This morning I saw Francis Lawrence’s adaptation of Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend.

This post contains spoilers so skip it if you want to read the book or see the film without any prejudice.

The tone for the film is set within the first five minutes as three of the most important plot points are cast aside; the cause of the outbreak is set up to be a virus, there are wild animals all over the city and worst of all the protagonist already has a dog. This last point is the most grating for me, as in the book Robert Neville spends chapters completely alone except for the night-time horde and the closest thing to companionship is his now-vampire ex-neighbour taunting him every night. Neville finally discovers a lone surviving dog and over the course of a few chapters tries and fails to earn it’s trust. But as it’s the only life he’s seen in months (if not years) he perseveres and it’s this effort which shows how lonely and desperate for a positive emotion he is. The film missed a trick by starting with a dog, although it did handle the dog’s death better than a single sentence at the end of a chapter like the book did.

Another vital difference is Neville’s career. In the book he’s a John Everyman working a blue collar job. In the film he’s a military super-scientist with a fully stocked laboratory in his basement. Although they both conduct research into the vampires, the book Neville has to break into a library to read biology textbooks and then steal scarce laboratory supplies before he can even begin to make sense of the madness he’s stuck in. This research leads him out of his drunken stupor and gives his life purpose again. By exorcising this arc from the storyline, it’s cutting out some character progression that the film sorely lacks.

The vampires themselves are fairly lacklustre. After an initial creepy introduction they are let down by some shoddy CGI work. They are all semi-nude, hairless and inexplicably have rubber jaws, resulting in an army of clones of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. front cover. Completely stripped of their humanity they end up having more in common with the mindless Infected from 28 Days Later than the book vampires who try and tempt Neville out of his house by using females in various states of undress. The trap that the film vampires set for Neville seems implausible considering that they seem to be nothing more than animals and incapable of higher brain functions. Although it could be that the vampire that springs the trap is part of a storyline abandoned in the final cut - is he supposed to be an alpha male (a la Land of the Dead) with pets, a loved one and enough cunning to set traps?

The female character introduced halfway through the film also veers away from the book plot. Book Neville eventually finds another person alive and he stalks her as he stalked the dog. After a period of distrust and paranoia, he eventually opens up to her and she double-crosses him. She turns out to be a plant from a group of humans who are infected with the vampire virus but have managed to stay alive and suppress it’s effects through medication. In the film, this woman saves Neville’s life after he recklessly tries to kill himself in a final confrontation with the vampires. He shelters her and her child, eventually saving their lives in the film’s climax and then they escape to a refugee camp of human survivors.

Why is this character change so horrible? It ruins another main plot point and even the title of the film. Book Neville is taken into custody by the fledgeling society and while awaiting execution he realises that to these people, he has become what he used to fear - he is a monster, either killing indiscriminately or experimenting on their loved ones. He is legend because he has become a mythical figure to this society and not because he came up with a cure for the virus.

So in conclusion, the film fails as an adaptation of the book and even as a beer and pizza movie. I’m unsure why it needed the title of I am Legend as it disregards most of the major plot points and themes. Hell, it can’t portray the main “last man on Earth” idea correctly as for the most part Will Smith isn’t alone. He’s got companions in the form of his dog and the wild animals. He’s constantly interacting with his family through flashbacks. Then he’s looking after a woman and child. What should have been one of the most emotional scenes in the movie, where Neville breaks down after the death of his dog and talks to shop mannequins, is laughably pathetic because his mental toil seems completely over-exaggerated. Couple the shoddy script with poor effects and a lame religious message and you’ve got an abomination not worthy of the same name as the science fiction classic it’s allegedly based on.

Still, that won’t stop Hollywood from making a sequel.