STORY STUDY - MEDIUM: FILM - “I Am Legend”
Good news, everyone! Someone found the cure to cancer! The only side effect you might get are either death, or becoming feral and becoming deathly allergic to sunlight.
I Am Legend is a 2007 film directed by Frances Lawrence, written by Mark Protosevich and Akiva Goldsman, and based on the novel by Richard Matheson. The story is about Lieutenant Colonel and army medical doctor Robert Neville living in New York City, which is in complete ruins. His only companion is his German Shepard, Sam.
It is set in the post-apocalyptic year of 2012, three years after a cure for cancer turns into a lethal strain that instantly killed 94% of humanity and turning 5% into predatory mutants. The remaining 1% is completely immune, which is the category Neville falls under.
Every day for the past three years, Neville spends his day scavenging the city for food sending out distress calls in order to find other survivors. He also attempts to find a way to use his immunity to create a cure. At night, he locks down his apartment to prevent the infected from breaking in.
It’s hard to talk about the film without talking about Will Smith’s performance. Neville has gone through three years without any human contact. He makes up for it by talking to himself or talking to mannequins that he specifically placed at a video store, which he visits from time to time. Smith has to carry the majority of the film, and his acting is convincing to the point where it’s scary.
One of the memorable scenes of the film is when one of his mannequins shows up in the city. As he passes by it, he starts shouting at it, his sanity slowly depleting, convinced that the mannequin moved there on its own. (It was actually an infected that moved it, setting up a trap for him.)
The setting is also very surreal: plant life growing through the metal of New York City to the point where even wild animals are living in the city.
It's a world where cancer is cured, and Batman v. Superman was released instead of 2015
I discovered the film the day when it came out. I’ve always liked post-apocalyptic films, and I hadn’t seen one where a majority of the film is centered on only one character (I had not seen the previous adaptations of Matheson’s novel, The Last Man on Earth and The Omega Man.)
It’s only fair to mention that there is alternate ending, which is in the same spirit as the ending of Matheson’s novel. Be on the lookout for that.
Lock down your room, and prepare…
