Killing/Reversing the book's message

Rating: 4/10 (10 January 2008)

I read the book this movie is based on when I was sixteen - an age when apocalyptic Science-Fiction leaves a big impression on your average teenager.
I loved the book. I also love most of Will Smith's work. And I love big-budget, high-concept sci-fi movies.
But I am not happy about the sharp turn this movie takes in the last fifteen minutes, just before it seems to put Neville's desperate fight into perspective.
Without giving too much away (but you may not want to read this before you have seen the movie): There is a pretty good reason the book is called "I am Legend". It refers to the protagonist's role in a world where the sole human survivor - who represents *our* time and point of view - has turned into a monster feared by "the next tenants"; the vampires and the "still living." The movie takes this message (that we, 21st century mankind, may become ghosts of the past) and turns it into its very opposite.
In the end, a cheesy voice-over tells us Neville becomes the "legend" not for the mutants/vampires, but for a group of good, God-fearing Americans that has survived in a cozy little village by the sea, complete with a pretty little church and soldiers at the gates. (Of course, all similarities to the first white settlers in a country ruled by gruesome red men is purely coincidental ...) And this tacked-on happy ending is pretty much the opposite of what Matheson tried to tell us with his novel: That our days as the dominating species may be numbered, and that when the day comes, it may be better to accept that we have not succeeded. 54 years after a man released a smart novel, box office logic dictates that Happy Smalltown USA has to prevail - no need for the average viewer to switch on his brain when he leaves the theater.
And frankly, this is more depressing than any "negative" ending the script writers could have chosen.
Good solid acting by Will Smith as usual and a convincing NY setting, so 4/10 for those who did their homework.