I Am Legend (but not the same one)

I Am Legend the movie is so different from Matheson's novella of the same name that it's almost impossible to understand why they bothered to keep the name - except to lure in viewers.

Note: Don't read this if you don't want spoilers for the book and the movie.

Seriously.

I mean it.

Okay.

Let's put it into chart form, first:

novella	movie
Southern California	Manhattan
vampires	sick people
mix of (un)dead and still living	all living
mutated bacteria	mutated virus
atomic bombs	cure for cancer
spread by insects	blood- and air-borne
stray dog	life-long pet
last man on earth	last man in NYC
vampires are intelligent	infected are animal-like but cunning
factory worker	military doctor/scientist
can't be bothered to work out sundown	always knows when sundown is
trying to kill them all	trying to cure them all
plays classical music	plays Bob Marley
woman is a vampire	woman is immune
dies alone, the last human	dies saving survivors and cure
legend = vampires' nightmare	legend = humanity's savior

As you can see, hardly anything is the same.

Some of the changes are from the earlier film adaptations - Neville's profession, for one: Vincent Price's character was a medical researcher, and Charlton Heston's was a colonel. The location change to Manhattan allows for better visuals, and a claustrophobic sense due to the island's being cut off (which leads to one of the major plot problems). His being a virologist and having been involved in the original distribution of the KV cancer cure gives weight to his being able to find a cure, and adds to the theme of the film - which is most emphatically not the theme of the novella.

The main difference, of course, is the ending - and the theme of sin and redemption which shapes that ending. Most of the other differences are more-or-less updating elements; what worked in 1955 doesn't necessarily work in 2007, after all. Making the threat actual vampires - frightened by mirrors, crosses, and garlic - would have required an entirely different mindset and turned the movie into a Day of the Dead zombified horror film. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course, it's just not what they wanted to make.) We're more able to believe in a rapidly mutating virus, and too far away from the Hiroshima bomb for that explanation, and with more than twice the world population, we need something that spreads rapidly. As for the dog being his pet, the main value of that (because there was the dog's death scene in the novella) is to give Neville someone to talk to for the bulk of the movie; on the written page a character can be alone, but in a movie we can't just watch him. Without the dog, we'd have had to have Neville talking to himself - or a voice-over.

(Will Smith's performance, by the way, is outstanding.)

(I'm adding this after rewatching The Last Man on Earth. It has got extended voice-overs, since Vincent Price has no one to talk to. Essentially, it's much closer to the original; it keeps the backstory, including his having to kill his wife when she becomes a vampire; it keeps them being vampires; it retains the creepy element of the vampires being able to talk and of one of them having been his best friend; and it has the same downer ending - he's killed by the new society of rational vampires. It does alter the feel of the ending; where Neville dies realizing that he has become the monster to their normality, Morgan in this movie dies yelling that they are the freaks and he is a man - the last man on earth, in fact. So it misses that bit of philosophy - what is "normal" and who deserves to live? But overall, much much closer to Matheson's dark vision.)

I had some quibbles - the flags looked in damn fine shape for three years of New York weather, for one, and wouldn't tigers have made more sense than lions, given their habitat? - and some deeper concerns, such as where exactly was his power and water coming from? But the main plot hole concerned Anna and Ethan, the providentially (with a capital P, it would seem) appearing survivors. Others - such as, if the infected are so bestial, how did they set a trap? - can be explained by realizing that we, in fact, know no more about them than Neville does, and he could very easily just be wrong. After all, they set the trap, they train their dogs ... and at the end, they are organized. But how the heck did Anna get onto the island of Manhattan when the bridges and tunnels had been destroyed? She clearly drove from there to Vermont, and had driven there from Maryland, but just how she got back to the mainland is never even addressed. Also, her statement that the colony is in Vermont because the virus "can't survive the cold" makes no sense; New York gets pretty cold - only a few degrees warmer than Vermont - and many places in the world get much colder than that. Canada, Russia, Scandinavia ... there should be colonies all over. Somebody should have heard his radio broadcast - AM goes a long way.

But still the film, as a film, works fine. It's just not Matheson's I Am Legend. And the changes are deep and crucial.

The novella is a pure 1950's style piece of science-fiction horror; the threat was caused by mankind's war-like nature and the book ended basically with the destruction of the species. The movie is a somewhat conflicted story where both the threat and the cure are created by science and the military is cast as heroic, yet the end is very religious, with the angry-at-God Neville finding belief in the end, our salvation "is in the blood", and a church prominent in the colony of the immune. The novella was about the end of us; to our replacements we were the misfits, the evil to be destroyed. What would follow us was completely alien. The film is about arrogance and redemption. What follows the plague is a reborn humanity.

Allow me to quote from archy:

Confirmation that anti-science is now an article of faith among conservatives comes from no less an authority than the National Review. In an online review of the movie I Am Legend, Greg Pollowitz writes:

Shhhh. The end of I Am Legend is religious. And the beginning of the movie is anti-science. The military is a force for good, too. Shhhh. Our little secret. And what must be surprising to those on the Left, a movie that's anti-science, religious and pro-military earned close to $80 million over the weekend.

I disagree with Pollowitz. Oh, not that his assessment is wrong (though, of course, the end of the movie isn't entirely anti-science; after all, though science brought the plague it also brought the cure). What I disagree with is his perhaps faux astonishment that I Am Legend is religious, anti-science, and pro-military - or that this comes as as surprise to "those on the Left". Hollywood may be what passes for liberal in our severely right-shifted political landscape, but ultimately it is there to make money (so perhaps Pollowitz ought to wait and see how much the movie makes in its second and third weekends, when the revamping of the plot becomes more widely known?). And movies usually are closer to the spirit of their times than many think. Recently we have seen many a huge science-fiction film that goes into God-did-it territory, some much more overtly than this one. Think of Signs, where billions die to restore the faith of one flagging preacher (a very Biblical kind of theme, actually). In fact, the only way Pollowitz can be surprised at this is if he doesn't go to movies very often.

So, no; we "on the Left" aren't surprised that people like Pollowitz, who are "anti-science, religious and pro-military", are spending money on a movie. And we certainly aren't surprised that "anti-science, religious and pro-military" is the spirit of these times. This is a profoundly right-wing country - so right-wing that "the Left" would be the Center in Europe, if not right-of-center. You can't move without bumping into those who glorify "the troops", iconify the military, and love the idea of force. Religion is so dominant that it's actually considered a reasonable action to ask presidential candidates for their opinion on the Bible as the inerrant word of god. And anti-science? Hell, yes. There was brief period of time after Sputnik that we all got scared of the godless Commies, but now, though we all love our technology and our medicine, many of us hate our scientific research and inquiry. Evolution, the Big Bang, the old universe - all are threatened in our schools and our courts. That this film is of the times is - or should be - obvious to all.

The novella was of its time - the Fifties, apocalyptic and warning. The film is (sadly) of its, fearful and religious. At the end, Anna appears from nowhere to save Neville. Why is she there? How did she get there? Why is she outside at night? How does she know there is a colony of immune survivors? "God told me," she said.

God did it.

That's the cry of the science-haters of our time, isn't it? Don't ask, don't research, don't argue: accept it. God told Anna, and she came, and she saved Neville in time for him to see his cure was working, and thus she could take the cure to Vermont. Because God sent her.

The character of Neville is given a powerful indictment of God - a speech whose accusations are never answered - but in the end, he accepts the irrationality of "god did it". "This is why you're here," he says. God does indeed keep his promise - no more flood - and though he destroys over five and half billion, he preserves a handful. And it's clear from the movie's final shot - the white church spire surrounded by armed soldiers and a giant wall - that it is the god of "those on the Right" who has done this thing.

novella:
"He knew that ... he was anathema and black terror to be destroyed... Full circle. A new terror born in death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever. I am legend."

film:
"Robert Neville dedicated his life to finding the cure. On September 9th, 2012, at approximately 8:30, he found it. At 8:52, he died defending it. We are his legacy. This is his legend."

Those are very different endings, very different legends.