I Am Legend

S

Sy

Time-Traveller
Watched I Am Legend a while ago. Pretty good film, very reminicent of 28 Days Later but I think it lasted a lot longer before it started to fall apart and Will Smith's performance put it in front of 28. A few things about it irked me though and that's the CGI, I thought it was unconvincing and took away a lot of the terror from the 'infected'. A more down to earth approach and less screen time would have made them a lot more scary.

Another thing that I think would have benefitted the movie would have been an absense of musical score, not that there was anything wrong with the score but I think no score would have enhanced the mood even more (Much like in 'The Birds'). By that I don't mean totally remove all music from the movie either, the music he listens to on his radio was fine.

One thing that annoys me about these movies is that although he's meant to be the last man alive, other survivors always seem to show up. It might be just me but that always seems like a cop out. It's almost like they thought, "oh **** the audience will get bored if theres only one character on screen for most of the movie!". To me I think Will Smiths performance would have held up as an almost one man show.

I know the survivors served a point in taking the vaccine to the surviving colonists but I think it would have had a lot more impact if Will Smith was kept in isolation for the entire film (aside from the flashbacks) and even though there were survivng colonists somewhere they could have found another way to discover his vaccine. Perhaps he could have sent out another transmittion or something before he sarcrificed himself. I don't know, I just think it could have been more than it was in that respect.

I must admit though, for once I enjoyed the film version more than the book. The endings to this film and the book are very different and even though I wasn't totally satisfied with the end of this movie it was a whole lot better to end it than I felt the book ended.

But wait what's this? A sequel is planned. No thanks. Leave it be.
 
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Good thing you put spoiler things on there! Im going to see it soon with a few mates (have to wait for em to get back from christmas holidays).
 
The 1st half of the film is amazing, but the 2nd half lets it down. C'mon bald people who look like burn victims who like to headbutt aren't scary.
 
Was a decent movie, loved the first half, Will's acting IMO was great, the second half was a bit of a let down, with all this mention of God coming down like some sort of Deus ex machina. The infected didn't look as epic as I expected, but still better than the book, I mean ACTUAL vampires? The movie seemed better from the synopsis, I also liked how they used the dog in the movie, much better than the book also. But yeah, they should leave it be, no sequal attatched to I Am Legend so it can be left as a Stand Alone movie, sequals will just ruin it. =/
 
eggybob said:
The 1st half of the film is amazing, but the 2nd half lets it down. C'mon bald people who look like burn victims who like to headbutt aren't scary.
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I'd say that around the one hour mark was where the film started to lose it. Just after his dog Sam died, which by the way I thought was a really strong scene. His suicidal rampage for revenge was equally as strong... and then he got saved, that's when it lost it for me. Though still a very good movie.

The main problem with the infected people is that you just saw too much of them. They should have gone the root they took with Alien or Jaws and showed as little of the threat as possible. It would have been a lot more effective.
 
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Sy said:
eggybob said:
The 1st half of the film is amazing, but the 2nd half lets it down. C'mon bald people who look like burn victims who like to headbutt aren't scary.
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I'd say that around the one hour mark was where the film started to lose it. Just after his dog Sam died, which by the way I thought was a really strong scene. His suicidal rampage for revenge was equally as strong... and then he got saved, that's when it lost it for me. Though still a very good movie.

The main problem with the infected people is that you just saw too much of them. They should have gone the root they took with Alien or Jaws and showed as little of the threat as possible. It would have been a lot more effective.
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Yep, i agree; just like the orginal trailers which showed a monster there but not what they look like, if the film was like that until the last 15-20 minutes it would have been awesome.
 
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I agree with Sy, the start of the film was really good, nice to see how this single man walks about New York city with his dog. As you said up until the part where the dog died (I too found this a very strong scene, it wouldn't of been the same if the dog was a human instead, it might just be because I have three dogs, but that was a great scene) and after that it was ok, but not nearly as good as before, I was expecting more, the film doesn't have a bad ending, but as I said, I was expecting more.
 
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Sy said:
I must admit though, for once I enjoyed the film version more than the book. The endings to this film and the book are very different and even though I wasn't totally satisfied with the end of this movie it was a whole lot better to end it than I felt the book ended.
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I agree that it was a very good film, but I can't really go along with saying the end of it was better than the book. Since this a fundamentally depressing story about complete and utter isolation, it tastes like weak sauce when Hollywood tacks on their cliche happy ending. Obviously, in the book, there is no such "cure" for the disease, Neville gets caught by the vampires (or, since this was written in the 50s, the "infected" are probably symbolic of communists) and is eventually executed, having been vilified as a mass-murder.

Other little things made me prefer the book over the film, like the "monsters". In the book, they can speak, know where Neville lives and are constantly screaming at him to come out of his house. The only reason they can't get to him is because his house is laced with garlic. In the film the things are just poorly CG-ed zombies working out of base instincts. I suppose you don't really get that same sense of Neville being utterly trapped once the sun goes down, the fact he has to turn up his music to drown out the screams outside.

I love both versions of the story, but it feels like the movie loses its edge once it finally decides to completely diverge from the great source material. Will Smith put in great performance, but I just wish they'd been a little tighter to the original. As such, this'll just go down as yet another "rather good" film that's ultimately toothless.
 
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I didn't really dislike the end of the book because it lacked a happy ending, in fact I rather liked the idea in the book but as a story about an isolated man when it was revealed that the vampires had found a way of fighting the illness my eyes kind of rolled into the back of my head.

I just really wish in the movie that they would have taken a 'risk' and made Neville find the cure but then kill himself to protect that cure. Then finish with it echoing out that he'd found a cure on the radio for no one to hear but Neville dying, believing himself to one day become a Legend. A brilliant bittersweet ending I would think.

They SHOULD NOT have made the infected people CGI. That's propbably the worst thing they could have done. Plus the last scene where that infected guy was smashing his head on the glass and all the others were just watching... It looked like a bunch of chavs on a night out. I laughed a little. Why werent they all swarming?? It's like the others were just standing around filming it on their mobiles to put on youtube or something.

I'll be honest I didn't like the book and I'm not a fan of horror at all really but I think this had the potential to be something brilliant rather than like Paul said just another "rather good" movie. What I would have liked this movie to been remembered for? Will Smith carrying an entire movie on his own (minus flashbacks).
 
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AMAZING

Not sure what else to write, well my hand hurts as my girlfriend got so scare she dug her nails into my hand and almost drew blood yes she cried when Sam died

Definately a brilliant film, and loved the ending very muchm, was wondering how they would bring the film to a conclusion although I would have loved it if the gates had opened and behind them was a waste land
 
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On a first note, i thought the film was brilliant! I was expecting something good, but i wasnt expecting something as good as this film was (still think transformers is my favourite movie of the year tho :p)

McIcy said:
AMAZING

Not sure what else to write, well my hand hurts as my girlfriend got so scare she dug her nails into my hand and almost drew blood yes she cried when Sam died

Definately a brilliant film, and loved the ending very muchm, was wondering how they would bring the film to a conclusion although I would have loved it if the gates had opened and behind them was a waste land
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I was thinking... Instead of it being a waste land or having the humans there, what if they opened the gate and it was a civilization of zombies... now that would be funny!
 
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