I Am Legend

Rating: 10/10 (20 October 2008)

The most recent version of I Am Legend had a lot of problems with budget. It was suggested for remake a number of times but shelved due to soaring costs. This is what they came up with that worked and fit into budget. I hope people understand this. Will Smith did an excellent job in the part of Neville. He really showed the isolation of the character and how he held it in because he had the dog. I have the original book and it is somewhat different but this is an adaptation. All of them have been but the first movie, "Last Man On Earth" showed the beings to be what Matheson wrote, "vampires." They were not zombies but his vision of a type of vampire-like state that developed. In the first movie Neville (Vincent Price) went out by day staking them. As they made more adaptations screenwriters brought out the more zombie like nature of his vampires. They were not patterned after the Eastern European vampires most identify with. Matheson wrote some of the screenplay for the first movie with Vincent Price but he didn't like how it turned out. One has to keep within a budget and so what one can do in a book cannot always be translated onto the big screen the same way.
This version was very good and they were the Dark Seekers and Hemocytes. They were vampires too that many are calling zombies. If you see the cover of the book first released again to publication prior to the Will Smith's cover they have fangs more or less. I don't know what the producers are saying but the book is about people transforming into vampires and that is why they didn't come out into the sun except for the adaptation,Night of the Comet which was very loosely based on the story and only inspired by it.
All in all I really liked it and felt it could have had a better ending for the viewing audience than the predictable killing him off, martyr. It would have been nice for once if the man got away and was awestruck by the surprise that there really was a colony in the end. Sort of the beat up man living in isolation finally finding others and a new life. His character was never suppose to be a doctor anyway. Each group that takes this on makes their own changes very similarly to the things Spielberg does when he ruined War of the Worlds.
I have to say though standing on its own merits I thought the movie was a 10.