Off Topic: "I Am Legend" - TERRIBLE!

DISCLAIMER: This article has SPOILERS; if that bothers you, don’t read it. I think it’s silly, but consider yourself warned.

It’s been a while since my last off-topic, but today I’m so indignant I had to write.

After reading good reviews (I need to find better sources), I took a chance and watched I Am Legend, which had just opened here. I really liked Will Smith’s previous film, The Pursuit of Happyness, and word was he goes dramatic again. That got me to the theater.

The beginning of the film is very good. Great cinematography, fast and dynamic editing. And even though Will Smith is practically the only actor on screen for most of it, he does a solid job. The technical crew recreated a deserted New York beautifully, and the tense moments work. In short, every trick in the book got used.

But the first time one of the monsters shows up, the disappointment kicks in: it brought back the horrendous special effects of films like The Mummy Returns. In a post-Matrix, post-Lord of the Rings era, there’s no excuse left for monsters this bad. Still, that part is forgivable.

The other problem is that the story is only superficially based on Richard Matheson’s novel. A shallow adaptation wasn’t hard to predict, but the film had been building good tension and was fun. Which is why the third act was doubly disappointing. The entire sequence involving Alice Braga is disposable.

It starts with a joke I still don’t get. Alice’s character, Anna, says she came from São Paulo, Brazil. Mid-conversation, Robert, Will’s character, asks if she knows Bob Marley. And she makes a face like: “never heard of him”. She says it out loud!

Ok, the story is set in 2012, not that far away. Even I, practically music illiterate, know Bob Marley and the song they played in the film. What are they trying to say? “In Brazil there’s only jungle, so nobody there has ever heard of Bob Marley?” Not important, but I found it strange. I’ll give the benefit of the doubt, because maybe I didn’t get the joke. Who knows.

Now, the “God sent me” part … no, no, so fucking sorry! I couldn’t swallow it. What does that have to do with the story?? Worse, the story took it seriously!! This Anna character “started listening better to signs from heaven”. She showed up to save Robert the instant he was about to die, heard his radio message because she got a divine signal, and she knows, simply knows, that a survivor colony exists, address and all, more efficient than Google Maps, because God told her … oh well …

And in the end the guy actually has a divine vision and decides to die! And the colony really exists! Wow. I hate it when a film starts thinking too highly of itself.

It left a worse taste than another terrible one: Signs, by M. Night Shyamalan. Same deal: the film starts with a serious mood, builds the tension, goes along great until it completely falls apart, also in the third act. The dying woman delivers a message from heaven: “oh, tell him to swing the bat …” And they show the little green aliens!! And the guy swings the bat and saves the world!

God damn! Ok, I Am Legend has nothing to do with the novel of the same name. The book ends in a completely different way, and the theme is something else entirely, far more interesting. If you go see the film, walk out when Anna shows up. Up to that point it’s a decent film; after that, brace for a huge disappointment.

I’m shocked by the sheer lack of quality in the storytelling. Akiva Goldsman worked on the screenplay, which explains a lot: the same person who managed to ruin the Da Vinci Code adaptation.

I’ve seen bad films by the dozen, but they know they’re bad and don’t take themselves too seriously. Take Resident Evil: mediocre, aware of it, and at least fun for a lazy Sunday afternoon. This one promises a lot up front and ends like that guy who turns around and goes “gotcha!”

The marketing team behind this film is very good! They managed to squeeze plenty of good reviews out of everywhere. Even on Rotten Tomatoes it got 68% approval! Far more than it deserves. Anything above single digits, on a zero-to-one-hundred scale, is already too much.

The next film people are talking up, with some hype already building, is Cloverfield. Whether it’s as good as they say remains to be seen.