I Am Legend

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480249/
Now here is a film I have been meaning to review for a long time. Upon seeing it like everyone else I raved on about its brilliance and desperation, but I made a big mistake, I liked it enough to read the book. Like most adaptations the film does not live up to the book, for many reasons. Matheson's novel is bleak and dark and Robert Neville is completely alone and hopeless. He deals with the desperation by drinking and smoking excessively, hating himself for it in a self destructive cycle that is the heart of the novel. The film however focuses more on his connection to the dog which in the book doesn't appear until half way through the book, and once it does it is afraid of him, slowly he gains its trust until it disappears coming back infected. Matheson painfully discribes Neville's holding and comforting of the dog whilst thinking of scientific ways of curing the dog giving the reader a little bit of hope. Right there the chapter ends with the gutting line "a week later the dog was dead". I understand that the film needed another character such as the dog to converse with Neville but within the book Neville's thoughts are all that is needed and perhaps his narcissistic comments on his bleak life would be better in film as they are definitely what makes the book better. Another dislike of the film is the back story given to Neville, it makes him a top scientist who helped create the disease whilst searching for a cure to cancer. In the book he is the epitome of a normal man in an extreme situation and he motivates himself to learn and question the Vampire myth that seems to have become true. Unfortunately the end is also disappointing with a mystical cure being found and Neville dying, although this is an extremely emothional ending it is no more so than that in the book where Neville is captured by "living Vampires" who have retained humanity and live off synthesised blood. To this new society Neville is the enemy and he ends his life and the book with the reflective thought that as minority changes so does society and with that realisation he ends the book with "I am legend"


In conclusion the film is good and it is understandable to change it the way they have, but I have to wonder if the film was more like the book would it be as good as it was or would it rise to the level of the book?a