Come Out! We Want To Kill You!

I know it’s been covered, but I felt that I should say a little something about I Am Legend, which I just read (and which only takes a few days to breeze through, at the longest).

I first heard of the story, and its bizarre title, when some of the new version was filmed outside my community college in Manhattan a little over a year ago. Someone told me it was post-apocalyptic, and about vampires, and starred Will Smith. I had no idea that The Omega Man, which I’d seen bits of years earlier, was based on the same book. (Since it’s been awhile, and I never saw the whole movie, I won’t really discuss that particular adaptation here.)

Moving on, a few months back my girlfriend and I watched The Last Man On Earth, starring Vincent Price, on television: we were expecting a silly old sci-fi movie and got an incredibly creepy and haunting film. I highly recommend it. Something in it rang a bell, and along the way we realized that it had a connection to this upcoming Will Smith movie we had heard about, and finally discovered that, gasp, it was similarly based on the book I Am Legend.

After seeing that, I really wanted to read the book and then see the new film, to make comparisons, but I wasn’t able to get my hands on a copy before seeing the very different, but also very depressing, new movie (which I believe is still in theaters). For the record, this new version is damn good, and reminded me that, when he’s not in a shitty movie, Will Smith is one hell of an actor. Anyway, just this past week, I discovered that my roommate owns a copy of Richard Matheson’s 1954 book that started it all, so I had to read it.

First of all, the book itself is very, very good. You probably didn’t need me to tell you this, a book doesn’t get made into three different movies in three different decades, each starring a very famous leading man, without a very good chance of being worthwhile. I won’t elaborate too much on the book alone, because you can probably read a good deal of that elsewhere, but suffice it to say that it’s a sad, lonely, disturbing, and revolutionary re-imagining of the whole vampire mythos.

By far, the Vincent Price film from the 60’s is the closest to the book, although whereas that version seems to just have the dead world be populated by vampires for no particular reason, the book really explores the supposed science behind vampirism, which is very interesting, and sucks any and all romanticism from the concept. Probably the biggest difference between the book and that first movie is that the novel spends a good deal of time dealing with how painfully horny the last man on Earth is, which is certainly jarring. Overall, however, The Last Man On Earth, stays pretty close to the desolate spirit of the book, Vincent Price manages a good deal of subtlety in the lead role, and the shambling, moaning, zombie-like vampires are just about the personification of creepy.

Skipping over Omega Man because I hardly remember it, the Will Smith vehicle I Am Legend is a very different animal from either the book or the 1960’s movie. (Not to mention the inherent humor in Will Smith playing a Vincent Price part.) Will Smith’s protagonist is a very different character from the original version of Robert Neville… in large part simply because he’s at a very different stage of grief. The novel’s Neville, and Vincent Price’s Morgan, are both at acceptance. They both certainly have moments of hope, and plans to find a cure for the “disease” that grips the vampire/zombies of the world, but for the most part their lives are full of depressing, violent drudgery. Another day of finding and staking unsuspecting vampires, another night of hearing them pound on the outside of the house, screaming to kill the protagonist. It’s horrifying, but there’s a large dose of acceptance there.

Smith’s character, by contrast, is still in denial. When society, and humanity, still existed, he was tasked with curing the plague, and he’s still convinced that he can. Not yet used to solitude, he sets up mannequins to talk to, brings “rented” DVDs back to the video store, and so on. If the events later on in the film didn’t happen, he would probably eventually turn into the book’s version of his character, but as it is, this current version of the character is still having his personality and hope shattered as the movie progresses.

It is also worth pointing out that, in the new movie, the zombie/vampires don’t speak, but are actually much more organized and cunning than in the book. The differences and similarities between these versions are really a lot of fun to watch for and discover–all things considered, the new version, unsurprisingly, comes across as the most upbeat of them… but don’t get it twisted, this movie is dark and quiet as hell, never turning into an action film, really, despite some major suspense.

Hmm, I seem to have lost my train of thought in here somewhere. But, I guess what I’m really trying to say is that I highly recommend reading the book, seeing the Vincent Price movie, and seeing the Will Smith movie… in whatever order you like. All three are well done, dark, creepy, and different enough to all be worth one’s time. I have no issue with a movie being vastly different from its source material, so long as it’s good.

Hmm, I should probably go see Omega Man all the way through, huh?