So I took my mum and my brother (passing through on his way to the CES) to the new Arclight (Sherman Oaks) to see “I Am Legend” last night. I’ll admit that it has some things going for it. Overall it is not the disaster one might expect, given the direction in which big-budget “science-fiction” projects like this headed by action stars usually go. Furthermore, it might be said to be a bit of progress to have the main character be a scientist, and one of African descent as well, although I’d have been more impressed to see the scientist character actually using the scientific method – inference, deduction, hypothesis testing. The placeholder for being a scientist here was still the usual – surround the character with fancy equipment, give them glasses and a lab coat, and get them saying a few sciencey-sounding things. Hollywood – please listen up: That’s not what science is!!
So it was basically an action movie with more than the usual puddle’s worth of emotional depth, for a change. Very good performances and so forth and more or less well put together. It did not have the feeling of being written by committee, and so forth. So worth a look.
On the other hand, one main thing has been bugging me all day. If the rabid infected human(oid) adversaries have (unbeknownst to our hero) despite their affliction become (or remained) so intelligent so as to use tools (this is not a spoiler – the film is marketed on this basis), how come they just don’t help themselves to the readily accessible supply of guns lying around New York in order to better deal with our well-equipped scientist-soldier hero? Instead, they largely just snarl and scream and bare their teeth – the completely standard adversary for our standard hero-with-guns. Nothing remotely original there. Oh well.
-cvj
Will Smith is a nice actor and I very much enjoyed the dog (very well trained btw). And a good small participation of Alice Braga, a fellow countrywoman from Brazil… 🙂
For the rest, I disliked the film.
Best
Christine
Does anyone have any scientific data as to why so much commentary is givin to showing humans as blood thirsty vampires in todays films? It is a bit overwhelming. In “I am legend” they make a connection between cancer research and the “T virus” as the reason we eventually see these vampiring beings.
Perhaps he has surrounding the cornfield a pride or two of those lions.
-cvj
I liked the movie as an adventure when I could ignore the illogic. For example, Manhattan has a healthy deer population, yet you can raise a patch of unmolested sweetcorn without a tall fence.
Assuming the rats were reacting to the contagion the same way the humans were, they would be far more prevalent and lethal.
Clifford:I don’t want to overstate this, since I’m not asking for the film (or any film in the genre) to be a science lecture or a lecture on the scientific method
Yes, I understand.
Clifford:A single scene giving a snapshot of him doing a bit of testing of animals in some cages is hardly an expose of the scientific method.
I think things done “afterword,” while injecting the serum into the human(iod) leaves for some introspection? Realizing that the subject was flat lining, he reversed the process?
And alas, the process was cyclical in bringing the subject back to life(complete) in that the regression from the virus was overcome. A lot of symbology there in a very short act?
Yes of course to your other points “on his timing” and subsequent use of “limiting a subset” of a larger group? Who knows they may of destroyed the generators?:)
I am sure the temperature of the enclosure hiding “the future” would have been cooked as well.
Now on to other things……
I don’t want to overstate this, since I’m not asking for the film (or any film in the genre) to be a science lecture or a lecture on the scientific method, and I am glad that they kept the main character as a scientist (ten years ago they might have dropped that), but I wanted a bit more of the scientist than just the action hero donning a lab coat and glasses. Show more of him thinking things through in his approach to the whole situation… A single scene giving a snapshot of him doing a bit of testing of animals in some cages is hardly an expose of the scientific method. You and I know the sequence of deduction and so forth that goes into that. The typical viewer just sees him injecting a bunch of angry rats.
And setting explosives to blow stuff up? He’s military, remember, and in an action film. Blowing stuff up is par for the course. As someone pointed out above, wiring his entire house with blacklights would have been an obvious thing to do… Much smarter than a big explosion, which made no sense at all – you’ve limitless people coming at you, so why do a single one-shot explosion that kills a subset of them, and leaves big holes in your defenses? And I’ll assume that he was hunting deer in that incredibly stupid way because he wanted entertainment. Otherwise he’d just set a simple trap or two, as he did elsewhere. I’ll let that one slide….
-cvj
efp:Will Smith: Worst. Deer hunter. Ever.
Ya no doubt.:)
I see Clifford responded before I did along the same lines. I might of added the temperate zones latitude of New York and the species of apples along that same line. Although, I know nothing of New York. My wife and I plan one day to make this journey.
I am doing “recall” from the movie itself.
Which of course brings me to things that I have been muling over before the full wakeful state?
Clifford:although I’d have been more impressed to see the scientist character actually using the scientific method – inference, deduction, hypothesis testing. The placeholder for being a scientist here was still the usual – surround the character with fancy equipment, give them glasses and a lab coat, and get them saying a few sciencey-sounding things. Hollywood – please listen up: That’s not what science is!!
I think this, “actually using the scientific method – inference, deduction, hypothesis testing,” is what caught my eye and and my previous retort on that aspect.
IN this mulling over, or remembering, I seem to see a whole bunch of cages with rats and a succession of different concoctions being used to test the degeneration of the healthful state of the rat(mice?) and this testing moved to a different level?
Also, in regards to what we are allowed to see in the short time this movie clips the suppose three years, that he would adjust his watch and synchronize according to some atlas, and shut the doors on his windows for safety(?)
The denotation scene on being tracked back to his house, seemingly showing some “advanced thinking” on his part, to the supposed responsive state of the degenerative aspects of the human(oid) in attacking his place?
This of course reminds of the “Flight or fight response that is primitive in us” and some of this being shown in the animal population being instigated as the “predator or prey response,” that any degeneration of the human being “might go” through in such a calamity?
This all has a purpose for me, in that what can be changed according to what our previous assessment was based upon “while remembering.” What it can do to help “readjust our views” based on what we first felt impressed upon us “in reflection?”
efp:- a few seconds on google, and here are some lovely fat apples near the Javits Center at the start of the High Line:
http://cityrag.blogs.com/main/2006/09/little_apples_i.html
Cheers,
-cvj
efp:- the point I made above is that he would have existing apple trees, and so he would not have to grow them from scratch. Manhattan is not a bare slab of concrete. It has many gardens. You should see them some time, if you have not – it’s rather wonderful when you find little surprise gardens there. I would not be surprised to find several apple trees there, although I admit that I cannot think of one at present, but it has been a while since I’ve been, and I never knew all the gardens that were to be found (who does?). So I don’t agree that apples were necessarily out of place. I’d guess that they’d be rather easy to find.
Wait, have you forgotten that huge 800+ acre blob of green called Central Park? There are certainly splendid crabapple trees there – quite famous amongst lovers of gardens. If I can think of crabapples so easily, I bet it is not hard to find other varietals.
No… I agree with you that there are things in the film that require suspension of disbelief, but apples are not a stretch of the imagination at all.
Cheers,
-cvj
Well, I still consider it darned unlikely. Corn grows in a single season, apple trees do not. There are far more serious breaches of logic in the film, I just wondered if it struck anyone else as out of place, it caught my eye immediately.
Will Smith: Worst. Deer hunter. Ever.
😀
In all fairness one might of noticed his corn patch and the garden space that he attended too? And let’s not forget the venison on tap?:)
Actually, I would not be at all surprised if there were apples and pears available readily. There’s an awful lot of active garden space in Manhattan. Maybe be found a few gone wild and kept them going as food supply. In addition to planting corn and so forth, as we saw.
-cvj
I happened to watch it over the weekend. I liked it overall, largely because of the “urban Castaway” part (and I’m a German Shepherd owner…) It was good enough that I was annoyed at some of the lazy filmaking that went into it (it doesn’t seem like it would have been very hard to make it a lot better). And there were lots of things that didn’t make any sense. Why didn’t he just wire his whole house with blacklights?
I wonder if anyone else noticed this: when they first show his post-apocalyptic kitchen overflowing with stored food, I saw a huge bowl of fresh fruit… apples and pears I think. Where the hell did THAT come from??? Is there an apple orchard on Manhattan island? Seems like a sloppy slip.
Cranky is an appropriate response i think. What can one expect when someone takes a book that has already been made into two other movies (The Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price and The Omega Man with the chimp-monkey-ape man Charleton Heston), and tries to do it a third time (and that is after three or four (ten?) other B-grade horror/vampire/zombie/creature films steal the essential plot elements). For this film to be something hugely provocative and powerful it would have needed substantive changes from a sci-fi world of 1954. A virus just doesn’t cut it; we are so past that in our capacity to suspend disbelief. Hollywood is remaking and remaking films ignoring a wealth of new material, some so advanced and beyond the pale in terms of story lines and plot elements yet well within the capabilities of the new technologies to take them to the screen. But nope, not gonna happen. I am cranky too.
Hey Plato….
Spoiler potential in my reply.
Yeah, I saw all that… but they’ve been battling for years and perhaps they’ve seen him use guns and drive a car and so forth for years… could they really not have learned to do anything but snarl and scream in that time? Seems a bit convenient to leave them totally regressed in one way, but be more unexpectedly advanced in another way…. As a get-out clause… perhaps these events we see are the first time he’s really been encountering them at all… triggered by the hunting event with the dog and so forth…
-cvj
Maybe a warning for a spoiler here.
My wife and I watched it last night.
Clifford:Instead, they largely just snarl and scream and bare their teeth – the completely standard adversary for our standard hero-with-guns.
Wasn’t it the virus that had gone wrong, and was responsible for some regression’s in the human development? Funny, they were afraid of the light. Just like some “others” we know?
The head leader just repeated an action Will Smith did to capture a humanoid for experiment. Going from testing and being successful with rat results, he made the leap to humanoids.
You see the pictures on the wall of other recipients of his experiments? He’d been busy over the three years.