Skip to main content

Coming soon: I Am Legend

This looks neat.

Apparently based on the book by Richard Matheson, it ends up looking like a version that starred Charlton Heston, namely The Omega Man. We shouldn't forget, however, that there's an even older version titled The Last Man on Earth, starring Vincent Price in the lead.

If the trailer is accurate, the premise of I Am Legend follows that of The Omega Man and The Last Man on Earth. Namely, a plague gets lose. A good chunk of humanity is annihilated, while most of the rest...mutate. Standard zombie movie stuff, really, except that in Matheson's book -- and pretty much in the previous two movie versions -- things are more complicated. In both the book and the Vincent Price film, survivors mutate into vampires; Charlton Heston didn't face vampires so much as albino religious fanatics who can't tolerate daylight.

What makes all interesting to me, however, is Matheson's underlying question: If everyone has mutated, isn't the lone "normal" man the aberation? I can't recall if there are any other "normals" in the Price film, or the novel for that matter, and there are precious few in the Heston film. Again, though, the queston we keep returning to is just what is normal?

I wonder if the 2007 rendition of I Am Legend, now officially titled after the book and complete with Will Smith, will ask the same question. Somehow, I doubt it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Not the Hero We Deserve, But the Hero We Need

The Dark Knight is the best film I’ve seen in years. Not just the best “superhero” film, but the best film of any type. It’s not perfect, not quite a masterpiece, but it’s flaws are, to me, tiny and overwhelmed by the time the film ends. While relatively bloodless, it is consistently brutal, not just in what it depicts but in the themes that drive it. TDK is a film for adults, please leave the kids at home.Let’s deal with those “flaws” first, the largest being the character Rachel Dawes. In Batman Begins, I blamed Katie Holmes. Her acting was weak, to say the least, which is regrettable in that who she is and what she says and does are important to the film. Critics agreed and either for that or other reasons, Katie was replaced by Maggie Gyllenhaal, who is a better actress. Yet here she’s weak, real weak. Maybe it’s the character, not the actress, which is frustrating because Rachel is a pivotal character. The film, at almost two and a half hours, might be a shade long. Having said t…
1 comment
Read more

About that "Steven Spielberg ending" comment

All right, when I wrote about the film V for Vendetta, I said the "happy ending" was an ending Steven Spielberg would have been proud of. Is there someone out there who doesn't get it? I can think of precisely one film that Spielberg didn't slap some sort of "and they all lived happily ever after" ending onto, and that was Munich (which sucked in its own right and for other reasons).Most of his films righteously have happy endings. Kill the shark, absolutely. Hero wins the day, without a doubt. Some poor schmuck prevails over homicidal big rig, yea!But as I recall, his first theatrical film didn't have all that happy an ending. Indeed, I think the protaganist gets his ass shot off and dies. Which was proper, since that was based on a real story and that's really what happened.And does Close Encounters of the Third Kind really have a "happy" ending? Our hero goes off with the aliens, and the music swells to happiness, but he's just aban…
Post a Comment
Read more

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

I went and saw The Last Jedi shortly after it came out and at first I didn't really feel like writing a thing about it. Why? Because the film just left me apathetic; I just didn't care. But I've been seeing arguments and counter-arguments fly back and forth, especially the aggregate professional critic (very high) versus the aggregate viewer (pretty low) scores. So, what the heck, here's my two cents' worth. And because I want to work myself up to a proper, full venting, there will be spoilers a-plenty.

We join the action shortly after the events of The Force Awakens. The Resistance (with no clear idea of what they're actually resisting) is fleeing from the relentless pursuit of The First Order (with no clear idea of what their order actually is). Death is closing in on our less-than-plucky heroes. Much running ensues.

And that's it, the entire plot in a nutshell. Yes, Rey (Daisy Ridley) goes off to receive training from Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill). But it…
Post a Comment
Read more