FAQ for
I Am Legend (2007) More at IMDbPro »

The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. Spoiler tags have been used sparingly in order to make the page more readable.

For detailed information about the amounts and types of (a) sex and nudity, (b) violence and gore, (c) profanity, (d) alcohol, drugs, and smoking, and (e) frightening and intense scenes in this movie, consult the IMDb Parents Guide for this movie. The Parents Guide for I Am Legend can be found here.

Yes. I Am Legend (1954) was written by American author Richard Matheson. The novel was adapted for the movie by screenwriters Akiva Goldsman and Mark Protosevich. This version of I Am Legend is the third movie adaptation of Matheson's novel. The two earlier films are The Last Man on Earth (1964) and The Omega Man (1971). Another adaptation, I Am Omega (2007), was released direct to DVD.

Yes. I Am Legend (2007) contains elements that are present in The Omega Man but are not present in the novel or its first movie adaptation.

This film is an adaptation of Richard Matheson's 1954 novel of the same title. Neville is the last man on Earth; everyone else is a vampire. At the end he realizes that as the only human left in a world of vampires, he is now the monster. He stalks the earth during the day and kills the vampires as they sleep. This has made him a mythical figure much like the vampires themselves once were. He is now a legend, hence the title I Am Legend. You could argue that, since Neville is the one who sacrificed his life in order to save the remainder of mankind, he will be a legend among the survivors, but that was not Matheson's intent when he named the novel.

This usage of "legend" is an older form that today would be replaced by "legendary" or "of legend," but is a correct usage.

Matheson wrote his 1954 novel with the intention of turning vampires into creatures of science fiction, rather than of the supernatural, as they had always been in previous vampire tales. He gave scientific explanations for vampires' fear of crosses, light, garlic and so forth. By 2007, the idea of vampires being explainable through science was no longer new or unusual; therefore, the movie makes much less of the infected humans being vampire-like. The creatures of the book and the 2007 movie share an aversion to sunlight but little else. The Matheson vampires are intelligent and well-spoken. (Or at least the "living vampires" are. See below.) The movie's creatures are primitive and animal-like.

Other differences include the following:

- The book is set in the suburbs of Los Angeles, not New York City. One of the screenwriters, Akiva Goldsman, said this change was made because New York City is better for portraying emptiness.

The book's story takes place in 1976-78, while the film takes place in 2012 (bear in mind that Matheson wrote his book in 1957).

- In the book, Neville discovers his dog after humanity has been wiped out; he spends weeks gaining his trust. In the movie, Sam (Samantha) had been the family dog.

- The book's Neville really is the "last man on Earth." Everyone else is a vampire--whether living or undead. In the film, 1% of humanity is immune from the disease and has survived.

- In the film, Neville is a military virologist. In the book, he is a civilian who works "at the plant" and possesses no special skills. Everything he does to fight the vampires, he must learn.

- The film doesn't give a clear explanation as to why Neville is immune (we just assume it's because of his overexposure to the virus). In the book, he believes that a bat bite he had received while he was in the army (which made him ill for weeks) is what gave him immunity.

- In the book, the vampires know where Neville lives and swarm outside his house at night, taunting him (they even know him by name). In the movie, they are unable to find Neville until Anna inadvertently leads them to him.

- A species of "living vampires" are introduced in the novel; they are human-like, but still carry the virus (which they have learned to control). These don't exist in the film (except in the alternate ending, where we get a glimpse of the undead becoming more human).

- With the exception of Neville, none of the characters from the book appear in the film (even his wife and daughter have different names and destinies; see below).

- In the book, Neville is a "legend" among vampires, ironically taking the role that had once belonged to the vampire itself. He is now the one who stalks and kills persons as they sleep. In the movie, Neville becomes a "legend" because he is the one who provides a cure to the plague.

- Neville commits suicide in both versions. In the film's theatrical ending, he blows himself up with a grenade as an act of self-sacrifice. In the book, he takes a poison pill to avoid being publicly executed by the vampires who have captured and imprisoned him.

- In the film, Neville's wife and daughter die in a helicopter crash while evacuating. In the book, they both become infected and die. Neville buries his wife in a shallow grave and she returns as a vampire.

In Matheson's book, the disease is caused by a bacterium and not a virus. It starts off like a flu epidemic and is carried on the dusty winds. The protagonist discovers this on his own after a lot of experiment and study. The symptoms of the disease resemble the qualities associated with vampires: the desire to suck blood, the hatred of garlic and mirrors, etc. In the movie, the disease is a genetically-engineered virus that mutates and causes the disorder. The victims are less like vampires and more like cannibalistic zombies.

Dr. Alice Krippin (Emma Thompson) manipulated a measles virus so that it would only attack cancerous cells--in effect curing cancer. Unfortunately, the virus (called the Krippin Virus, or KV) soon mutated, becoming communicable through the air and deadly to humans. It killed the vast majority of the population (90%). In everyone else, except for the 1% of the population who were immune, it caused extreme aggression, loss of pigmentation, shallow and rapid respiration, hyper-metabolism, and hyper-sensitivity to light. It essentially caused humans and animals to become vampires, which in this movie are referred to as "Dark Seekers."

In Matheson's novel, there are two different kinds of vampires. There are the reanimated vampires that had died yet somehow came back to life. And there are the vampires that are still living. The vampires that are dead were people who had contracted the virus and died from being unable to breathe. Neville's wife had become one of these because Neville had buried her instead of burning her in the pit.

- In the book, the dead vampires are animalistic to an extent, but they are intelligent enough to taunt Neville in various ways, e.g. the female vampires will lift their skirts and pose lewdly. (The theme of Neville having to constantly fight to control his erotic impulses recurs several times in the book.) Some of them will turn into ash when Neville stakes them because their corpses are so old. In the film, The Dark Seekers are animal-like and appear to lose their intelligence after contracting the virus.

- The "living vampires" are people who had contracted the virus, but did not die. Neville kills these persons by driving a stake through their hearts. He does not realize they are still alive, or indeed that there are two different kinds of vampires. The living vampires are the ones that hunt Neville down and try to execute him. (They hunt and kill the dead vampires as well.)

- In the book, both kinds of vampires share many traits with traditional vampires. They are repelled by garlic, have psychological aversions to religious symbols and mirrors, etc. In the film, the only vampire-like trait that the Dark Seekers have is an extremely painful reaction to sunlight.

Anna does say that that the virus cannot survive in the cold, which is the reason that the survivors compound was established in Vermont. It is implied that the cold inhibits the airborne virus but does not inhibit the infected, i.e., Neville uses ice to lower the temperature of the infected he is treating because it helps the antidote to take effect. Yet the matter is unclear. The epidemic seems to have begun in the lead up to the Christmas season, and Neville has been alone for three years or four winters. It must be remembered, however, that cold-sensitive some viruses only have survival problems when they are outside of a host, such as on doorknobs, toilet seats, or dust particles in the air. Once inside of a warm body, the virus is in a perfect 98-99° Fahrenheit environment, and the cold will not affect it, so it remains viable and able to be spread on contact.

Neville is described at the beginning of Matheson's story as "a tall man, thirty-six, born of English-German stock, his features undistinguished except for the long, determined mouth and the bright blue of his eyes..." It's safe to say he was white in the original story. In the first two movie adaptations and the graphic novel adaptation, he is white.

In the original ending of the movie, it was shown that all the bridges were destroyed except for the George Washington bridge. Patrols were stationed on that bridge to control access on and off the island, and a sign was posted with a WARNING that Manhattan was a restricted area and that it was unlawful to enter without permission of the Installation commander. When the ending was changed for theatrical and DVD release, that scene was cut from the movie, leaving no explanation as to how Anna could have gotten on and off the island.

Alternatively, and since Anna would not necesarilly have known that the GWB was still intact (no mention of it is made in Neville's recorded radio broadcasts, and she came from Maryland), she took a boat across the Hudson River with Ethan and their stuff; and scavanged the SUV when she got to the Manhattan shore. She may or may not have repeated the same process when she left Manhattan for the Bronx or Long Island or whatever route she took north to Vermont if either she was still unaware that the GWB was intact or if it was effectively impassible. This also explains why her SUV was shiny clean and not looking like it had made an arduous journey. In order to mitigate against problems of old oil, weathered tires, weathered electronic systems, she would have been wise to select a car in New York from an enclosed parking garage; one that was also covered in a cloth would be more likely have had an owner who used synthetic oil and kept up proper maintenance during his/her life. She might well have had to change cars several times along her journey, if bridges, overpasses, et cetera were jammed with the cars of the dead, and a practical way around could not be found.

It's vinegar. He uses vinegar to block his scent so that the Dark Seekers can't track him down.

There are two possibilities: 1) The Dark Seekers made the trap for Neville. The alpha male had copied Neville's trap design and used Fred as the bait. 2) Neville had made the trap (either for food or to capture or kill the infected), then abandoned it and eventually forgot about it. The alpha male found the trap, knew what it was, and put Fred there as bait (or Neville may have put a Fred lookalike there himself as a marker). Neville then fell into his own trap. Fans hotly debate this question, mostly because it's unclear just how intelligent the Dark Seekers are. Note that the movie's alternate ending (available on the DVD) shows the Dark Seekers coming to rescue the one that Neville had captured. This deleted scene suggests that the Seekers have a certain amount of intelligence and might have been capable of making such a trap. In another deleted scene in the alternate cut, Neville, Anna, and Ethan investigate the 'Fred' trap; and Neville says that the trap contains his own materials, which suggests that the infected may have cannibalized one of his traps.

The song in the first half is "Two Rocks and a Cup of Water" by Massive Attack. It is also featured on the soundtrack for Danny the Dog (2005). The song in the second half is "Death Is the Road to Awe" by Clint Mansell. It is also featured on the soundtrack for The Fountain (2006).

The outdoor scenes were filmed almost entirely in New York City. Scenes set in Greenwich Village, the Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx, St. Patrick's Cathedral, TriBeCa, and on the USS Intrepid and the Brooklyn Bridge, were all filmed on location. Streets were blocked off for long periods of time and weeds were imported from Florida and spread around the streets to show the overgrowth. Pedestrians, moving cars and persons visible through windows were all digitally removed from the final film.

It is common for children who have been through extreme trauma to give up speaking. In a deleted scene on the alternate ending cut DVD, Neville, Anna, and Ethan go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Ethan jumps into the fish pool. He then says "it's cold" when Neville throws bait in and the fish begin frenzying around him. The DVD's special features reveal that the child actor has a very thick New York accent that some audiences would find hard to understand. That may be the real reason the character is given no dialogue.

Neville brought his wife and daughter to the dock, where they were put on one of the last helicopters transporting people off Manhattan Island before it was to be quarantined. The military then blew up all the bridges, and as they did, some desperate people jumped onto the outside of another helicopter that was taking off. This caused the helicopter to spin out of control and crash into the one that was carrying Neville's family, killing them. The actual crash is not shown.

Neville is a lieutenant colonel.

A panoramic shot of the interior of Neville's dwelling shows several gas-fueled generators. He presumably uses these for electric power. For water, he may have a roof top water tank. Tanks like this are still in use in New York today to supplement water pressure. Normally they are fed from the municipal water system by pumping water to the roof top tank and letting gravity build the pressure for the building. In Neville's case, the tank may be a later addition that is fed by a rainwater collection system of some kind. Or it could be fed with a pump that is powered from his generator array, and connected to the water system left in the city. Even if it is only residual water left in the mains, it would still be a considerable amount in terms of the number of gallons available. It is possible that even after three years, the water that had been present in the city's pipelines would still be there. After all, Neville is the only one using a water supply that was meant to serve nine million citizens. New York City's water comes from the Catskill Mountains. The water only needs to be pressurized if it's going above the height of the Catskills. As long as he stays out of skyscrapers, Neville will have no trouble pumping water; he will always be below the mountain. Whenever Neville turns on the water you can hear him start a pump. The water could come from a well, a cistern, or from existing water mains.

It's a 2007 Ford Shelby Mustang GT500.

Without citiwide electricity to run refrigerators, fresh meat is in short supply. In one scene, Neville is forced to feed the dog vegetables in tomato sauce. Canned foods, dried food, preserves etc. would last indefinitely, but meat would rot fairly quickly. Neville has generators set up around his house (visible in some wide shots), which allow him to power his own equipment, including the fridge in his kitchen.

New York City has three major zoos: (1) Central Park Zoo, (2) Prospect Park Zoo, and (3) The Bronx Zoo. The deer and lions could have come from one of them. Upstate New York also has lots of deer. Considering that deer can swim and that the George Washington Bridge is still intact, it's possible that they migrated into the city.

He is in the Temple Room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

It is a Tower Records/Video. However, this creates something of a plot hole in that the events that lead up to the city being deserted happen in 2009, and Tower Records liquidated all of their stores in 2006 - as such no place that previously housed a Tower store would still have products by 2009, when there were still some residents.

While the crew obviously went through great lengths not to ever show the name "Tower", the font on signage, hours on the door, behind the counter,etc. are all dead giveaways to anyone who ever visited or worked in one of their stores on a regular basis.

No. He wakes up in bed throughout the movie. He might stay in the bathtub between dusk and bedtime as a way of escaping the noise from the Dark Seekers.

This appears to be a continuity goof. Otherwise, he had woken up some time near dawn and opened them. (The second time we see Neville wake up, he opens the shutters.) He appears to hide in the bathtub with the gun unable to sleep and presumably gets up at dawn, opening the shudders, letting in the light that he feels protects him and then can finally sleep. You will also notice he doesn't do anything at night that could make noise and let the dark dwellers know where he is such as exercising or using electricity. However, it is possible Neville has a timer on the shutters to open at a certain time after dawn to allow light it to wake him up, and protect him. He has access to the kind of technology it would take to put the generators on a timer and make them open the shutters, however this possibility is least likely.

"Legend" by Bob Marley. "Legend" is a compilation released by Island Records in 1984, three years after Marley's death.

"Three Little Birds" by Bob Marley. This is the also the song Neville sings in the lab as he holds Sam and notices that she's mutating.

In one of the empty homes Neville enters, there is a newspaper clipping that says infected dogs are able to come out at dusk (though they can't pass through a stream of direct sunlight).

Neville quickly brings Sam back to his home and injects her with the cure that appeared successful on a test rat. But he either gives her the injection too late, or the compound is ineffective. Seconds later, Sam becomes fiercely aggressive and attempts to bite Neville. To save himself and spare Sam the pain and agony of being a canine hemocyte, Neville is forced to strangle her.

Many viewers think that Neville could have done more to save his dog Sam's life. He had the glass room, cages, chains, manacles, etc. But Neville surely wanted to spare his dog the agony of being a canine Dark Seeker, especially since he couldn't be sure of curing her.

There's no way Anna could have driven from NYC in those conditions and still have a shiny clean SUV. It's possible the prop people didn't realize the context in which the vehicle would be used. Or the car may have been a product placement for Ford, in which case the car would have to be clean no matter what.

Is there a way to explain away the goof? It's possible the car is not the one in which Anna left Maryland. She may have driven to the Hudson River where she transferred herself, Ethan and their stuff onto a boat of some kind, hot-wired another car when she got there, and repeated the same process when she left Manhattan for the Bronx (or Long Island or whatever route she took north to Vermont). In order to mitigate against problems of old oil, weathered tires, weathered electronic systems, she would have been wise to select a car from an enclosed parking garage; one that was also covered in a cloth would be more likely have had an owner who used synthetic oil and kept up proper maintenance during his life.

Neville had been an Army scientist, probably in charge of a government task force to contain and cure the disease. This had made him an important figure during the crisis, and many had looked to him to find a cure. His face had appeared on the cover of Time with a headline asking whether he could save humanity (this Time cover appears on his refrigerator door), and he was mentioned in the second recorded broadcast of "The Today Show" Neville was watching. He also mentions himself by name in his own repeated broadcast.

The infected, or "Dark Seekers," were entirely computer-generated, although part of the time their motion was controlled by actors, using "motion capture" technology.

Neville only travels during the day, when the Dark Seekers can't follow him. He is meticulous about his comings and goings, and he covers his tracks. When Anna brings him home it is still dusk, when the Dark Seekers can still track them. She does not realize this and the Dark Seekers discover his hideout.

There are two possibilities. One, they sleep standing up while huddling. Two, they are eating the body of the deer whose head can be seen outside.

In the film, both Anna and Neville refer to the creatures as "Dark Seekers". However, on the DVD, the subtitle track uses the term "hemocyte" to describe the Dark Seekers. Both names are correct.

The eye scanner can detect dilation of the pupils. Those infected with the virus have pupils that are open to their widest point. The reason why the scanner first detected Zoe's (Neville's wife) pupils as dilated could be because: 1) the scanner malfunctioned, or 2) her pupils were dilated due to an adrenaline rush, something that could easily have happened to Zoe when she was being evacuated.

She uses a phosphorous flare. The lights on top of Neville's car are most likely ultraviolet lights, which kept the infected from attacking his car until he flipped it and smashed the lights.

The story is, indeed, set in 2012. But flashbacks show that the virus became airborne and epidemic in late 2009. As the outbreak spread around the world, immediately killing off 90% of the world's population, there were few people left anywhere to make or buy cars. Whatever cars were left in Manhattan after the island was sealed (around Christmas 2008) would have been from the current year (2008) or earlier, with the possible exception of a few newly-released 2009 models. At any rate, the props department would have found it difficult to find 2012 Fords.

Initially, they may have feasted on the humans trapped on the island. Following that, they might have turned to eating the bodies of the dead, which would explain why there were no bodies lying in the streets. They probably had the smarts and agility to trap or bring down other animals on the island, such as the herds of deer occasionally seen jumping between the parked cars or the birds seen flying between buildings or even stray dogs and cats. They may have done what Neville was doing -- scavenged from abandoned houses and stores. Finally, they may have organized themselves into small groups and killed and ate Dark Seekers from rival hives.

Neville had set up a mannequin on the end of the pier where he spent every afternoon hoping to meet another living person. The Dark Seekers think it is Neville and rush over to it, not knowing that Neville is sitting in his truck waiting to shine his UV lights on them and then run them over with his Ford Expedition.

That scene took place in Neville's basement laboratory. There are several explanations as to why a hand grenade could have caused a major explosion. One is that Neville used an incendiary grenade. Another is that the explosion was amplified in the confined space. A third is that he kept other volatile and flammable chemicals down there.

The viewer can only guess at what was going through Neville's mind at the time. There was no need for Neville to blow himself up. He could just as easily have tossed the grenade and climbed inside with Anna and Ethan. Some possible reasons that have been suggested to explain Neville's decision include a) he had lost his will to live, b) the crawlspace was too small to fit all three of them, c) if the grenade didn't kill all the Dark Seekers in the basement, the survivors would know where he, Anna, and Ethan were hiding, and d) the Alpha Male was only after Neville.

No, this is a common misunderstanding. At the very end of the Theatrical Version Anna says "At approximately 8:49, Robert Neville discovered the cure. At 8:52 he gave his life to defend it.". With Anna's accent it has been misheard as "at 'age' 52, he gave his life to defend it."

Butterflies show up in a number of places in the movie. The first butterfly is when Neville's daughter Marley forms one with her hands as the family drives to the helicopter to get out of Manhattan. She says something like "Look, Daddy, it's a butterfly." A bit later, Sam is chasing a butterfly in the field where Neville is picking corn, and Neville drives by a faded sign that features a butterfly and the logo: God still loves you. Towards the end of the movie, some people see a butterfly shape in the cracked Plexiglas when the Alpha male keeps butting his head against it and/or a butterfly smeared on the Plexiglas with the Alpha male's blood. Neville then looks at Anna's neck and sees a butterfly tattooed on it, remembers Marley's words, and decides that it's a sign from God. In the original ending, there was a butterfly on the Alpha female, and people have interpreted the butterfly on the Plexiglas as a sign that the Alpha male is smearing a butterfly on the glass in order to tell Neville that he wants the Alpha female with the butterfly tattoo.

The USS Intrepid aircraft carrier, and the aircraft aboard it, are decommissioned vessels that comprise the Intrepid Air and Sea Museum, at Pier 86 in New York City. The aircraft had been placed aboard the carrier. The plane is, however, not an SR-71, but its similar looking predecessor A-12. See: Google Earth at location 40 degrees 45'51.3" N x 74 degrees W.

It's necessary to closely watch the sequence of events as they take place in that scene. First, Neville, Anna, and Ethan run down to the basement laboratory with the Dark Seekers closing in on them. Neville barricades the three of them in the containment room. Only then does Neville notice that the compound appears to be working on the Alpha female, who is also in the containment room with them. But the Darks have already invaded the lab and surrounded the room, so Neville has no way to get to the compound, which is stored elsewhere in the lab. The only thing to which he has access is the female's blood, so he draws up a sample and gives it to Anna, knowing that the compound can be obtained and replicated from the blood as long as Anna is able to get it safely to the survivor's colony in Vermont.

Neville appears to have a "natural" immunity. Natural immunities are genetically-based and cannot be passed to other people, with the exception of newborn infants whose mothers have conferred upon them short-term immunities through the placenta or breast-milk. In the case of the alpha female, she appears to have been developing an "acquired" immunity. Acquired immunities are developed after an individual has been infected with a virus or other pathogen. The compound that Neville injected into her appears to have stimulated her body's immune system to produce antibodies against the virus. It's these antibodies found in the blood that can be used to confer immunity on others. Neville's blood doesn't contain those antibodies because he never got the disease in the first place nor does he have the compound in his blood because he never injected himself with it.

Near the end of the movie, both original and alternate, Neville locks himself, Anna, and Ethan in the Plexiglas cubicle that contains the Dark female, but the alpha Dark continues to throw himself against the glass. Neville notices that the compound that he injected into the female several days earlier is beginning to work. Here is where the endings begin to differ.

In the original ending (which has become known as the alternate ending and is available on an extra disk in some DVDs), Neville puts down his gun, detaches the alpha female from her IV, and instructs Anna to open the Plexiglas door. Then Neville wheels the female outside to the waiting Darks, who have stopped their attack. Neville gets a syringe and withdraws some of her blood. The female wakes up and is embraced by the alpha male, who carries her out of the lab. The next day, Anna, Ethan, and Neville leave Manhattan, headed for the survivors' colony. Anna has left behind a radio broadcast that assures anyone listening that they are not alone.

The original ending was shown to a test audience who apparently did not like it for a variety of reasons, including the fact that it changed the ending of Richard Matheson's novel. A new ending was filmed for theatrical and DVD releases. In the new ending, Neville does not exit the Plexiglas room. Rather, he draws up a syringeful of the female's blood and gives it to Anna with instructions that she get it to the survivors' colony so that the antidote compound can be extracted from the blood and made into a cure. Then he seals Anna and Ethan in a crawlspace. Pulling the pin on an incendiary grenade, Neville blows up the lab, himself, and the Darks. The next day, Anna and Ethan leave Manhattan and drive to the survivors' colony in Vermont. The survivors welcome them, and Anna hands them the antidote.

A detailed comparison between the theatrical version and the alternative theatrical version with pictures can be found here.

"Redemption Song" by Bob Marley.

The trailer has a scene in which Neville is surrounded by the Dark Seekers. The scene had been part of an ending in which Neville releases the Alpha Female, followed by the Alpha Male leaving him in peace. Neville, Anna and Ethan then go off to Vermont. The filmmakers scrapped this ending after testing it with a focus group.

A lovemaking scene between Neville and Anna was removed. This scene probably occurred right after the Bob Marley scene (after Ethan had been put to bed). The Bob Marley scene and music would have helped set the mood for Anna and Neville to dance and get close and eventually make love. In the scene that follows, Anna goes down to the lab to see Neville. She is wearing a different shirt (possibly his) and seems much more upbeat in the way she greets Neville, as if she had just had sex with him.

Another shot that was deleted was an aerial shot of Greenwich Village after Neville detonates his car bombs, and a scene showing Neville driving his Mustang through a storefront was removed.

The DVD has: the alternate ending; a scene with Anna, Ethan, and Neville investigating the "Fred" trap; and a scene where Ethan is swimming in a pond as Neville and Anna watch.

Francis Lawrence said in an interview that he cut out an hour. He said most of it dealt with the Dark Seekers.

From SlashFilm (Jan 3, 2008):

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The rumors we reported back in August regarding a sequel to I Am Legend have apparently moved one step closer to the big screen. According to ShockTillYouDrop, author Richard Matheson just signed off sequel rights to his 1957 novel to Warner Bros.

Meanwhile, the film's screenwriter, Mark Protosevich, continues to express his involvement with a follow-up set a decade in the future. Whether Will Smith will return is still under wraps, though the actor has expressed strong reluctance to star in sequels in recent interviews. If you've seen the somber smash hit, wouldn't a sequel undermine the movie's entire message and title, sort of like how the film version undermined the book's big reveal?

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Yes. The first adaptation of Richard Matheson's 1954 novel, I Am Legend, has fallen out of copyright and now appears on a number of websites devoted to public domain movies. You can see this film at Archive.org or at Classic Cinema online.

PRO:

In what has been a pretty remarkable career up to now, it's this performance that fully affirms Smith as one of the great leading men of his generation. -- Scott Foundas, Village Voice

The Manhattan movie of the year, Francis Lawrence's I Am Legend, offers a stunning glimpse into how the city - as we know it today - might look in 2012 if it were abandoned in 2009. -- Jack Mathews, New York Daily News

The first two thirds and change of I Am Legend is terrific mindless fun: crackerjack action with gnashing vampires barely glimpsed (and scarier for that) and how'd-they-do-that New York locations that retroactively justify the traffic jams. -- David Edelstein, New York Magazine

A scary, inventive, exciting and breathless adventure that combines the best elements of Children of Men, Escape from New York and The Road Warrior, but leaves out the worst stuff - such as the story-clogging despair and political allegory in Children, a movie that made apocalypse look like kind of a downer. -- Kyle Smith, New York Post

The movie year's most expensive and ambitious sci-fi spectacular, I Am Legend, is three movies in one: a futuristic effects-o-rama, a zombie thriller and a survivalist parable. Each is better than average, and the experience is fairly gripping. -- William Arnold, Seattle Post-Intelligencer



MIXED:

The movies being sold as a high-octane action spectacular, but thanks to Smith and Lawrences directorial restraint, the quiet moments are what define the film, and what you find yourself wanting to see most. If anything, its the action scenes that fail. -- Peter Suderman, National Review

In spirit, I Am Legend is caught in some abstractly doom-laden sci-fi past. For what it is, though, the film is well-done, a case of suspenseful competence trumping questionable relevance. -- Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

The first two-thirds are classic science fiction, technologically plausible and emotionally resonant. It's only when God enters the picture that things slide downhill. -- Lawrence Toppman, Charlotte Observer

There is something a bit thin about the story, and just as in 28 Days Later, I find that digital, rage-filled zombies halve in dramatic interest with every second that passes. There's a credibility niggle too: in this post-apocalyptic wasteland, Neville's apartment has electricity, perhaps from a generator - but also running water. No one, though, could fail to be impressed by the gobsmacking digital creations of an empty, ruined Manhattan, a jungle with real zoo-bred animals roaming around. -- Peter Bradshaw, Guardian

The vision of a Manhattan filled with abandoned cars, its bridges shattered, lions chasing deer down Fifth Avenue, Times Square overgrown with rushes, is poetically realised by production designer Naomi Shohan and probably accounted for a large part of the fabulous budget. Smith, alone with his dog for much of the time, commands our attention as the resourceful Crusoe figure, and there are some good action set pieces as Neville does battle with the ghastly mutants. But despite a tagged-on happy ending, this is a deeply depressing experience as no doubt Matheson intended it to be back in the angst-ridden Fifties. -- Philip French, Observer

The movie works well while it's running, although it raises questions that later only mutate in our minds. -- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Remarkably eerie yet annoyingly larded with cheap horror-film shock effects, I Am Legend stands as an effective but also irksome adaptation of Richard Matheson's classic 1954 sci-fi novel. -- Variety

Some cartoonish CGI and a mangled screenplay that misses the novel's point are downsides but the apocalyptic vision brings definite chills. -- Jamie Russell, bbc.co.uk

Overall, I Am Legend is a wasted opportunity - a rickety, weather-beaten framework around an otherwise strong central performance from Smith. -- Eric Alt, Premiere



CON:

Science fiction fans hoping for a faithful adaptation of Matheson's novel will be disappointed. This is no more a visitation of the source material than its predecessors, The Last Man on Earth or The Omega Man, were. -- James Berardenelli, ReelViews

This new version of I am Legend completely perverts the meaning of the title, losing the clever, dark irony and turning it instead into something heroic rather than something tragic. -- Beth Accomando, kpbs.org

Matheson's bitterly ironic ending - which pivots on the nature of Neville's legend - is gutted and turned into formulaic pap. -- Maitland McDonagh, TV Guide

After its promising opening, I Am Legend devolves into a generic zombie slaughterfest. -- Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail

A big part of the reason for this movie's nose dive around the one-hour mark is that, seen up close, the Infected just aren't that scary. -- Dana Stevens, Slate

The credits list a couple of dozen medical and scientific consultants. What this film really needed was a script doctor. -- Michael Sragow, Baltimore Sun

Unfortunately, after those first 10 minutes its all downhill for I Am Legend, as the film descends into a monster-movie malaise starring a horde of balding CGI monsters that look like refugees from a video game and that will scare absolutely no one, save those who worry that green-screening is ruining the movies. -- Josh Rosenblatt, Austin Chronicle

Sources include: christookey.com, movietome

I Am Legend is, of course, a remake of The Omega Man (1971), which is in turn a remake of The Last Man on Earth (1964). All three of these movies are based on Richard Matheson's story but each brings different perspectives to Neville's attempts to survive. Several people have noted that I Am Legend reminds them of Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later... (2002), in which the Rage virus is unleashed in the UK and survivors attempt to band together in London, and the sequel 28 Weeks Later (2007). Some have compared I Am Legend to Stephen King's miniseries, "The Stand (1994)," in which survivors of a deadly virus migrate to two diametrically-opposed survivors' camps in Boulder, Colorado and Las Vegas, Nevada. There are also similarities between I Am Legend and David Slade's 30 Days of Night (2007) in which residents of a small town in Alaska attempt to survive when the town is overcome by vampires during the wintry "30 days of night." Other movies which have plots more or less similar to I Am Legend include The Andromeda Strain (1971), Robin Cook's Virus (1995), Resident Evil (2002) and its sequels, Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004) and Resident Evil: Extinction (2007), and The Satan Bug (1965). For a more sci-fi take, but similar imagery of animals roaming the jungles of New York, the Terry Gilliam film Twelve Monkeys (1995) takes the tale back to the beginning of the end.