I Am Legend - Cheap Thoughts

Hello and welcome to the first instalment of Cheap Thoughts, a series where I talk about products on my mind. The first film that I want to talk about is I Am Legend. (Spoilers Ahead) Released in 2007, directed by Francis Lawrence and starring Will Smith. The story follows Smith's character Robert Neville, a scientist for the army in New York City. After a virus breakout causes the zombie apocalypse, however, there's a twist, the zombies (Or vampires, depends who you ask) can only travel at night, as the sunlight burns their flesh, meaning during the day, Robert is the only human in all of New York, along with his dog Sam and a stray animal every now and again. The majority of the film just follows Robert through his daily routine, travelling around New York, experimenting on rats to try and find a cure and broadcasting his location in case there are any other survivors looking for shelter. After a while, Robert's dog and only friend Sam is infected and Robert is forced to kill her, in a fit of rage, Robert tries to kill himself and as many "Darkseekers" as possible, but is saved by a woman and a child, two more survivors. Once they return back to Robert's home, they are over swarmed with Darkseekers and retreat to the basement, where they discover that Robert's experiments have begun working, he then provides the woman, Anna, with a sample and tells her to find help, she and the boy, Ethan, escape while Robert sacrifices himself to kill the Darkseekers. Later on, Anna discovers a colony of survivors and the film ends with an optimistic view of the future.

The film was a box office hit and both critics and audiences seemed to like it fine, it was one of Smith's last films before he took a 5 year long hiatus (Which no one seemed to notice) and he was most likely the main reason why the film was a box office success. And it definitely feels like his kind of movie, after all, this is a man with an ego so big he refused the role of Django in Django Unchained because he wanted to be the main character (Even though his character is in the fucking title!) But I digress, because he is actually a major part of why I love this movie.

Smith's character, despite being the only character on screen for the majority of the film is very engaging, and not just because of Smith, he's not cracking one liners and cool quips every 5 seconds, in fact there's very little dialogue in the first act of the film, most of the dialogue is through flashbacks of the initial breakout and the death of Smith's family. The film definitely creates this sense of isolation, not just through Smith being the only person on screen, but through his actions. Everyday he goes to a Blockbusters (So much for predicting the future!) and has multiple mannequins scattered in the store and pretends to have conversations with them and gives them personalities, as a coping method, even pretending to have an awkward encounter with one of them. This ends with a great emotional pay off at the end of the second act, after Sam dies and he is at his breaking point, he returns to the shop and begs one of the mannequins "Please say hello to me" and it is honestly a heartbreaking scene, to see this man at his lowest, where he has given up on everything.

So I should probably talk about the dog itself, yes it is a heartbreaking scene, not just because they broke the number one rule of movies (Never kill the dog!) but because Robert is being forced to kill his best friend in the entire world, in fact, his only friend in the entire world. Though again, I think what sells this most is Smith's performance, in fact I would go as far to say as this is one of the best performances he's ever given and is often overlooked, not his all time best, but one of.

The other thing that I love is the pacing and lack of dialogue in the movie, like i said, there is very little dialogue in the first act of the movie, it gives the film a sense of atmosphere and scale, something about seeing New York City completely empty just doesn't sit right. And there's an incredibly tense scene where Sam runs into a pitch black building and Robert, completley terrified, has to run in after her and you could cut the tension with a knife. Robert isn't a soldier, he's a scientist, so when he runs in there, he doesn't do it bravely, he's scared out of his wits that he'll be attacked. It's a great scene.

Although this film does have some major issues, the first one being the Darkseekers themselves, ignoring what a stupid title that is anyway, it's hard to define what they are. They have the origins of zombies, if you get bit by one you become one, they feast off flesh, they seem like zombies. But they're also sensetive to light, have some intelligence and again, if you get bit by one, you become one. I don't know which one they're supposed to be, or maybe it's a mixture of both, but it's not made very clear. And not to mention the CG on the creatures is awful, this is a classic example of where practical would have been much better than CGI.

Then there is the third act of the movie which just kinda...sucks. Once the woman and the child are introduced, the film becomes far less interesting because the new characters aren't interesting; they're cliched, underdeveloped and boring. And then there is the ending of the movie, which a lot of people complain about, in fact most people prefer the alternate ending of the movie. In the original ending, the darkseekers stormed Robert's house in search of one of their own that Robert was experimenting on. They found her and just...left...yeah, just left. I don't really like this ending because it makes the Darkseekers come across as co-oporative, which makes them less threatening and savage. Also it's just a little bit too happy ending, the original ending was bitter sweet with an optimistic view of the future, so yeah I prefer it this way to the initial ending.

Overall I think I Am Legend is a very underlooked film that not a whole lot of people talk about, it has a great performance by Will Smith, great pacing, an engaging atmosphere, crappy effects and a less than impressive third act.

But nevertheless I am giving I Am Legend an 8/10

-Danny