3. I Am Legend (2007)
Here's a movie concept that's great because it's derived from one of the greatest sci-fi novels ever written: Richard Matheson's
I Am Legend. Set in the aftermath of a global catastrophe that leaves just a single man alone on the planet, the plot concerns, Robert Neville (Will Smith), who spends his nights hunting down the rest of humanity, who have all become bloodthirsty vampires. The novel is a classic. A staple of the vampire genre. Smart and surprisingly believable. What I fail to understand, though, is the decisions that were made regarding the original story and the extremely ill-judged movie version - one that not only fails to take its most important idea from the vastly superior source material, but completely throws out its most basic concept: that Neville is the
last man on Earth. That was the point, guys! Perhaps even more frustratingly, before Hollywood decided to change the entire intellectual premise of
I Am Legend for no reason (it doesn't improve the story at all, nor does it make for better "cinema" or "easier to understand"), the movie is a fairly enjoyable one. Watching Neville navigating an empty New York is a lot of fun. That's until we realise that there are other survivors and that the idea behind the title "
I Am Legend" has been forgotten. I'm all for changing certain aspects from novels when it comes to adapting them for the big screen, because they're two very different mediums, and sometimes it's necessary, but I can't comprehend - in this case - why the novel was so brutally massacred from the inside out. The film
would have been better if they'd have left it as it was. I know it would have. And now I can only sit in the darkness, waiting for somebody to come along and announce that they're going to make a legitimate version of this amazing story, because they really
should.