I Am Legend - Soon to be Wil Smith's next big movie
Written: Nov 08 '07
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Quite original in some parts
Cons: Too short
The Bottom Line: It's definitely worth reading, but I don't know how great of a movie it will make.
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| phungus's Full Review: Richard Matheson - I Am Legend |
When I first heard about the new Wil Smith movie, I Am Legend, I thought it looked weird and interesting. I later found out that the movie is based on Richard Matheson’s popular book from the 1950’s. When I found the audiobook version at my local bookstore, I decided to give it a listen so I could know what to expect from the movie. Having now finished the book, all I can say is that the movie might not be so good unless they change some things.
This is supposed to be one of the best horror novels ever written, as well as one of the best vampire novels ever written. I just don’t see it. I thought it was a pretty good story, but not the best thing ever. It does put an original spin on age-old vampire stories, which was really cool, but the novel itself is so short that it barely qualifies as being a novel. If only it had a little more meat to it, this could have been better.
This book is about a guy named Robert Neville who is the last human alive on Earth after a vampire apocalypse. Vampires have taken over the planet and he’s struggling to live day by day. At night, he barricades himself in his carefully prepared home. By day, he goes out in search of supplies and kills a few vampires wherever he finds them. When the story begins, he’s several months into this existence and has basically accepted that there are no living humans left.
Neville is introduced well into his survival mode, so the book doesn’t offer much in terms of what exactly happened, at least not at first. It takes a little while building up the character of Neville before it describes the situation, which I thought was a nice way for the author to slowly unfold the story. The author stays focused entirely on Neville throughout the entire story.
One thing that made this book very interesting was how it took the scientific route with how it explains vampirism in regard to the way vampires react to garlic and sunlight. Their need for blood is broken down into a way that actually makes sense from a medical standpoint. I won’t tell you what causes the vampirism, but the book goes into great detail as to how people become vampires and what it does to their body. That part was incredibly fascinating.
I got the impression that this book would be about a lone ranger type who goes around fighting vampires, but it wasn’t. In fact, there’s not a whole lot of action in the book. The whole thing is a character study. Ultimately, this becomes a story of survival. It’s about the lengths someone will go to just to stay alive, even though there is absolutely no hope and no end in sight. In one part, Neville reflects on his own natural drive to keep living, as if he’s been ingrained with some ideal to keep going because he might be the last. The story delves a lot into how people’s minds turn in on themselves when stuck in traumatic situations like the one in this book. You could liken the whole thing to someone being stuck in occupied territory during a war, like a French civilian during the Nazi occupation of World War II.
As far as the upcoming movie goes, I don’t know what to expect from it. The role of Robert Neville will be challenging to play, but I do have confidence that Wil Smith could pull it off. In many ways, it would be a lot like the role Tom Hanks played in Castaway. In the previews, it shows Smith’s character walking around with a dog, but in the book the dog is only there for a very short period. I’ll just have to see how all the character’s introspection plays out on the big screen. I do think this upcoming movie adaptation does have the potential to be boring.
In the end, I liked I Am Legend for what it was worth, but I didn’t think it was the best vampire story ever. I will definitely be seeing the movie to compare it to this book.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
phungus
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Member: William Fulks
Location: Biloxi, MS
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My short story, When Dragons Sleep, now on Amazon - visit http://www.wfulks.com for more info.
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