A New "I Am Legend" Movie

Payday is coming.... Yeah I heard it was damn good from a friend. And am going to watch it. payday is coming, payday is coming.
 
Saw it last night and it was very good. Closer to the book than I expected. If you go into it expecting a decent post apocalyptic movie you'll probably love it. Go into it expecting a decent adaptation of Matheson's book you'll probably dig it. And if you expect a page for page remake of the book down to the finest details you'll hate the world forever.

The Good
Never feels like an action movie. Read the old script for Arnold, it was terrible.
Has the same tone and gloominess.
Will Smith is really good. There's some humor, but it's mostly nervous laughter about his situation.
My only complaint about the book was fixed here. The dog has a much bigger role. A little too Old Yeller for me, but still good. In the book you never get a chance for an emotional attachment with the dog.
Overgrown and abandoned New York looked really good. Lots of details in the signs and shit laying around.

The Bad
The whole thing about Nevell regarded as a murderer among the intelligent vampire society is entirely dropped. They simplified the story a lot. You have clear cut good guys and bad guys. Too Hollywood, but they sorta make up for it with the end.
I hated the tacked on happily ever after ending., which leads into....
Religious undertones. Explaining how God is behind all these coincidences and some lady's hunch about a survivalist camp is hokey to the extreme.

Stuff that pisses me off
I am so sick of cheap scares. Every single horror movie in the last 10 years does it. A harmless thing will jump out suddenly, trying to get that scare, then the really dangerous thing jumps out seconds later. Every single scare in the movie is like that. There are some great creepy parts like when he follows the dog and stumbles onto a sleeping hive. Which leads to another complaint...
The vampires sound good, do some creepy shit (the people standing and "sleeping" was awesome), but don't really look scary. I guess if cancer victims make you giddy with fear this will have you pissing your pants.

In a nutshell, I Am Legend beats the ever loving shit out of The Mist.
 
I liked it alot. I was very impressed they made it without turning it into an action movie. Overall my opinions were the same as Mad Max above me especially the religious undertones. I understand the main character being so defeated by the deaths of so many that he would not believe in God, but having the one person he meets claim to have come after hearing his voice makes her seem prophetic.

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
 
A review of I am Legend and the movies here-

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17275555

Updating I Am Legend meant more to Goldsman than casting megastar Will Smith and moving the action to New York. While earlier versions were preoccupied by the Atomic Age, today's I Am Legend has a faith-based message, articulated in the film by one devoutly Christian survivor: "The world is quieter now; you just have to listen. If you listen you can hear God's plan."

"We felt that people broke out into two categories in terrible circumstances — people who had hope and people who didn't," Goldsman says. "And those with hope had a much better chance of survival."

Hope here means faith in God as well as faith in science — and that's a new twist to Matheson's story. Still, Akiva Goldsman says every adaptation of I Am Legend reiterates the original's power.

"It all sort of mixes together in time, and the story adds to itself," he says. "Times change, movies change, and apparently I Am Legend keeps getting made."
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So if you want to sell, you have to sell a Christiam message?

And if you don´t have the message you flop like Golden Compass?

Not a good sign.
 
Well, Golden Compass just kind of sucked, so that may also have contributed...
 
Mad Max RW's review was pretty spot on. In particular:

Mad Max RW said:
The whole thing about Nevell regarded as a murderer among the intelligent vampire society is entirely dropped.
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That was my biggest disappointment. Furthermore I don't think they followed the book plotline that much at all.

Mad Max RW said:
I am so sick of cheap scares.
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Agreed.

Overall I thought the movie was good but I would have preferred them to make it longer (it wasn't even 2 hours) and give it more depth.

In comparison - The Omega Man is still much better.
 
I haven't yet read the book, so pardon the outsider's view, but that was a gorram awesome film. My bff and I spent the next hour walking around screaming vampire noises in the mall. It were wonderful.

Will Smith didn't even piss me off, which surprised the hell out of me.

The ending, while perhaps a bit too happy, didn't really bug me. It fit the movie, I felt...it wasn't too big a leap to believe in the survival of a heavily armed village in a remote location.

My only critiques were the "OMG HE SHUT SOME WINDOWS LETS SCARE THE SHIT OUT OF YOU FOR NO REASON!" (i.e., pointless scares), and the shaky camera. It wasn't as a bad as a Bourne or Bruckheimer movie, but for fuck's sake, let me watch one movie without my eyes hurting.
Oh, and Bob Marley. Fuck Bob Marley.
 
[rant]

I hate it when people mix up Christian hope and blatant optimism coupled with a survival instinct.

It's not hope or faith that keeps you alive when the world is fucked, it's keeping your head clear and not being a fucking emo.

Faith won't keep you alive, it'll just make you care less about death because you have the delusion that you'll wake up in wonderland even if you slowly die of radiation poisoning right now and just experienced the tragic loss of everyone you ever cared about through painful melting of their brains a couple of days ago.

There are no atheists in fox holes, but only because atheists care about not getting killed. Try and find an atheist suicide bomber (who isn't mentally unstable).

[/rant]

I don't think Will "Product Placement" Smith can outperform Mr. NRA, though.
 
I was being facetious. Of course there are enlisted atheists. There are plenty of motivations to serve your country despite knowing that the game's over once you're dead.

My point is that atheists have the better arguments when it comes to surviving the apocalypse. Most truly faithful would probably think it the judgement day and die happily out in the open. If they have any reservations, they're pretty damn inconsistent about the whole ascension thing.

EDIT: i.e. most Christians tend to lose their faith when it comes to dying because their survival instincts outsmart them. The whole heaven thing is more of a warm and comfy place for your mind to wander when facing the painful truth of the end of your existence -- suicide bombers excel, obviously.
 
one of the most religious persons i know, recently though he had throat cancer (luckily, it turned to be fucking switched labresult, lulz, muricans), but he said he was scared shitless of dying. not so much of going to hell, but of dying.

i found that rather funny for a christian.
 
just saw the movie.

didn't like it.

i must say that while i thought Smith would suck, he wasnt too bad. but the script and the story was.
now, i've read the book and seen the two movies (well, 3 now), and i must say that thisone is the worst by far.

the book was good, especially playing with morality and conflict.
the first movie had Price, meaning character and class.
the second movie had action and while dumbed down, it also was pretty well thought out and well portrayed.

the last movie however was simplistic storywise, overly high tech, often downright stupid, inconsistent, and storylines were not worked out as they should. not to mention the religious angle was pretty moronic.
if they had taken the original storyline of the book (the evolved race), the movie might have been saved. but now? don't feel as if it was worth even to watch.

also, for some reason i was overly annoyed by the rendering of nature reclaiming New York. i've seen pictures of whole cities and regions reclaimed by nature, but the movie's rendering of it was bland, unimaginative and nowhere near of what one would expect.

PS: how is that shitty compound wall going to keep out the muties if they can scale bare walls?

PPS: i'll admit of course that there were a few 'neat' things in the movie and nice finds that added a little to the novelty of it all, but other than that, i have a hard time to discern any redeeming features.
 
just saw the movie and up until that woman and the kid shows up i thought it was great and a nice buildup ...

i knew it was going down the drain but i kept hoping that it would somehow be closer to the book.

basically you had everything so beautifully set up - with the alpha female abduction for the proper treatment .. then the god's plan bullshit starts pouring in from nowhere...

god bless ham-erica
 
that movie was amazing.... probobly better then the omega man, though i still enjoy the omega man. i never saw the last man on earth but according to my sources it follows the novel better then any of the three.
 
cody92 said:
that movie was amazing.... probobly better then the omega man, though i still enjoy the omega man. i never saw the last man on earth but according to my sources it follows the novel better then any of the three.
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I've heard quite the opposite on the movie following any novels; however, I could not agree with you more. It was a good film. I still was very pleased with the musical score and the sense of being all alone one got from it.
 
Can't explain it in English, cause my English skill... oh, here it is - "boring shit".
It was a good film.
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You mean "good dog"? Yeah, dog of Will Smith was better than other... actors.
I haven't yet read the book, so pardon the outsider's view, but that was a gorram awesome film.
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Oh, haven't read the book too. And all I can say - "What an incredible amount of bullshit" (C) Wooz
 
I saw it the other day and liked it; my main complaint is the same as most others - the cop-out religious angle at the end, and it negation of the clever twist in the book. So he's a legend among this town of god-fearing christians for creating a cure for a plague which they are never going use since they're all immune anyway and living in a forest in the middle of Vermont hundreds of miles away from civilization, and which they probably believe was a divinely directed event anyway? It doesn't make any sense, let alone come close to the satisfaction or cleverness of Matheson's ending.

I really didn't like the vampires either; the huddled mass in the darkened warehouse got my hopes up, but they ended up being pretty ridiculous and contradictory. They're apparently too stupid to find Neville's house or exist in any human way, but are clever enough to figure out where he gets DVD's and recognize that he's using mannikins to ease his loneliness? And they're smart enough to use one of his "friends" to set a complicated and well hidden snare trap for him, and to train and use hunting dogs? They can smell blood from miles away, yet can't tell when people are five feet away from them? They can dodge bullets and scale a 3 story brownstone in 2 seconds and punch through steel shutters, yet are near helpless against plexiglass and all stand around while one guy headbutts it for 5 minutes? What the fuck? All that would be moot if they were scary at all, but aside from the few "jump" scares they just seemed more like a plot device than something that inspired any horror.

That said, aside from the last 20 minutes or so though (and the deer hunting in the mustang), I really enjoyed the movie and thought Will Smith did a great job as Neville - or at least, much much better than I expected. If the ending wasn't such a let down this probably would have been one of my favorite movies of the year.
 
(I think it goes without saying, but Spoiler Warning.)

Like most of you, I thought the end (most of the stuff after the lady and the kid showed up) started a downhill slide from which the movie didn't really recover. All in all, though, I've got to say I liked it a lot. Like I Am Robot, it probably would've been a more enjoyable film if they had pulled a Disturbia and done away with the pretenses that it was being made with much more than a tip of the hat towards the source material.

It was less of an action movie than I had expected them to try and make, too. I can't say I was surprised at Smith's performance, but that's only because I've been saying for years that he's not a shabby actor at all, and that the "Will Smith playing Will Smith" character is largely due to his scripts being tailored specifically to that idea. He did such a good job playing a driven man eroded by loss and loneliness and living too far inside his own head that I can only imagine how much better the film would've been if he had been forced to contend with the moral ramifications of a sentient, evolved race of "dark-seekers" rather than just his own demons and the lack of human contact, and I seriously regret the loss of that element. I also think he 'thawed' much too quickly when the lady and the kid showed up. The VERY end was every conceivable variety of lame, but Will Smith's last actions before the epilogue were, to put it plainly, pretty freakin' cool. All in all, it was a pretty good film, and one I plan on adding to my DVD collection when the time comes.

In regards to the God question, I think there's some room for interpretation, there-- yes, the easy message was "God's fixed everything now," but it's not much harder to take precisely the opposite from the film. The "God Still Loves Us" banners in the midst of the crisis, Neville praying with his family for safety right before their helicopter is sent flaming into the water... these are powerful counterpoints to the faith of the female refugee (damn, does ANYBODY remember her name?) at the end of the film, and the other "pro-God" angles that come at you throughout the film. What struck me was that there were people arguing the points of God's love, there were people arguing the point of his vengeance (presumably) or his nonexistence, but it didn't effect one damned thing. The plague was caused by man's arrogance, and it was the genius, drive, and sacrifice of one man that provided the cure. If there is any message in that, to me, it's that you can argue theology all you want, but at the end of the day mankind is responsible for it's own problems and must rise to the challenge of being it's own savior.
 
When people clap at a theater. Yeah. It was definitely worth it. ^,,^ It's given me some hope for Hollywood.
 
To me, it felt like it barely went for half an hour. I dunno, maybe it was because I was slightly tipsy, but the movie was an hour and a half long yet it seemed like very little actually happened.
 
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