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I Am Legend

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Mimpy

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I saw I Am Legend last night. I thought the movie was excellent. It was action-packed, funny at times, emotionally tugging, and haunting. There was not much dialogue throughout the movie, so that left every point to be made by Will Smith's actions. It was a telling story.

What I thought was really poignant was Will Smith's courage to continue to survive. Most people would just commit suicide. His motive for why he tries to survive,

to try and find a cure to fix the vampires

, was noble and right. I thought the whole movie represented good morals.

There was only one injection of religion, but Will Smith rejected that properly.

As for the ending:

I have heard many people complain that the movie was good until the last five minutes. Since I did not ask them what they disapproved of (since I had not seen the movie at the time and did not want to ruin it for myself), I can only imagine that it was Will Smith's acceptance of his own death. I did not think this was a cowardly or stupid act at all. I think it was a full realization of his values. He knew that his death would achieve his highest value, the reason he had been surviving for three years: to find a cure to re-populate the world.

All in all, I thought Will Smith played a very heroic character, who was strong, determined, and passionate. I highly recommend this movie.

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I saw I Am Legend last night. I thought the movie was excellent. It was action-packed, funny at times, emotionally tugging, and haunting. There was not much dialogue throughout the movie, so that left every point to be made by Will Smith's actions. It was a telling story.

What I thought was really poignant was Will Smith's courage to continue to survive. Most people would just commit suicide. His motive for why he tries to survive,

to try and find a cure to fix the vampires

, was noble and right. I thought the whole movie represented good morals.

There was only one injection of religion, but Will Smith rejected that properly.

As for the ending:

I have heard many people complain that the movie was good until the last five minutes. Since I did not ask them what they disapproved of (since I had not seen the movie at the time and did not want to ruin it for myself), I can only imagine that it was Will Smith's acceptance of his own death. I did not think this was a cowardly or stupid act at all. I think it was a full realization of his values. He knew that his death would achieve his highest value, the reason he had been surviving for three years: to find a cure to re-populate the world.

All in all, I thought Will Smith played a very heroic character, who was strong, determined, and passionate. I highly recommend this movie.

I liked this movie as well. I have not read the book either.

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All in all, I thought Will Smith played a very heroic character, who was strong, determined, and passionate. I highly recommend this movie.

That is two good movies for him in recent times then. The Pursuit of Happyness was also a very good movie with a good moral message. Anyway, I like the sounds of I am Legend based on what you said, so I think I'll be watching it when I can.

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Seen it twice, loved it both times. Very well made and superbly acted. My only complaint is that the zombies were a little too over-the-top. I would have preferred more realistic ones, a la 28 Days Later, because the rest of the movie's premise was not at all unrealistic.

My only philosophical complaint is not that Smith committed suicide...it's that his reason for doing so was that he suddenly found religion.

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My only philosophical complaint is not that Smith committed suicide...it's that his reason for doing so was that he suddenly found religion.

I took his "revelation" at the end more to be the result of quick thinking. He said that he was "listening," but we all know that he was just smart. I agree that without that injection of religion the movie would have been practically perfect. However, when Smith said that he was "listening," I took that more to mean that he was just thinking and integrating the sum of his knowledge to formulate a plan. He recalled his son's voice, he saw Anna and the child...I felt he was putting things into perspective.

That is how I saw it. I know, of course, that God was implied. The movie still maintains its merit, though!

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I liked the story.

I hated the movie.

Predictable scenes, shaky camera, cliche dialogue, and every other scene was computer-generated. Not even good CG, either. The infected things looked like video game characters, and the designers didn't bother to create more than one character model for them either. Apparently the KZ virus causes it's victims to exchange whatever they are wearing for a pair of baggy black cargo pants and possibly a leather jacket. All people were the same height and had the same bone structure before becoming infected.

I liked the story a whole lot but the execution into a movie was laughable stupid. 30 Days of Night was a better vampire flick, even with it's craptastic ending.

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I really disliked the movie as well.

The CG was bad, but I can overlook that if the story is good enough. But... there was no story! Most of the "action" was a pointless portrayal of everyday life for the man who caused the virus. Big deal; we could have guessed all of it based on one shot of the abandoned and decaying city.

A problem for me, as usual, was Will Smith, who is not a good actor and was not believable in his role. I didn't believe he was smart enough to create the virus, let alone cure it, but I didn't understand why he wanted to cure it, either. There could have been several legitimate reasons, but none of them were settled on.

Almost until the end I was going to forgive all of that, because the premise was so interesting. But it totally wiped out!

The genius scientist sees the light and way of make-believe

? I can't think of anything they could have done to make the movie worse for me at that point, because nothing then had any foundation or believability. And the final line, "

Be the light of the world

," started my mental highlighting of all of the absurdities and disappointment I was going to ignore in the previous couple hours.

Why did he have to kill himself

?

Why not just throw the grenade out and then quickly shut the door

?

Why did he memorize Shrek and talk to the mannequins, but have the mental stability to keep himself in shape, and conduct scientific experiments

? Etc., and on.

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I didn't believe he was smart enough to create the virus, let alone cure it, but I didn't understand why he wanted to cure it, either.

Neville did not create the virus. If you remember, a woman scientist and her team created

the cure for cancer with a virus, which mutated into something that was harmful to human beings.

As for why he would want to find a cure, there are two main reasons I can think of:

a. He was a virologist by profession, so obviously he was genuinely interested in the field.

and b. He loved the world and mankind and wanted to see it restored.

Edited by Mimpy
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Why did he have to kill himself

?

Why not just throw the grenade out and then quickly shut the door

?

That was a big one for me, too.

When the lead zombie is bashing the door he creates a hole about the size of a football that Neville could've just tossed the grenade through. Also, the fact that he charged the door and detonated the grenade right as he hit the glass was stupid. Most of the monsters were in the back and would not have been harmed by it, and he could've blown the door off Anna and Ethan's hiding place too. Smart thing to do would be to get the grenade in the center of the other room and use what's left of the glass door as a bottleneck and injected the zombies one at a time with one of his many killer serums he had in the lab. But noooo, they just had to bring religion and martyrdom into it. I'm definitely not going to watch this one again.

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Why did he memorize Shrek and talk to the mannequins, but have the mental stability to keep himself in shape, and conduct scientific experiments

? Etc., and on.

Perhaps because he hadn't seen a human being in 3 years and talking to mannequins was the only way he could stay sane enough to conduct scientific experiments? It's the same thing Tom Hanks did with his volleyball in Castaway.

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I haven't seen it and I'm not sure I will, But I did see the original version "The Omega Man" with Charlton Heston on TV some years ago.

As far as end of the world movies go it wasn't bad, but it was more than a bit tedious (too few characters, too little variety of events), it felt long and, honestly, I can't quite remember how it ended. Frankly I liked the Simpsons parody of it better (The Homega Man, in a Halloween special). I've seen doomsday movies, or near-doomsday movies, that I've liked more, like "Soylent Green," "Twelve Monkeys," and even "Terminator 3."

Still, if you like end of the world or end of humanity stories, I highly recommedn Niven and Pournelle's "Lucifer's Hammer," and "Footfall." The former is about a comet strike, but has an amazingly upbeat, optimistic ending (so does a novella by Niven about a different kind of cosmic disaster called "Inconstant Moon"). The latter involves aliens who drop an asteroid on us (the Foot) as part of their war of conquest. the ending is along the lines of Hammer's. Oh, Hammer also has a good illustration of the proper ethics of emergencies.

I warn you both are hard reads. In Hammer there are lots of scenes about the devastation, including a lot of corpses in various satges of decay, and even worse actions by some people. I liked both, but I couldn't stand to re-read either.

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Most of the "action" was a pointless portrayal of everyday life for the man who caused the virus. Big deal; we could have guessed all of it based on one shot of the abandoned and decaying city.

It's not "pointless". You're just missing the point. The story was about how a man deals with complete and utter isolation, a la Castaway. In the case of Will Smith, he uses routines to keep the ever encompassing loneliness away. Maybe you can dig that, maybe you can't, but I thought the movie did a decent job showing it. I don't think Will Smith is as good as Tom Hanks as far as inner portrayals go, but he wasn't bad. In fact, many scenes with him and the dog (especially the final dramatic one) I thought he did really, really fucking well.

A problem for me, as usual, was Will Smith, who is not a good actor and was not believable in his role. I didn't believe he was smart enough to create the virus, let alone cure it, but I didn't understand why he wanted to cure it, either. There could have been several legitimate reasons, but none of them were settled on.

Will Smith's capacity as an actor is obviously pretty subjective. I for one think that he is excellent if only for the fact that he continuously improves and finding a wide dramatic range. I don't see why you think he isn't "smart enough", but certainly I think the movie did a poor job capturing the science part of Will Smith's character. Mostly we just see him record himself throwing one liners at a bunch of hairless, vicious rats. In fact, he never actually does anything scientific, which I suppose the director figures would only get in the way of the action.

As for his motivations for curing the virus: it was the last thing that he had promised to his wife and child. For the next three years that he lived alone, it became the only motivation for his continued existence. If you think about it another way, what does Will Smith's character desire more than anything else at that stage of his life? Normal human contact. A part of him is convinced that he is the last man on Earth, and that there are no safe colonies nor any remnants of human civilization left. Thus his best shot at achieving what he wants the most is by curing the infected. Note that even as his life was threatened by a horde of zombies in his basement, the thing he most wanted was for them to submit to his help ("let me save you!").

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It's not "pointless". You're just missing the point. The story was about how a man deals with complete and utter isolation, a la Castaway.
No, I understood they were trying to go for that, which is the "premise" that I referred to, and it's why I thought the movie was so bad. In my opinion, a terrible job was done with the premise.

For me, a movie is good as a sum of its parts working together toward a particular goal, and it should be clear what the goal is. I thought Transformerswas so good because it didn't seriously try to be anything other than an action sequence for fighting robots, and it was awesome! If the goal is unclear, the movie will almost certainly be bad, even if some of the elements, such as its cinematography, are good or great (The Island, for example, was beautiful to watch in some parts... although its goal as a futuristic story was pretty clear, even if it didn't accomplish that very well). If some of the elements (writing, plot, editing, humor, cinematography, historical accuracy, CG, and so forth) aren't quality, to that extent it will detract from the overall quality of the movie, in conjunction with how well it is achieving its goal. And finally, if the goal is reached in a cheesy or otherwise bad way, (told poorly, undermined in some significant way, acted poorly), the movie will be bad.

With I Am Legend, the premise of a genius capable of curing humanity into existence again is really interesting! A great movie could have been made. Some interesting plots could have been made altering the premise somewhat (28 Days Later). But how is this man affected psychologically? That is the main element this movie was supposedly concerned with, but it didn't achieve its goal. Will Smith just wasn't believable. Since everything else in the movie, minus some of the shots of New York, was cheesy, and since the ending didn't make sense and actually made Smith's character less believable, I really didn't like the movie.

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I Am Legend was a movie that had me thinking after about 30 minutes of " When is this going to end, so I can go home and tell my friends how shitty this is ?" which sucks...Because I liked the idea and I didn't think Will Smith could screw it up all that bad, even though hes best left to Action-Comedies.

I think it could have been more interesting if they expanded on how the virus got so widespread, what happened to the heads of the company that created it ETC.

The lack of dialogue didn't bother me that much. It was more that what was there was boring or, worse, morally reprehensible. The only thing that really keeps me awake during these mediocre films is analyzing the philosophical overtones of the characters and their actions.

Oh yeah, and the zombies/vampires were some of the worst animated things I had ever seen. Might as well have brought in the cast of Thriller.

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((WARNING -- BOOK SPOILER))

Yet another Hollyweird disappointment. I bought the book after watching the movie - way too political for the Hollywood lefties - too much inference about collectivism and anti-conceptual savage mentality. If you're wondering why he is Legend, forget about about the movie, the cure, his sacrifice for humanity... the theme of the book is the rise of the savage collective in a world devoid of rationality, and the last stand of the last rational mind. The "legend" he refers to is the hated, terrifying "I."

The book could well be a prequel to Anthem.

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Agrippa1 says the novel I am Legend could be a prequel to Anthem; I'll have to read it, then!

I didn't think any of the three films versions of the book were outstanding. None were truly bad, either. But disaster stories have generally attracted me and put me off; I like to see what rational people do under such extreme cirumstances, but usually the disaster or apocalypse is man-caused in these stories.

So far, it sounds like Lucifer's Hammer and Footfall are the only other world-wide disaster stories that would be worth reading.

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I haven't seen it and I'm not sure I will, But I did see the original version "The Omega Man" with Charlton Heston on TV some years ago.

Actually, this story was first filmed in 1964, under the title The Last Man on Earth, with Vincent Price in the lead role.

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  • 1 month later...

a biblical mix of noah's ark and the crucifixion (by granade) of JEsuschrist. What's not to like?

The story makes it that he discovers the success of his vaccines just in an instant that demands his self-sacrifice. So, Anna, brings the holy vaccine to vermont and tells the story of the man who gave his life to save mankind to the sound of the bells and the flame of the flag. Second coming Hollywood style.

I really liked the aerial views of Manhattan though.

Outbreak! that's a good virus movie.

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The alternative ending to the movie can be seen here.

I like this ending a whole lot better. I think it is somewhat strange that the vampires are suddenly calm and somewhat rational,

but Smith doesn't die

, so I would have preferred to see this ending in theaters.

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