I like Will Smith but I've never denied the obvious: he's not a great actor. His emotional range consists of being sarcastic, yelling really loud, and trying to cry. He does all three in I Am Legend, which wasn't as bad as I expected but was still rather forgettable.
As the last man on earth, Smith has to carry the movie for an hour or so by himself, and fails miserably. Some people are gonna say "bubub wut about SAM, the lovable dog?" And I say there was nothing spectacular about the dog. Toto set a precedent for all canine actors - be cute, be funny, and above all do some shit. Sam does nothing but listen to Will Smith pretend to be a scientist and talk to mannequins ("Sam, I dunno if I can ask her out, what if she says no lol").
spoiler
spoiler (click to show/hide)
I almost laughed when he died, mainly due to Smith looking like he was about to pass a kidney stone
You'd expect a movie with a $150milly production budget to at least get the visual aspect right, correct? Nope. Here lies the worse CGI I've seen in ages. Like much of the movie it just felt lazy. The monsters would have been so much more compelling if actual actors were used to a certain degree.
In terms of plot I'll give the movie props for not being cliche. I liked the whole reversal of protagonist/antagonist roles...
spoiler
spoiler (click to show/hide)
we're used to seeing the good guy run off and try to save his damsel in distress from the clutches of the evil madman, but here there's an interesting reversal which is unexpected and impressive.
I went into the movie knowing the gist of the "spoiler" and still was surprised. If anyone has read the book, uh what really happened, and how unfaithful was this?
6.5/10
I thought the alt ending
spoiler
spoiler (click to show/hide)
only makes the love aspect blatantly obvious (ie the alpha male trying to get his girl back), and Will Smith lives?
spoiler (click to show/hide)
sam :'(
spoiler (click to show/hide)
The one that bought Transformers on HD-DVD over Bourne.
could you explain why the book is called I Am Legend?
spoiler (click to show/hide)
in the book he's finally overpowered and caught. they take him to the "city" they've constructed underground and everyone is awed that he's been caught. to him, he had become a legend who kills in daylight, unstoppable, unkillable. a kind of old hat now, but at the time it was rather breath taking to have the "hero" of the book be completely transposed with what would traditionally be the villian of the story.
spoiler (click to show/hide)
from wiki: He is portrayed as a man struggling between his humanity and the pragmatic, often brutal aspects of survival in his new world. As Neville learns more about his nocturnal foes, his views on their nature begin to change. Are they the monsters of legend, or something more? The end is coming for Neville, and as it approaches, the consequences of his actions become clear. Society has begun rebuilding itself, and Neville is not a part of it. At the end of the book Neville realizes that he does not belong to the new people of earth. A revelation is made: with the new world order in place, a role reversal has occurred. Neville has become the "monster in the day" to the new people of earth, becoming to them what Vampires once were to humanity. Neville becomes a new legend in and of himself, hence the title.
spoiler (click to show/hide)
"the bad guy" from the vampire perspective considering he stole the Alpha Male's queen
That's Hollywood for ya. They take the essence in tact (for the most part) and fuck everything else up with filler
That's an incredibly basic interpretation of the final bit. Isn't the "protagonist" always the BAD guy from the antagonist's perspective? Particularly with the theatrical ending, where there's
spoiler (click to show/hide)
apparently still an entire colony of normal human beings surviving. Will Smith and his little supposed kidnapping nonsense is child's play, and something that works out for the greater good, in a certain perspective. In the original story, Neville is the very last of his kind, and murders hundreds, possibly thousands, of "alive" vampires during the daytime to little end.
I dunno, I went into the film not knowing anything about the book, but knowing the spoiler of Will Smith being the
spoiler (click to show/hide)
badguy or whatever
so when he captured the female vampire and the Alpha Male yelled at him in anguish, I was like "ah, I see where this is going lol." I guess my point about protagonist/antagonist stuff is that usually the perspective of "lover trying to get his chick back" is that of the protagonist, whereas here it's the protagonist who steals the lover away instead. I guess it might be a slight parallel but it's what I perceived from the movie :-[