely on respiration and other crutches of the living and thus wouldn’t miss most of their “vital” organs. Of course, that’d require an absurd extra explanation for viral vampires like Matheson’s, hence the glue thing. The other alternative is Brooks’ solanum virus that kills the infected and then brings them back to a state of undeath.
I realized this morning, too, that the poster that said “God still loves us; do we still love God?” displayed prominently during the hunting scene was another God-down-our-throats moment, not an attempt at realism. Gah.
The corollary to this is that no matter how completely awful the movie, people on the Internet will not be able to handle criticism of it. All will be forgiven with the magic words, “Eh, it entertained me for two hours. What more can you expect?”
I think the movie failed on nearly all levels.
The CGI was abysmal and distracting - really, really distracting. The sound effect of the monsters screaming was hilariously cliché and awful. As others have said, these creatures apparantly have jaws made of Jell-O. When moving, they apparantly don’t follow the known laws of physics or momentum. Jurassic freakin’ Park had better special effects.
I don’t have a problem with mentions of God in movies. I don’t have a problem with religion being portrayed in movies. I’ve no problem with prayer, faith, or belief in the supernatural in movies. But I do have a major problem with such things being portrayed in such an idiotic fashion. Note to film makers: Just mentioning God a few times doesn’t make your movie deep or interesting. If you ever have a character who says they “just know” something, and they expect this to be taken even remotely seriously, you should give up making movies.
The ending was pure schmaltzy crap. A big steaming pile of it served up in generous portions. I have never read the novella nor seen more than a few minutes of “The Omega Man”, and have only seen the first third of “The Last Man on Earth”. From what others have described in this thread, all three of those have much, much better endings. Hell, they can’t possibly be any worse.
I did not think the acting was anything special. Will Smith is just Will Smith. He wasn’t terrible, but he didn’t strike me as being any particular character - just Will Smith in yet another sci-fi action film. Ho hum.
Just about everything involving the dog was way, way too cutesy. “Eat your vegetables”? Dear god. The death scene of the dog would have been emotionally laden if I hadn’t been thinking in the back of my mind, “Eat your freakin’ vegetables?! Who writes this crap?” And while I can understand his reluctance to kill Samantha, the smart thing would have been to put a bullet into the dog’s head as soon as it was apparant it had been bitten. In fact, we only have it on the authority of the movie makers that Smith’s character is intelligent. The only smart thing we see him do is set a rather implausible trap. That, and he uses big science words and draws blood and stuff, so he must be smart. But we see him doing odd, stupid things constantly. He acts like Will Smith, Action Hero.
There were also many little, mostly unimportant things that bothered me. (I hesitate to mention them, because undoubtedly someone will end up thinking, “You’re complaining about THAT? There’s just no pleasing some people.” If these were the only flaws in the movie, it would have been watchable.) First off, are those deer or freakin’ gazelles? Secondly, does Smith’s character really think the best way to hunt deer is to drive at them and try to shoot them from a moving car? He’s supposed to be intelligent? Here’s what you do - Step One: Find out where the deer tend to hang out. Step Two: Wait there, patiently and quietly, with a gun. Step Three: Shoot deer. Given the number of deer depicted, he could have easily been able to get venison on a fairly regular basis if he were at all patient. Thirdly, why did he have baskets of fruit in his home? We saw him getting corn, but unless I’m very much mistaken, there was an abundance of fresh fruit in his kitchen. How? Did he grow an orchard in three years in between his medical research? Are there orchards in New York City?
Add me to those who saw certain parallels with “Cast Away”. However, “Cast Away” is a much better movie. The airplane crash scene in that movie contains more excitement than “I Am Legend” contains in its entirety. I do find it annoying that in such movies, characters seem required to form relationships with inanimate objects and talk out loud to them. It’s as if movie-makers think every minute of the movie needs to be full of dialogue. It doesn’t. “I Am Legend” would have been greatly improved if the first ten to twenty minutes contained virtually no dialogue - just quiet scenes of the decaying city as Neville goes about his business.
If anyone is interested, you can watch the entirety of “The Last Man on Earth” on the Internet Archive website: Link I’m only about a third of the way through, but so far it’s a far superior film.
Other than…curing the worst medical disaster in human history single-handedly in three years? Devising an elaborate plan for keeping a modicum of sanity (the fake people) and then tweaking New York City–no small task–to accommodate it, by himself? Keeping the darkseekers off his path for three years?
I thought it was funny, and it established the lengths Neville was consciously going to in order to keep his wits about him.
Logical, maybe; reasonable, sure; but this dog was the only living thing in his life that didn’t want his blood. He knew there was a chance to save her, so that’s what he did.
It fits for a city man who probably never had any reason or occasion to learn how to hunt, and had to teach himself based on nothing but military training, which only goes so far.
I saw it a few days ago. Really enjoyed it, have not read the book.
If they blew the bridges and the tunnels, as we saw, were breached and flooded ( The exit from Lincoln Tunnel around 39-41 st. is shown with cars covered in water ), then she’s kind of shit out of luck. Unless she found her way to Marble Hill, that is…
Cartooniverse
I confess, I thought that when Will Smith was saying “Please say hello, Please say hello,” I thought that would be a great time to yell “Hello.” I didn’t, but the thought was there.
Also, I’m sick and tired of the only atheists in movie being “something bad happened, so there is no God.” I know many atheists, but as far as I know, none of them are atheists because something bad happened. Also, almost everyone dying is very biblically consistent.
I don’t consider long, involved conversations with inanimate objects and animals to be a clever plan to keep your sanity. I see them as a sign your sanity and mental function is already dangerously impaired.
I don’t know how clever it was to keep them off his track for three years. They don’t go out in daylight, so it’s not like it’s hard to avoid being followed during the day. “Be home by sunset” isn’t really all that clever, just common sense given the situation. We see him sprinkling what appears to be vinegar in front of his house, but the reason for this is never explained. Is it to mask his scent? Maybe. But fresh vinegar every night is a blazing neon sign for the nose that something is alive there. Someone has to be sprinkling that vinegar. Seems extremely counter-productive to me.
The strongest case for his alleged intelligence is his ability to eventually find a cure. But what exactly did we see him do? We saw him trying numerous compounds to see what worked. It was trial and error. In the end, it looked to me like he stumbled blindly upon the cure due to some divine plan by God. Blech. Maybe it took a great deal of intelligence to figure out the best compounds to use, and a similarly great intelligence to make those compounds. But this is really just speculation. For all we know, he was provided with a bunch of chemicals by the military early on, and has just been blindly trying them in sequence ever since. I’m not saying the movie needed a scene with a “Eureka!” moment where he figures it all out, but there needed to be something that made me think, “This guy is clever. I like him. I think I’ll root for him instead of the CGI.”
We didn’t see him sprinkle fresh vinegar outside his house every night, did we? It was once. The overwhelming smell of vinegar could just as well mean a broken bottle of vinegar is near; when’s the last time you smelled vinegar and thought “Ah, people hiding!”?
FTR, I saw The Omega Man last night and it was awful. I mean, I’ve seen some stinkers in my time, but that was one of the top five worst movies I have ever seen. It was bad. Oh man. Hadn’t they invented acting and dentistry by 1971?
You must be talking about a different 1971 movie with the same title, not the one I’m familiar with.
Hollywood always gets this wrong. Hollywood’s idea of hunting deer seems to entail chasing the deer across the landscape while toting a rifle. (E.g. The Deer Hunter, Last of the Mohicans.) (Who’s gonna win that race, do you suppose?)
They get this wrong so consistently, I’ve stopped noticing.
Oh, come on.
There was nothing vaguely vampiric about Matthias’ people other than some powder on their faces.
Neville’s escapes were visible from miles away, and his jokes were awful. They were badly written and Neville couldn’t have delivered them worse if he were Chuck Knobloch on his first day at UPS.
The “lovers” couldn’t have had less chemistry if they were political science majors.
If Heston could act his way out of a paper bag, he sure wasn’t eager to show it in this one. I’m willing to chalk this point up to shitty directing.
Neville’s death was completely absurd and totally unbelievable. Matthias and hundreds of followers fail to kill him for two years, even after elaborate schemes, several successful traps, and even breaking their own rules by sending whatshisface scaling up the wall with a gun, and Matthias suddenly turns out to be an Olympic javelin thrower who can hit a man in the heart with a spear from hundreds of feet away? What the fuck ever.
Flash-bang grenades turn out to be the one way to disable as many hooded freaks as you want, at any time, but Dr. Neville never thinks to pick up a couple?
Neville fortified his house with a machine-gun turret, and we don’t even see it until after he thinks he’s never going to fight another vampire? It’s never even used? Shit, the turret at the country house at least got some ass every now and then.
Oh, and Neville has so much blood that he can fill up bottles and bottles from his veins, and then bleed from a spear to the heart for, what, 8-12 hours, only dying after Dutch happens to show up and grab a bottle of blood?
I could go on and on and on, but it’s making me more and more pissed off thinking about how I wasted a couple of perfectly good hours on that movie. OTOH, I Am Legend seems a lot better now.
Just got back from the movie, at an imax theater. Haven’t read the whole thead.
I was impressed with Smith’s performance, and generally engrossed up until right after Samantha died. At that point, it seemed like he was definitely headed towards crazyville, but then the woman and her kid showed up, I got bored and soon enough the movie was over. The camera work was too jerky at times, and the special effects were too fast and blurry.
Okay flick, but I could have waited for the DVD.
levdrakon, you raise an interesting point: would the movie have been better if Anna’s arrival had further destabilized Dr. Neville rather than restoring his sanity? Should he have been less with-it at the end than at the beginning? I think so, now that you mention it.
I actually wondered myself if Anna were real. I kept expecting the camera to whip around and show me nothing or maybe a mannequin. That didn’t happen, but yes I could have watched loneliness, isolation and despair pull at Smith’s remaining grip on reality a bit more before he went action hero and saved the day. At least they didn’t form a happy nuclear family at the end.
You’re right about some of these (e.g., the unlikelihood of that javelin throw) and wrong about others (e.g., they’re not vampiric because they’re not meant to be; that’s a change in adaptation, not an inherent flaw). This is actually one of those movies I like even though it doesn’t make a great deal of sense. Maybe because it’s part of my childhood.
You’re missing the biggest bit of illogic in the movie, which is actually part of the character rather than a plot hole: Neville (still talking about The Omega Man here) supposedly has a goal of wiping out the “nest” where all the freaky-deaky albino psychotics live. Logically, this should be simple: A) They don’t come out in the daylight; B) they only travel on foot; C) Yet they appear at Neville’s apartment house every night right after sunset. So, they must live nearby, like, say, in the courthouse. Neville should have taken care of them in a month, but instead he spends his time methodically going through buildings that are miles away across the city. The only way this makes sense is if he’s half-crazy, and keeping himself from succeeding because, if he ever wiped them out, he’d be truly alone. When insane pasty-faced robe-wearing Luddites try to kill you every night, at least you’ve got company.
Similarly, in the new movie, I wonder if Neville isn’t sabotaging his own deerhunting efforts. We never see him actually get a deer; maybe he never has, and has been living off fish, vegetables and canned goods the whole time. Maybe, after all the lab animals he’s killed trying to cure the virus, he’s just not eager to take any more lives. (Or maybe it’s just that sitting in a deer blind isn’t very cinematically interesting.)
I’ve been thinking about this; the book had a real effect on me when I read it thirty-four years ago, and again recently. But would I really want to see a complete translation to film? It’s one of the bleakest, grimmest stories I ever read.
I understand that, but they’re neither vampiric nor particularly diseased-seeming. That is, they seemed pretty much like a cult of light-sensitive albinos in black coats. I mean, what the hell is up with this disease?
First stage: Choking, pain, fainting.
Second stage: Patient is bedridden.
Third stage: Patient is mentally strong, able-bodied and high in morale, eager to fight for Matthias.
Bullshit.
And exactly how light-sensitive were they, anyway? It didn’t seem to actually hurt them. When Matthias’s right-hand man scaled the outside wall of Neville’s house only to be splashed in light when Neville got the generator running, the light bathed out over the “brethren” as well and they looked shocked and screamed, but a couple of minutes later when the camera went back to them, they were still standing there, they just looked shocked and started screaming again.
And the revelation that they holed up in the courthouse was a shock to him, even though he himself had been held prisoner there? WTF?
I kind of got that impression, too. Maybe he liked the chase–it kept him sharp, and it was a lot of fun for Sam–more than he liked the prospect of actually killing anything. I certainly never got the impression that he had a lot invested in his success.
I just saw this today, and I liked it well enough. The ending managed to be happy without being too sappy (I was afraid they’d keep Neville alive), and Will Smith is an amazing actor. Though the themes the movie dealt with seemed completely different to the ones explored in the novella.
The one thing that did annoy me was the CGI. Even the lions and the deer looked fake. Did they not have enough left over from their budget after paying Will Smith and Emma Thompson? (WTF was she doing in that movie anyway?)