Is now the first movie I have ever walked out on.  Do you want to watch Will Smith wash a dog for 10 minutes?  Seriously this movie has the slowest pace I have ever seen.  Its been done before a thousand times as well.  Virus breaks out, everyone turns into hungry zombies, only one guy remains.  It was basicly 28 days later except with an annoying main character and zombies that look so stupid the only thing I can compare them to is Bat Boy.  God this movie was aweful, most of the time you just watch Will Smith be bored since he has nothing better to do.  There is 10 minutes of him talking to mannequins that made me squirm in my seat from boredom.  Ugh... just google Bat Boy if you don't know what he is already, the zombies were seriously THAT lame.

Never felt more proud to leave that heap of crap for some air hockey and pinball.  Anyone else waste 8 bucks on this?

I have not seen it and I will, more than likely, have to wait until it is released on DVD (as there are no lightsabers, no colorful animated characters and no Wiggles' dances). I am a fan of the book written by Richard Matheson in 1954. I am certain the movie will perform as the status quo of sub-par performance of the book. However, the book is slow so I would expect the movie to be slow. It's a part of the book that makes it worthwhile to read.

The real comparison of this movie will lie, for me, in how it compares to the previous versions of this book to movie: The Last Man on Earth starring Vincent Price (which was very true to the book) and The Omega Man, which is set in the same locale but changed a lot from the book with a very heavy Christian influence added at the end.

I love Matheson's book, it's a great story and I'm sad to read from various accounts that, once again, they molested a good book to make a movie.

Of course the biggest place they can fail with the book is the ending, which certainly doesn't lend for a happy Hollywood ending, but they forced it in there anyway. And if you can't do the ending justice of that book, then sadly I have to conclude that the movie is full of fail.

Also, it's a vampire story more than zombies, so the whole mindless zombie angle confuses me, being that especially the crux of the book's ending requires sentient thought from the "monsters".

As for that ending, I have read in reviews here and there, that they've left some christian overtones in there as well, which weren't in the book either. I wish I could remember which reviewer/critic said that, because it wasn't Ebert and I can't find the review.

Much like nuksaa, I'll wait for the DVD, and likely for similar reasons (kids do that to your social life).

Other than that, I can only really recommend that people read Matheson's book, it's a fabulous story, and in my mind one of the best pieces of vampire fiction out there.

* * * Possible Book Spoiler (or deduction might lead you to figure it out) * * *




The ending is awesome, and takes no prisoners. It goes where it needs to go, the logical conclusion of the story. It doesn't twist it into something that might make people feel better, no happy Hollywood endings for the sake of making test audiences happier.




Lilith

To be honest I've always found zombies to be fairly limited as far as movie monsters anyway. The lack of conscious thought generally strips away a lot of the depth that you might be able to plumb for a story. Though I guess much is true from many monsters in movies these days (and hell, while I'm on that subject, many movies don't bother to try for any depth anyway, which is why a lot of movies are shallow tedious pieces of forgettable crap).

Roger Ebert had the following to say about the zombies:




As nuksaa has pointed out, the pace of the novel is also slow. But then this isn't supposed to really be a balls to the wall kind of action movie/story. The trailers in that regard may probably be somewhat misleading too.

That said, I've found that a lot of people don't really understand story progression anyway, and if shit isn't blowing up then they complain there's no pace or plot development. A drawback of the MTV generation, where people are used to an aural and visual assault and don't really understand or have the patience for letting a story quietly unfold like it needs to. Suspense these days doesn't mean too much.

If you want to read an example of stories where the suspense and horror is all slow and quiet build up, then reading Shirley Jackson (cited often by Stephen King as a major influence on his work) will be a good idea. The horror in her stories is actually the more disturbing for being so quiet and seemingly normal, rather than in your face buckets of gore and monsters jumping out.



Lilith

Well I am certainly not the MTV generation, in fact I avoid TV like the plague.  If there is something I want to watch, I'll download it.  No fucking way I will sit through commercials for even my most favorite shows.

I had no idea there was a book before the movie.  I guess that explains a lot, still....I hated it.  As far as zombies go only 28 days/weeks later really kept my attention.  I don't understand how so much havoc can be caused by slow moving neck biters, but I understand completely when they sprint at you and beat the living shit out of you before puking blood in your face.

A book (well, novella I guess, it's not that long)[footnote]I have this particular edition which also contains a number of short stories.[/footnote], and as nuksaa pointed out, 2 movies already as well. Though obviously the last version was sometime in the 70s with The Omega Man. I haven't watched either, though I think I have the Vincent Price one on my black and white horror classics dvd set.

By and large I think most movies fail when they stray from their source material (when sourced from good books/stories), the material that was often chosen because it was so damn good, and then they go and change all the bits that made it good. Then again, most movies fail when the writing fails, somehow they're willing to blow millions on an actor to draw in the crowds, but not a good writing team to make sure there's actually something for the actor to do.



That was also one of the things that made the Dawn of the Dead remake back in 2004/2005 so effective for me. No shuffling, but running. Or, both at least.



Lilith

Have just sat and watched it and as others have said it's slow. For me the best performance was by the dog. I felt like SPOILER blowing myself up in the end.

I don't go to the cinema and this film reminded me why.

*Spoiler warning*

I thought the first half of the film was really good, but everything after the dog dying is absolute shit.

<spoilers>

I happened to see this particular film last Sunday in the cinemas, and personally I quite enjoyed it. even though it is pretty lame. It isn't really one for people who enjoy blood and gore and people being eaten, because the film wasn't made to unfold like that, it more surrounds suspense, tension and the story of Will Smith's character who is obviously slowly going insane from isolation.
The thing that bugged me the most was that woman who randomly showed up, she didn't fit into the linear sequence of events at all. And I'm rather glad that this didn't have a happy ending, - that would have completely ruined it.

For me, the most tragic part of the film is when the dog died I couldn't of cared less about any other character dying!!
</spoilers>
~Kitty

The book was better. The vampires in the book were better.

I wish hollywood made the book into the movie. It would be R rated, but it would be good.

Indeed, Hihen.

I Am Legend is my favorite book from the 20th Century.  It was the book I used to give flouncy Lestat-heads to make them piss their velvet trousers.  Let's just say I'm . . . waiting . . . to watch the movie.  I'm sure it's not as bad as all that, but dude, a film actually based on the book would indeed be R-rated and would indeed be severely badass.


~Nachty, who refuses to come out, no matter how much Ben Cortman calls~

I finally agreed to go watch it - it's still playing in a few theaters once a day or something. Movies do not generally make me cry, but I bawled my eyes out when the dog died. I really couldn't care less what happened after that. I did think Will Smith did a good job of going insane. And I liked the way they used silence to build tension. It was good and creepy without being overdone. The ending sucked though - I'm going to go get the real one from the library.

the movie didn't suck
it had good parts it had bad parts but so do most movies
and it was in my opinion fairly good for a zombie movie which i normally don't like

Interesting that you called it a zombie movie, and I've heard others call it a vampire movie.  I haven't read the book, or seen the film, but I'm curious: which is it?  Or is it both?  Is this one of those tropes that's more open to interpretation?  Should I bother when the DVD comes out?

In the book, Luna, the creatures are constantly referred to as 'vampires', and they live on blood, have fangs, are allergic to sunlight, the whole shmear.  They are also a lot more like movie-style zombies (as opposed to the voodoo kind) than other vampires, in that they wander around in packs, seem animalistic and de-humanized and have few 'supernatural' powers beyond being 'alive' when they should be dead.  In fact, George Romero cites "I Am Legend" as the basis for his Living Dead films, which created what we think of as zombies in pop culture.  As for the new "Legend" film, I still haven't seen it, but the creatures sound more zombie-like than vampire-like to me, and they are evidently never referred to as "vampires" in the film (which is a shame, because that's like re-making "The Wolf Man" but making the title character a mutant beast-thing rather than a lycanthrope).

Still, the original "Legend" vampires were indeed science-based virus-freaks who seemed only co-incidentally to mirror folkloric vampire properties, so it was nebulous from the beginning.  Neville basically states that he is calling them "vampires" for want of a better or more specific term.  He also names the bacillus he discerns as being responsible for the contagion after vampires.

Notably, other film adaptations, particularly "The Omega Man", have also eschewed direct vampire-ties, probably to distance the material from the standard "cape and drape" approach to vampire fiction throughout most of the 19th and 20th Centuries.  Probably the closest portrayal of novel-style "Legend" vampires can be found in "John Carpenter's Vampires", wherein the 'goon' vampires act very much like Matheson's (although with the inclusion of a "master" to give them purpose and voice beyond mindless devourers).

~Nachty, with waaaaaay too much information on the undead~