Holy HELL was this over-rated. I'm just going to consider this the pg-13 version of 28 Days Later. Let me compare what frustrated me the most about I am Legend with regard to 28 Days Later.

Atmosphere of Isolation
I am Legend
The insane majority of this movie is Will Smith wandering around a vacant Manhattan with his faithful dog Sam. His faithful dog Sam. Its strange how that completely kills this mood of being the last man on earth. Throughout the entire movie before he goes suicidal the only thing that really gravitated to me how lonely he was is that he set up manicans as store customers. Granted this is interesting but as soon as you seen the first one in the screen frame im pretty sure everyone in the audience anticipated the ensuing dialog. In regard to 28 Days Later.

Cillian Murphey wakes up and starts to wander around Great Britain with complete bewilderment at the lack of people. His puzzlement is something that the audience can completely relate to instantly in a shoe change swap. As he continues to walk around his swagger and hollering coupled with a MAGNIFICENT soundtrack really helps to add the tension and the mounting feeling of paranoia with the isolation. The musical score slowly builds along with this Cillians own deteriorating mental state.

I am Legend takes an entire movie to try to scrape a mood in that I think 28 days later does in about the first 15 minutes.

Emotional Connection that everyone is dead, except dogs
I am Legend
Now both these movies shows completely vacant metropolis that used to number the millions of people but empty streets doesn't exactly emotional charge the audience, we need a bit more. I am Legend does this in flashbacks. Three things stand out at least in my eyes during this flashback. Stop reading if you haven't seen the movie and go to the next bold. First thing, disgusting lady begs her baby to be allowed to exit. This failed on me completely, a wailing mother and her poor infant, its almost as if the writers of this movie were to lazy to think of a better emotional attachment, this just annoyed me. Second thing, when Will's wife is at first denied exit of the city. As worried as I usually am about the social and beautiful elite escaping the city, this made my heart do a slight flop and I was honestly quite relived when she was permitted to exit. Finally, the helicopter with her and their child *which I made no connection with, sorry annoying kid!* crashed into another helicopter. I wasn't as sad as I was bewildered on how those choppers managed to hit each other. In regards to 28 days later.

This movie also has 3 hitters on the "holy crap this situation truly does suck" scale. First off, Cillian gets home and finds both his parents death lying next to one another. The most wonderful musical score plays in the background. The music isn't as depressing as it is sympathetic to Cillians loss, as im sure the audience can only be as well. It doesn't go extremely far lengths to try to convey a message and the paragraph written on the photo was so sad and beautiful in its simplicity and I suppose love it conveys. "Don't wake up", loving it 28 Days Later. Secondly, 28 Days Later goes in for the kill in a morbid and dank setting as Mark *guy who Selena chops into pieces before he goes zombie* relates his story of his family doing his best to escape the city. While we all might not be the children of government scientists with massive military influence I think we can relate to a father doing his best to pathetically bribe his family out of danger *I say this with respect, it was pathetic but thats all he could do*. Eventually Mark loses grip of his sisters hand, climbs on a kiosk and describes the gorey manic panic. Man does that SUCK, but good emo connection to me. Third and lastly, after allowing the audience to see an un-zombie tainted family in the girl and her father that travels with the party it is cut to ribbons when the father pushes away his daughter with love before he turns into a zombie freak machine. Boo hoo, but it totally worked, damn you for making me feel!.

Although 28 days Later mood setups may have been hit and miss for the audience, more than likely one of the emotional connections did the job quite well for you and it was humbly spaced out throughout the movie, instead of trying to jam it all within a 6-10 minute flashback that I am Legend tried to do. And even if it did work, come on, that scene happened 30 minutes ago! I am not bummed out anymore and no if a baby didn't make me sad a dog sure as hell won't.

Zombies! Grrr!
I am Legend
This will be way shorter, holy hell did they SUCK. CGI zombies that look totally fake, more like wet pieces of clay with gigantic mouths. Thats pretty much it, after seeing them mobile I lost all feelings of terror. One thing as a plus though, when Sam the dog got lost in some subway catacombs and you seen those zombies huddled together, their flesh looked way more lifelike and even tho they were facing the other way it was truly horrific, I was scared as piss. In regards to 28 days later

These zombies were killing machines and looked it, demon from hell red eyes thats believable and relatedable *if you ever seen someone get insane drunk mad, eyes get bloodshot* and when those zombies in the church turned and gave Cillian the stink eye I was quite taken back. It was rather strange that throughout the movie even tho the "enraged" didn't attack each other there only seemed to be like, 8 zombies on the screen or in a given place at once. Minus the scene in the tunnel where you see a bunch of shadows of zombies. Shadows....=P

Wrap up
All in all, I am legend wasn't painful to watch as much as it was boring and better done in the past, its completely forgettable except maybe to remember how people can eat up such a mediocore movie. In regards to 28 days later, well whats to say. Plenty of people enjoyed this movie and it was great.

Also, im going to check what Big Brother Rotten Tomatoes has to say on this for creme of the crop. Ahh..not surprised, I am Legend gets a 65%. 28 Days later gets a 86%.

InsanityManifest:

Let me break it down for my homies: The book's title was referrence to how man had become the stuff of legends like Vampires had been in the past.

That is so fucking cool, that epiphany is original as fuck and could have completely saved this boring movie. Damn you Hollywood!

I cannot comprehend how it was possible to make this movie while the book has such great scenes that would translate amazingly in a film.

It is for me not so much that "I am Legend" as a film sucks (it ist well played by Smith, but just incredibly boring and no-brain-popcorn-standard-fare) but more how much opportunities were missed in a book that would translate into one of the greatest sci fi horror movies ever made...

I joined this for Croshaw's reviews, but I must say I agree with that review more than anything else I've seen. The only thing I didn't see that I hated in there was the horror-movie-setting, arbitrary "He's in a dark room, quick, better make something scare the audience" creatures jumping all over the place.

The movie was... okay. It is something that I probably won't be buying bit it did have its traits. But let me get this off my chest; was it me or was the dog the best actor in the entire movie? haha, serious! She was probably my favorite character because all of the... well, Will was alright but I didn't think he was anything special. Some of the moments felt unnecessary too; like the Shrek part and I suppose the video store part, but I can kind of see how that was worked in. I liked all the preparation the main character had though, even though everything just screws up at the end. Whatever, I don't think it was a waste of my afternoon, but again... not something I would dish out $30 for when it comes to DVD.

Movie was 'entertaining' I thought. Nothing that made me think of seeing it a second time. But I didn't think it was fucking horrible or anything. I agree I enjoyed the first half much more then once Smith's character was rescued and the action picked up. I liked the lonely atmosphere of that first half and at point I was thinking what that would be like , not scary zombie vampires, but scary to be so alone. I still wished the connection between him and his dog was pushed even more before the dog's demise, to give it even more impact. They were obviously trying to make that connection between the two, but I have a feeling there could have been more done.

I think the film did a decent job in showing the isolation of the character. I don't think the dog ruined it at all as sebboh mentioned in his review, I think it would have been worse off to cut the dog. As a viewer, I felt the dog was almost my vehicle as to watch this man go about his business as the last man on earth. As from the dog's view, you are there with Smith's character, and experiencing the events with him, but still detatched from him in a certain way because it is not person, it can't speak. And I still like the device it serves as that extra blow to Smith's character when the dog dies, as to tell him, now you are truly and utterly alone.

Only thing that irks me in movie reviews is when the writer spends 90% of his time comparing it to a book. It's not the fucking book, its a movie. Did you ever hear the uppity pricks coming out of the Lord of the Rings films, complaining about this and that being left out, they should have included this substory, but all the while forgetting the fact that the film was good in it's own right. When taking a written story and adapting it for the screen, you consider time, and how you want to direct the audience. You could spend an hour of screen time on a short, really cool section of story from the book, but as the director you need to ask if that is necesary to push the story you want to tell along in the film. Judgements are made in adaptations, not always ones everyone agrees with, but thats part of the process.

The better reviews of films are ones from the people who haven't read the book. Or leave the book out of it. You want that same exact story, with all your favorite parts? Cool, then go re-read the damn book. Good thing about books is your imagination of what it would visually look like, you might always be let down at a movie because when you read the book, it is your own idealized movie. Again, like lord of the rings, when I read the books, the visuals were more fantastic then the movie in my head, but I still thought the movie was a good achievement. Or I remember Jurassic Park. I loved that movie, but yeah of course there are elements in the Novel I remember being much more memorable to me, in my vivid imagination

Anyway, I vote I am Legend as , Meh. Probably rent it on video and watch it again.

I'm boycotting the film. They cearly didn't make it from the book that I read, so why don't they change the damn name?
They completely missed the point of the book - that what we consider monstrous is highly relative; that it challenged the orthodoxy of vampire novels; that it had absolutely nothing uplifting in it whatsoever. It was the last point which made me love the book, and I guess it's what has made the story so unpalatable for Hollywood.
Timid filmmaking in my eyes; threw a lot of money at special effects and regardless of how well they worked out, they could have made something to make the viewers think instead of a dumb action movie.

Sebboh, you may like to know that the soundtrack to the empty London scene in 28 Days Later was from the album F#A#Infinity by Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Get it, it's an amazing album.

The first half was ok, the remainder was terrible. Thank hollywood for throwing in a happy "jesus knows best" ending in a story that has absolutely nothing to do with it. I've read the book before I went to see the movie, I highly advise people to read it as well. Great short novel with alot more focus on the human mind itself then bald cgi vampires.

i know!!! wtf, that movie was no longer "i am legend". the ending was possibly the coolest part of the book. they've left out so many good parts which shows robert's character and you get a feel for his character. i mean fuck the movie. the movie itself would be good if it wasn't based off such a bad ass story. (i've read the book as well. fyi: Matheson is considered a horror writer not sci fi although the differences are lacking)

jm4130:
Only thing that irks me in movie reviews is when the writer spends 90% of his time comparing it to a book. It's not the fucking book, its a movie. Did you ever hear the uppity pricks coming out of the Lord of the Rings films, complaining about this and that being left out, they should have included this substory, but all the while forgetting the fact that the film was good in it's own right. When taking a written story and adapting it for the screen, you consider time, and how you want to direct the audience. You could spend an hour of screen time on a short, really cool section of story from the book, but as the director you need to ask if that is necesary to push the story you want to tell along in the film. Judgements are made in adaptations, not always ones everyone agrees with, but thats part of the process.

The changes they made would compare to making a LOTR movie and at the end Frodo would've kept the ring and became the dark lord himself. They just took the plot, thrown it away and replaced it with exactly the opposite.

I don't mind small changes like changing the main location from LA to NY and giving him a dog but this is a far to big change because the whole plot was one of the things that made the book a classic. This movie was nothing like that.

I found the movie to be a large piece of garbage. Will Smith doesn't have the talent in acting to have a 2 hour movie to himself and a dog, only Tom Hanks in my mind was capable of doing that. This movie didn't explain a lot of the plot, leaving holes in many parts of the movie that leave you saying "why?". Also, it doesn't really go into depth of the god complex that he creates, showing it more as stubborn idiocy.

The movie was great until the CGI humans showed up, then it quickly went to crap. I don't understand why they couldn't use real people with makeup, it would have been much more belieavable (and cheaper) and I think much more scary than the completely fake looking monsters they had. The ending blew... pointless and I don't understand why God had to be brought into the whole equation since he was absent from the entire movie up to that point.

In comparison to the book, I don't even know why they had the audacity to use the title from the book because they are NOTHING alike except a virus wiped out humanity and made some of them turn nocturnal. In the movie the humans were just humans, but angry and photo sensitive. In the book they were very vampiric in nature and Neville spent his days hunting them down and killing them while they slept (they were never awake during the day). His wife came back from the dead in the book and he had to KILL her again. the book had a mass grave consisting of a burning pit like a mile wide in the middle of LA (it took place in LA not NY) where they dumped all the victims. The book ended when the vampire humans, who had managed to control the virus, capture Neville for constantly murdering them in the sleep and executed him for being a monster... how the hell is that even related to the movie ending?

Am I the only person who went WHAT THE F*CK!? at the fact the zomb- sorry, infected broke down his lab door at the end in about five seconds but they cant break through 3inches of glass. Now I wasnt the the best state of mind when I saw this and my memory of the day is a bit spotty but I am pretty certain that the main lab door was a few feet of f*ucking steel, definitly stronger than 3inches glass at any rate.

i thoroughly enjoyed the movie, but after i saw the movie i went home and read the book, and i gotta say, the movie didnt compare. that book was a masterpiece. I thought Smith's acting was beyond fantastic, but the rest of the movie was somewhat lack luster, and i do get so annoyed when an "adaptation" has fuck-all to do with the book.

in all, i give the movie a 3/5. good watch, especially if you havent read the book, but as always the book is far better.

rip off, rip off.

InsanityManifest:
Neville was a legend because he found the damn miracle cure.

Neville is a legend, because of what he does to the vampires/infected. Not because he found the cure. He is a legend because he is their equivalent of a vampire.