I Am Legend (2007)
Jan. 5th, 2008 02:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficFirst off, this movie would be so much better with men in suits to play hte vampires. I don't see why you can't cast humans to play... humans. Apparently, we have the technology to make Captain Cthulu from POTC look real, but a regular guy with a funky skin condition has to look like he's a refugee from an Atari game. If Will Smith really wanted to cure everyone, he should've just hit reset.
I think my appreciation of the film was damaged by reading both the novel (better) and the rejected screenplays (one by Thor scribe Mark Protosevich which I highly recommend; also better). In those, the Darkseekers -- don't they sound like they should be menacing Harry Potter or something? Movie's name for them. -- are basically vampires. They can talk, they can think, and it flips the entire notion of the vampire slayer on its head. Just crazy stuff. In the movie, not only are the Darkseekers basically the Infected from 28 Days Later (although 50% less scary because they're vulnerable to SUNLIGHT), but Neville isn't even trying to genocide them in all but the most abstract way. Which makes you wonder why a bunch of animals decide to sacrifice a great many of their number to attack Neville's fort. Apparently it's at the direction of an alpha Darkseeker, who for some reason has it in for Neville. Maybe he wants his money back for Men In Black 2.
Oh, did I mention behind the cut that the Darkseekers don't even lay siege to Neville's house at night? That's pretty much a pivotal element to the book, the horror, and Neville's psyche. His next-door neighbor is calling for his blood EVERY NIGHT. Here, it's gone. The Darkseekers aren't people, currently or formerly. They're Gollums, they're Dobbys, they're Jar-Jar Binkses.
A lot of the movie is spent setting up Neville's isolation, leaving me waiting for the Chemical X to be added to the equation. When it is, finally, almost no time at all is spent developing it. Then there's some hokum about hubris vs. God's will which I think was only added so that the movie could have a "message". Apparently, the reason bad things happen to good people is because... dum da dum... God has a plan. Gee, thanks Candide. I never would've guessed. Not that I'm an atheist, but it's perhaps for the best that the movie doesn't try to explain why God's plan requires 99& of the world's population to die and/or turn into blood-sucking vampires. Unless this is a metafictional indictator for "because it'll make a nice star turn for Will Smith."
That said, the action scenes (when you get over the fact that the Fresh Prince is shooting at unconvincing CGI like he was playing a rousing game of Half-Life 2 instead of fighting for his life) are good, Will Smith's acting is tops (I really can't wait to see what he does for Hancock, unless it's as dreadful a comedy as the ad campaign is making it look like), and the movie up until the disappointment of Chemical X is pretty good on its own terms. It relies a lot on Will Smith's natural charisma to sell it (living in perpetual isolation for three years is apparently more hijinx-y then one would suspect), but there's some good psychology there. It almost makes you wish they had focused on the isolation. So, serviceable action movie, but it could've been a masterpiece. They had all the elements there, but they had to reach for a big heaping spice rack of generic and the standard Hollywood ending instead of doing something true to the book. Which, okay, is pretty much what you would expect from the director of Constantine, but my disillusionment stands.
Although I still can't get over the scene where the evil alpha male has Will Smith wounded, the sun is setting, all that stands between him and his prey is a sliver of sunlight that he can cross with only superficial injury... so he sets some of those evil zombie dogs from Resident Evil on the Willenium, which can only bark until the sun is completely down and that mildly irritating sunlight disappears. DUDE! He's right there! If you're so smart, just man up, cross the light, and kill him yourself! You're an animal, you're supposed to be above this fiendish death-trap nonsense!
I think my appreciation of the film was damaged by reading both the novel (better) and the rejected screenplays (one by Thor scribe Mark Protosevich which I highly recommend; also better). In those, the Darkseekers -- don't they sound like they should be menacing Harry Potter or something? Movie's name for them. -- are basically vampires. They can talk, they can think, and it flips the entire notion of the vampire slayer on its head. Just crazy stuff. In the movie, not only are the Darkseekers basically the Infected from 28 Days Later (although 50% less scary because they're vulnerable to SUNLIGHT), but Neville isn't even trying to genocide them in all but the most abstract way. Which makes you wonder why a bunch of animals decide to sacrifice a great many of their number to attack Neville's fort. Apparently it's at the direction of an alpha Darkseeker, who for some reason has it in for Neville. Maybe he wants his money back for Men In Black 2.
Oh, did I mention behind the cut that the Darkseekers don't even lay siege to Neville's house at night? That's pretty much a pivotal element to the book, the horror, and Neville's psyche. His next-door neighbor is calling for his blood EVERY NIGHT. Here, it's gone. The Darkseekers aren't people, currently or formerly. They're Gollums, they're Dobbys, they're Jar-Jar Binkses.
A lot of the movie is spent setting up Neville's isolation, leaving me waiting for the Chemical X to be added to the equation. When it is, finally, almost no time at all is spent developing it. Then there's some hokum about hubris vs. God's will which I think was only added so that the movie could have a "message". Apparently, the reason bad things happen to good people is because... dum da dum... God has a plan. Gee, thanks Candide. I never would've guessed. Not that I'm an atheist, but it's perhaps for the best that the movie doesn't try to explain why God's plan requires 99& of the world's population to die and/or turn into blood-sucking vampires. Unless this is a metafictional indictator for "because it'll make a nice star turn for Will Smith."
That said, the action scenes (when you get over the fact that the Fresh Prince is shooting at unconvincing CGI like he was playing a rousing game of Half-Life 2 instead of fighting for his life) are good, Will Smith's acting is tops (I really can't wait to see what he does for Hancock, unless it's as dreadful a comedy as the ad campaign is making it look like), and the movie up until the disappointment of Chemical X is pretty good on its own terms. It relies a lot on Will Smith's natural charisma to sell it (living in perpetual isolation for three years is apparently more hijinx-y then one would suspect), but there's some good psychology there. It almost makes you wish they had focused on the isolation. So, serviceable action movie, but it could've been a masterpiece. They had all the elements there, but they had to reach for a big heaping spice rack of generic and the standard Hollywood ending instead of doing something true to the book. Which, okay, is pretty much what you would expect from the director of Constantine, but my disillusionment stands.
Although I still can't get over the scene where the evil alpha male has Will Smith wounded, the sun is setting, all that stands between him and his prey is a sliver of sunlight that he can cross with only superficial injury... so he sets some of those evil zombie dogs from Resident Evil on the Willenium, which can only bark until the sun is completely down and that mildly irritating sunlight disappears. DUDE! He's right there! If you're so smart, just man up, cross the light, and kill him yourself! You're an animal, you're supposed to be above this fiendish death-trap nonsense!
