Man, I’m a sucker for these QUIET EARTH type stories. You can’t help but think about what you would do in a situation like that, alone or with a couple other people, living in an abandoned city, everybody else either dead or disappeared. All of society’s leftover resources would be there for the plucking. Where would you take up residence? What would you drive? Would the rides at Disneyland still work? What sort of games would you play to amuse yourself? Backhoe Rampage? Skyscraper Free Throw? Condo Shitting? How would you deal with your loneliness? And would you bother to wear pants?
If there’s monsters involved, like in DAWN OF THE DEAD or any of the three movies based on Richard Matheson’s book I Am Legend, then it becomes more of a survivalist challenge, you start thinking about strategies. How to fortify your home, how to transport yourself around safely to scavenge, etc. In this case it’s vampires he’s dealing with so he can pretty much wander around and do what he wants during daylight (vampires have a sunlight related disability), but at nightfall it’s on.
To me that’s mainly what I Am Legend is about: living a life like that and the toll it takes on you mentally. To some people though the book is mainly about the ironic twist at the end that hasn’t been used in any of the movie adaptations. I’d love to see that too, if somebody could figure out how to translate the inner monologue realization from the book into movie form. But I’m not gonna get broken up about another re-interpretation of the story. I guess I’m not as much of a stickler for literal adaptations as alot of individuals. I think it’s more important for it just to be a good movie. For example, the remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD doesn’t have the substance of the original, has a different approach to zombies that I don’t like as much, doesn’t even spend all that much time in the mall that’s the main setting of the original. And yet I can’t complain too much because it still works, it is an effective action-horror movie on its own terms, I enjoyed watching it. So I guess I am more interested in faithfulness to the magic of cinema than to original source material. (more…)
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