Thu 20 Dec 2007
like any book that I grew to enjoy and then was made into a movie I was disappointed.
the attempts by Vincent Price (”The Last Man on Earth“) and Charlton Heston (”The Omega Man“) were bad, but never used the title of the book for the title of the movie, so I had hoped that by using the same title there would be an attempt to be faithful to the book…
No such luck.
I can always excuse some changes, things done to expedite the storyline to be compacted into a 1.5 hour visual experience, but I can never get over changes that fundamentally change the nature and intent of the original work.
I’ll give just one example, and that will be enough.
“I am Legend”
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Movie
Neville in the movie never uses that phrase for himself, but the character of Anna describes him as such. She is a refugee, guided by god, from the virus and after meeting with Neville escapes to a safe refuge in New England thanks to the final sacrifice of Neville; which was, of course, inspired by a message from god. He’s a legend because he stuck it out in New York and eventually came up with the cure that saved humanity.
Book
Neville is captured by infectees that have retained some of their humanity and have started to create a new society. Neville’s humanity and continued attacks on the infected, including the more “human” ones, brings him to their attention and enmity. Anna in the book is one of the “societal” infected and meets with Neville to spy on him. The new society eventually captures Neville to execute him. While imprisoned Neville realizes that he is now the last human on earth and is a dinosaur. Once he’s killed he and humanity will only be something talked about in the new world as a myth, as a legend. Hence he himself realizes, “I am Legend”.
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So… I am sure the people who made the new movie had something to say…
I don’t like reading too many messages into movies… no pun intended, but I read for that… movies are for stupid entertainment… though that being said, I do tend to like movies with a message… kinda counter reasoning, eh? oh well…
but, that being said, it pisses me off that anyone will take the message from someone else’s work, throw it aside and use the framework to act as a vehicle for their own message.
It does an amazing disservice to the original creator.
If they wanted to get a message across, that’s awesome… but come up with something semi-original…
It’s not like the idea of a massive viral infection leading to vampirism, zombies or rabid mutants hasn’t been done a million times… from Stephen King’s “The Stand” to the “Resident Evil” video game and movie series…
I’m sure no copyright lawyers would have jumped on these guys if they did something similar to get their message across… whatever it was… if there actually was one besides having faith in god to fix everything… :-(
it was a visually ok movie… but the mutants/infectees were too CGI’d and retained none of the humanity that was in the book… like the attempts by infected females to hyper-sexually seduce Neville or of his neighbour constantly calling for him to come out… in the movie they were just animals…
though that was likely an attempt to minimize the impact on sensitive American viewers of Neville killing hundreds in cruel painful half-assed experiments.. if they aren’t human anymore, why feel any moral outrage…
I mean… no American could be a Mengele could they… especially not Will Smith… ;-)
bah
