This article contains spoilers.
"In I am Legend a plague has killed most of humanity and transformed the rest into monsters. In New York City a lone survivor (Smith) struggles to find a cure."
The first 50 minutes of I am Legend are incredible, you’re immediately sucked into the desolate, post-apocalyptic world of New York City as we follow the every day life of Robert Neville and his dog, Sam, hunting, transmitting emergency messages, "renting" movies at the local video store and trying to avoid the infected "Dark Seekers". In nightmarish flashbacks we’re presented to his former life, in a deteriorating world some years prior.
We quickly start to find out that the infected are smarter than Neville initially thought, they set a trap for him and set infected dogs after him. He manages to kill them, but not before they seriously injure Sam, who’s infected as well. In an extremely emotional scene Neville tries to save the dog by injecting her with a possible cure, but he quickly realizes it isn’t working, and is forced to strangle his last friend as Sam starts to mutate. He is heartbroken and his desperate longing for human contact climaxes when he goes to the local video store and sobbingly begs a mannequin to start talking to him.
In a fit of rage he goes off to kill some Dark Seekers, probably with the plan to commit suicide as well. You know something big has to happen at this point in the movie, and the easiest way out would be to introduce other survivors. This was exactly what I was hoping wouldn’t happen, I love the abandoned, post-apocalyptic world, and now that Neville is totally alone it could be even more interesting to follow him, unfortunately an introduction of survivors is exactly what happens. A woman (Anna) and a boy saves Smith and brings him home, unfortunately the Dark Seekers follow them and launch an attack on the house.
The movie ends with a weird epiphany, Neville believes there is a god after all and that Anna was sent to him, to take the cure to other survivors. The ending is horrible, not only is it a typical Hollywood ending, it doesn’t make sense either. He becomes a legend because he sacrifices himself and cures everyone, in contrast to the genius, original ending, in which Neville becomes a legend because the "still-living" (infected humans who are partially cured), see him as a horrible, mythical monster, because he kills them and can walk in the daylight. Thus, they punish him for his crimes against their new society. I didn’t know the ending of the novel before I saw the movie, and after reading about it, it’s even more obvious that they didn’t have the guts to make the movie anything else than what it is; a Hollywood blockbuster. Even if they didn’t want to copy the ending from the original, they could’ve still focused on the intelligence of the infected and Neville’s effort to make a cure, without introducing the survivors. Still, it’s worth watching because of the first half and Smith’s superb acting.
I am Legend – 6/10.
[UPDATE]
I can’t believe I actually gave it 7/10, anyway, I’ve changed it now. However, the movie does indeed deserve a 7/10, if you ignore the ridiculous Hollywood ending and consider the alternate one instead. It makes a lot of connections to the ‘legend’ part of the book, just what I missed, and it would really have made the movie a lot better.
