I just saw I Am Legend, after being pulled in by the trailers and the hype and mystique surrounding the Will Smith self-proclaimed blockbuster. I have to say I Am Dissappointed. I Am Hosed. I Am Ripped-Off Again.
Yes, Will Smith is indeed a ‘Legend’ in his own right. Entertainment industry chatter has always been “Will Smith can sell July movies like no one’s business.” He is actually really good in the movie and there are some good aspects to the movie which I will lay out here, but overall, it was found wanting. (Warning – Medium sized spoilers follow here)
Will’s character is supposedly the last man alive on Earth. But as we find out, it is simply an Earth that has had most of its population wiped out by a virus, and Smith’s character is immune. What are the odds? Not only that, but he was involved in the creation and research of the virus. This virus, as is spoon-fed to the viewer at the beginning of the film, was 
engineered to cure cancer, which it did. But the side effects and/or mutations of the virus (this part was not clear) are highly contagious and most of the Earth is wiped out. Those who did not die from the virus became zombies, for lack of a better term.
They become sensitive to UV rays (light) and live in the dark and come out at night, prefer blood and to hunt/kill for survival and completely lose their hair, skin pigment and magically develop the ability to open their jaws/mouths far wider than a normal human. This adds greatly to cinematic effect, but also makes the story much less believable since, these “things” couldn’t possibly be human. I mean how can a virus make your yawn bigger? Oh wait, it worked on me during the film (insert rim shot here)!
The film does manage to convey extreme isolationism in very good detail. I found myself wanting the mannequins that Smith spoke to in the film to talk back to him. Smith’s character sleeps in his tub in a fetal position in his barricaded home while the “dark sleepers” come out at night to go absolutely ape-poop on anything that moves.
Smith’s character has a looping broadcast for any other “survivors” to meet him at the (used to be) Brooklyn Bridge. This is odd, since laterin the movie he repeats how he is certain that everyone else in the world is either dead or an infected zombie…so why bother? Just noticing…
The end kinda pissed me off, really. There was so much more they could have done to flesh out the events between 10 minutes before the end and the end, but they decided to skip ahead instead. The movie plays out to about 1:36, so it’s not like they didn’t have enough wiggle room with time. I imagine all of the movie’s budget went into effects, which are pretty outstanding. This includes the look of the zombies..they could have looked a bit more real if it weren’t for the unrealistic “hollywood” screaming sounds and the over-extending jaws. They were using horror techniques almost just for the sake of having them rather than moving the storyline along. And don’t get me started on the whole Bob Marley connection. I love the artist and the collection album Legend, but the way it gets connected to the films is a bit odd at best.
I give the movie a “you pretty much have to see it because it’s Will Smith and everyone else will think you’re stupid for not seeing it” as well as a 4 out of 5 for the reletively realistic isolationism scenes.
-Josh
i am one of those who liked the movie. it certainly is NOT a “oh my god it’s the best movie ever” type, but it was really entertaining. i too wish that they would flesh out some of the stuff about the actual virus and how it spread and how the quarantine/safe places became about, but maybe then it would make it too easy? i dunno. i’m pretty easy when it comes to movies though and it takes a lot for me to not like a film. especially since i see so few of them! i’m trying to go to as much as possible while i’m in the states!!!
I thought it was a good movie. Anything Will Smith does… I’m there. Nothing else could have possessed me to WANT to watch a scary zombie movie. I thought it was a lot less Hollywood and gratuitous gore than say… 28 Weeks Later. (I was tricked into watching that one… I didn’t think it was going to be about zombies. I thought it was going to be more about the human condition after a global crisis.) I was no better for having watched 28 Weeks, and I was not entertained.
I was entertained with I Am Legend… from being uncomfortably tense and scared to amused by Will Smith’s ability to talk to mannequins and make it real. He was like a super hero with his sidekick dog in the beginning… they were setting him up to be Superman–invincible, but in the end he was just a stubborn man still believing he can “fix” a mistake when the whole rest of the world would have gotten the hell out of Dodge. So his heroism ended up being more human and less John McClane… less Hollywood, IMO.
As for the screaming, unrealistic, unhuman, great special effects zombies… I think they make them that way so that the audience will not see any redeeming qualities in them… so that they can continue to see the hero as doing something beyond the extra mile. I was expecting the zombie in the basement to somehow get disconnected from the sedatives and get him. There is just no way that I would be able to sleep in the same house as that thing… once human or not. That’s how they want you to feel.
And then in the end when the zombie starts to look more human, you feel like maybe the hero is doing the right thing, but the other crazy zombies are just a sheet of glass away and not stopping to be reasoned with… it makes you sad and frustrated and then the hero does the right thing, and all is well again in your mind.
And you’re left with Bob Marley’s comforting music because just as he is a legend, so ends our hero.
I was lovin’ the first half of the movie. Then it kind of fell apart for me. The ending was pretty weak…it didn’t work for me. The ending could have worked had they eased into it more gradually…it just sorta happened, then it was over.
Disappointing.