Book-to-film adaptations: 2 – ‘I Am Legend’

Most people who saw the film I Am Legend probably had no idea the movie was based on a book. And even if they did, there’s a chance they had no idea what kind of impact Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend had on the horror community, both written and filmed.

Written in 1954, Matheson’s book followed a lone survivor of a horrible plague. The survivor was everyman Robert Neville and the plague was vampirism; as the lone human in a world of vampires, the book followed Neville’s daily ritual and his evolution as this survivor, and great swaths of information and characterization happen solely in the head of Robert Neville through his stream of consciousness and thought processes. The Omniscient Reader stays deep within Neville’s thoughts as he uses all the spare time that he has to kill as many vampires as possible during the day and do hours and hours of research to find a cure for this horrible problem. And The Omniscient Reader is so thoroughly into the mind of Robert that when he comes to his ghastly end, the Reader is right there with him.

 This book went on to greatly influence modern undead horror stories; George Romero regularly cites I Am Legend as the main influence behind the original Night of the Living Dead (1968). And the 2007 film was not the first attempt at bringing Matheson’s novel to the silver screen. In 1964, The Last Man on Earth was made, starring Vincent Price and another version was made seven years later with Charlton Heston called The Omega Man. Both films make significant deviations from the source material (the latter moreso than the former), and neither film is very good.

2007’s I Am Legend ain’t much different from those two. Here we get Will Smith (Shark Tale) and second-time director Francis Lawrence (Constantine), using the original title of the book as the title of the film (and really, why didn’t they do this the first two times around…it’s an awesome title…oh wait…we’ll get to that…), but again making some big changes to the original story. Some of the changes are negligible, like changing the original Los Angeles setting to New York City (more visually appealing anyway) or updating the years from the 1970’s to the 2000’s. One change that I thought worked well was the idea that the vampirism plague comes about because people were working on a cure for cancer; I like how people were just trying do good and something went wrong. Very very wrong. In the book, it’s not explained where the plague came from, people just started getting sick, but this explanation works well and actually adds a layer to the whole thing, as opposed to taking something away.

Otherwise, the changes are pretty big and pretty bad. The best example of these changes and the movie taking the easy way out is the relationship between Robert Neville and his dog. In the movie, his dog is his companion and they keep each other company. In the book, Neville finds the stray dog after not having any contact with a living creature in forever. And it takes him forever to win over the trust of the dog and to have any sort of relationship with it, his first relationship with a living being that doesn’t want to kill him instinctively. Having the dog there for Neville in the beginning is easy for the storytellers and easy for the character. Another example of taking the easy way out is the weak creature effects. The very first time we see The Infected, we see actual people, in body make up and looking very creepy. And then these people were fired and sent home, because the creatures throughout the rest of the film are totally computer generated. They look video gamey and weightless, like they are made of air. Or pixels. (pixel dust?) And Will Smith running away from fake blurry apparitions does not an exciting movie make.

The changes made to the ending are interesting. The movie introduces a third act character that is indeed in the book, but uses her in a completely different way. The movie simply has this random plague-immune character show up at pretty much just the right time and she helps Robert Neville save the day. The book has more of a Shakespearean betrayal kind of third act twist that would make M. Night Shyamalan’s pants shrink, and much like the dog, does a lot more with these people and situations and refuses to take any easy way out. A final example of taking the easy way out: they actually changed the ending to a less ambiguous and more definite ending from what they originally had, which was actually fairly close to the book in tone and intent. This alternate ending, easily found on the movie’s DVD, would have left audiences scratching their heads a bit and not just because of the moral ambiguity but also because it would have been set up kind of poorly. But hey, at least they tried.

It’s hard to explain without getting into the nitty gritty details of the movie and book, but I’ll try anyway: using the title of the book “I Am Legend” makes absolutely no sense in the movie, though the dear Lord knows they did their best to shoehorn the mothertrucker in there. The book ends with our hero realizing that not only is he the last human in a world of vampires, but the vampires viewed him as some sort of vampire killing boogeyman who comes out during the day and murders sleeping vampires. Neville learns that the world belongs to them and he has become the urban legend, the Last Human, the Vampire Slayer. He has become the legend that vampires once were. The body transference is complete! It’s a lot like Vice Versa or Freaky Friday. Wouldn’t be surprised if either of those movies are also loose adaptations of I Am Legend. Since the movie couldn’t really end this way because of the story changes made before it, some nonsense about Bob Marley’s Legend was inserted into the screenplay. Seriously. This must be the first film to be purposefully named after a best of compilation album. Maybe next Francis Lawrence will make an Echo The Dolphin movie, and work in something about how the Dolphin listens to nothing but Pink Floyd.

I Am Legend the film does have some good things going for it. The first hour is pretty well done (not surprisingly, this first hour sticks closest to the source material), and Will Smith is a fine actor. Plus he has the charisma and chops to be alone on screen for very long periods of time. That’s that whole it thing coming into play, and why Smith was actually a great choice for Neville. But there’s a moment in the movie where Robert Neville falls, hit his head and is knocked unconscious. And that’s where the movie itself falls and hits its head, and things just go from bad to worse. At the very least, hope can he had that in five to ten years, Hollywood will crank out their fourth version of this story, and maybe (just maybe), possibly, perhaps, they’ll get it right. But probably not.

(Reposted from my original Examiner article here.)