I am Legend

I had the chance to see I am Legend last night and I guess I walked away with mixed feelings about the whole thing. It had the potential to be awesome, even with what ended up on the screen there were hints of some very big ideas but ultimately I think it ended up collapsing under its own weight. Having had the chance to think on it a bit I feel that what it suffered from was too many themes trying to compete for face time. You have the Castaway-esque angle with one man left on the island of Manhattan, fighting to stay alive in a city full of nocturnal maniacs. You have said nocturnal maniacs showing signs of being organized, even intelligent but this is never explored up to its potential. You have a man desperately trying to seek a cure, determined to an obsessive level. And finally you have a scary zombie-like film with lots of good jumpy bits. The problem is none of these themes is given enough camera time to make it feel totally coherent. It has a story and it plays out well but what tries so hard to be complex merely ends up being simple by the finale. It felt pared down and I would be curious to see what other versions of the script looked like as I have heard it was one of the best scripts Hollywood had developed in years, but that was when Shwarzenegger was attached and likely it would have had a better director and used practical effects while this version had a great lead in Will Smith, an iffy director, and leaned far to heavily on computer effects. The funny thing is the set piece effects like the Dark Seekers themselves were really very good, it was the lighting and peripheral effects that were at times really really lame. The direction was competent but as a friend pointed out, he felt more sorry for the inanimate volleyball Wilson in Castaway than he did for the living dog in this movie and that is an accurate way to see this movie, it lacked real resonance.

This isn't to say I didn't like it, I thought it was great and it was a fun opportunity to sit with my freaked out wife an be a human shield for a time. I think that this movie ultimately failed itself in that it wanted to be more, it felt like it wanted to be impacting and powerful, but just came off as a good action flick with Will Smith.

A little bit of a side note, there is what may be a huge Easter egg at the beginning of the film. In the background (nearly impossible to miss) is a huge poster for an upcoming film. The disaster takes place in 2009 and there in the billboard is a Batman symbol surrounding a Superman shield with the very realistically plausible date of 5 – 15 – 2010. Is Warners trying to tell us something? I don't know but I sure wanna find out!