Will Smith pulled off this one-man show very well. You could easily believe that he was a man who spent three years basically on his own.
SPOILERZ BELOW
The movie only gets three stars not because of plotholes and moments of sheer ludicrousy (of which there were several), but because the movie becomes a Signs remake. About 40 minutes in there’s a moment where his family prays together, which makes me go Sure enough, the movie’s message is about God’s plan. If that’s what a movie aims to do that’s fine, but it doesn’t work in this case for two reasons. First, the movie is called I Am Legend; it’s supposed to be about this guy and his struggles. Second, the religious message just seems thrown in at the end in a haphazard manner after the late, blatant foreshadow.
The movie should have ended with the cure he discovers for the virus being destroyed by the zampires (zombie vampires) in front of his face, and then him dying shortly after.
Once zombie vampires enter the plot, I exit it. Remember “28 Days”? That started out great: the first half hour or so was plausible and realistically…uh…realized. But then come the zombies, and the credibility of the entire movie is shot. I think Thoreau said something like “The master reveals himself within limits”; when you start adding fictitious beings to the plot, there ARE no limits, since you can ascribe to them any capabilities or powers you’d like. And even in many of these instances, the plot will still contradict itself at one point or another.
I was interested in seeing “Legend” primarily for how an unihabited Manhattan was depicted; could have been interesting.
Yeah…zombies…hmmm…the only thing they can kill is a movie.
^^ His canned goods would’ve been ok for a bit longer, and his lab was in the city and his ego or OCD kept him in the city, but why he didn’t ‘take a tank’ is a mystery.
I would’ve had a better defense plan for my house. And why didn’t the rabid humans turn on each other? It’s not so much that as how did they survive without eating each other; there wasn’t that much food around.
Not so much as why did the rabid humans not turn on each other, why were they able to keep rabid dogs? At one point in the movie, Smith says that they had lost all recognisable human traits (or something to that effect), then not long after, they were making traps for him and unleashing dogs of hell on him. Doesn’t make sense.
Some of the suspense was good, but the CGI in this movie was appalling. The lion scene - those lions were so fake, not to mention the ‘disney’ aspect of there having to be a female lion and the bloody male lion and one cub following… what a load of shit. I saw better CGI lions in ‘Night at the museum’!!
Don’t even get me started on the rabid 'human’s. WHY they felt the need to make them CGI i do not know. They moved unrealistically and would have worked alot better if they had been played by actual humans. Just because CGI is available, doesn’t mean its going to make a movie better. The creatures mouths opened too wide (after all, these are meant to be merely mutated humans - mutated by a virus, not ‘evolved’ over years), and the sound they made was laughable… again, if they’d screamed like tortured humans, it would have been far more chilling.
One of the best shot pieces was when the dog went into those passages and we caught a climpse of the creatures all in a huddle, breathign fast. just a fast glimpse. I thought that was very effective.
The God told the lady there is a survivor colony in Vermont, and…lo and behold…there was a colony in Vermont!
Edit:
I was thinking about the psychology behind this movie and it seems that the main goal of the movie is to attempt to reinforce the value of “faith”. (zombies and virus and all the other stuff is just used as means to this end).
If you take the highest value of “human life” and sacrifice it for another value X, this value X will only be reinforced. I see this pattern repeated in many Hollywood movies. People die for all kinds of values: family, spouse, honor, pride, vengeance, etc. The more people die for this value X and the more tragic the whole thing is, the more this value appears to be reinforced/validated to the observer. Just something I thought.
Actually, this is when the movie still had something of a chance. Smith’s character isn’t able to see that the reason the male came out into the light after the female is because he cared about her. He’s blinded by his guilt, ambition, and no doubt by his long separation from the rest of humanity.
Read the book guys, actually some of your questions have answers. In the book they do turn on each other, for instance. And the reason why he doesn’t escape is partly because he needs to be locked up at night and partly because he’s too depressed to try. The whole vampire thing is a lot more complicated too.
Sure enough, the movie’s message is about God’s plan. If that’s what a movie aims to do that’s fine, but it doesn’t work in this case for two reasons. First, the movie is called I Am Legend; it’s supposed to be about this guy and his struggles. Second, the religious message just seems thrown in at the end in a haphazard manner after the late, blatant foreshadow.
