I Am Legend: A Review

                                                                                  

                                                          

     What is science fiction? Science fiction can have many elements and what exactly it constitutes is subjective. For me science fiction is science, fantasy, futurity, technology, and the unknown. I have chosen to review I Am Legend, the original novel by Richard Matheson (1954) and it film adaptation by Francis Lawrence (2008). I am certain I Am Legend meets my science fiction criteria and will relate to our weekly class themes, particularly Week 7 - Planetary Disasters, Week 8 – Alien as Other, and Week 11 – If Robots Are Slaves, Can Logic Be Freedom?
     In I Am Legend, Robert Neville is the only man left on the planet who is not infected with a vampiris virus and he is determined to find an antidote. The original novel is set in the Los Angeles suburb of Compton, while the film adaptation is set in New York City. Due to the nature of the creatures Neville has to find solutions in the daytime, before nightfall comes and the vampires come after him. In the novel he spends his days removing dead vampires from his lawn, from the previous night’s activities and relocating them to a massive fire pit, which contains his late wife and daughter, victims of the virus. In his spare time he locates the vampires in their comatose states and drives wooden stakes in their hearts to kill them off. When he tries to kill them by shooting them some of them die, some don’t and this is similar to the Week 8 reading of John Campbell Jr’s “Who Goes There?, in which The Thing gets shot after thawing and escaping and the group determines it is unkillable. And just like the group in “Who goes there?” who are faced with a situation of the unknown, to examine the creature and risk releasing a deadly plague or to leave it frozen and safe. They end up realizing that by continuing to investigate and not giving up would be the way to answers and lead to the elimination of the deadly viruses. Neville pillaged the public library for scientific journals to lead him in the right direction. Neville was living in a complex life in a world that seemed anything but, he had unlimited freedom during the day, and lived his evenings in terror.


 
Neville’s freedom was reminiscent of the main characters in Larry Nevin’s Inconstant Moon reading from Week 7 when he states:
      “And I was free. For me there were no more consequences. Tonight I could satisfy
        my dark urges, rob, kill, cheat on my income tax, throw bricks at plate glass
        windows, and burn my credit cards”.
The only difference was night and day, and neither took advantage of their freedom by destruction.
     In the novel Neville sees a dog during the day and fantasizes about owning it and gives chase on several occasions before catching it. In the film the dog is with him from the very beginning and it is clear that they need and rely on each other. The dog is immune to getting the virus via airborne particles as Neville is, but is susceptible to being bitten. Also the vampires in the movie were a lot more aggressive and athletic than those depicted in the original novel and as a viewer it appears that Neville’s demise is surely inevitable. The vampires would bite the dog, after ending up inadvertently in a dark warehouse during the day, and even with Neville’s vaccines, it would die. The vampires were nothing like the robots from Week 11, in   Brian A. Aldiss’s “Who Can Replace Man?” who had different class brains and could carry out different tasks, the vampires acted in unison.
     There is an intrigue that automatically comes with destruction, because of the unknown and this was certainly true for both I Am legend and in Week 7’s critical article “War and Nation” by J. Robert Oppenheimer in which there were concerns about not only our purpose on Earth, but also its future:
     “No world has ever faced a possibility of destruction – in a relevant sense
      of annihilation – comparable to what we face, nor a process of decision-
      making even remotely like that which is involved in this”.
A major point depicted in both I Am Legend and War and Nations is the moral fallout that exists within destruction.
     In the film, Neville sends out daily radio broadcasts on all AM stations to see if anyone is out there, he lets them know that they can meet him at the pier and offer help in the forms of food, shelter, and security. Neville is caught with the sun down and incurs a vicious vampire attack, from which he is saved by a woman who with her son has come from Maryland because she had heard his radio broadcast. Understandably lonely since losing the dog and having no human contact in three years, Neville is ecstatic to see them and takes them home. She tells Neville that she has heard of a colony that has survivors and that is their destination and they came to give him a ride after hearing his voice on the radio. He assures her that she is wasting her time by going to the colony because everyone is dead. She recognizes that Neville has lost touch with people, and he is insistent on fixing the problem and has vowed to stay at “ground zero”. The vampires from the vicious attack had followed them home and the next night launched an attack with hundreds of vampires and they finally made entry, this coincided with Neville discovering his cure for the virus worked, he had found the antidote. As the vampires began to destroy Neville’s lab he pleaded with them to stop for he could cure them, return them to human beings. He comes to the realization that his attempts are futile and they are not going to stop, so he grabs a hand grenade and launches himself into the pack of vampires. The woman and her son survive and make their way to the colony that does indeed exist and it is later announced Robert Neville did indeed find a cure for the virus. This discovery was big, like the discovery in our Week 8 readings of Johnson and Edy’s “From Lucy” where the initial discovery left the paleoanthropologist wondering what they had discovered, but they did know it was big.
     The novel and the film adaptation compared favorably, I wish the character of Ben Cortman who was so prevalent in the book has been used in the film, I think it would have been a great dynamic and could have enhanced the film further, therefore I would give the nod to the novel. I Am Legend has many science fiction elements in common with our weekly themes and topics from the great science fiction writers we have read this semester.