I AM LEGEND: THE BOOK AND THE FILM
I AM LEGEND: THE BOOK AND THE FILM
Recently, watched I am legend. A good+bad film. Those who have not read the original novel by Richard Matheson can find the film good. But I have read the book. So I found the film little dissatisfying.
The makers have taken lots of cinematic liberties that they have changed premise and changed characters. Why filmmakers can do anything in the name of cinematic liberty?
The novel dealt more with psychological status of Robert Neville. While the film is more concentrated on special effects and showing empty Newyork city. What was the need of showing lions and deers in Newyork city?
Also the novel explains some scientific as well as super natural reasons for people being infacted and being zombies’ type of creatures. Here there is no satisfying reason for infection. I also missed the Courtman and his signature line ‘Robert Naville, come out’
Initially, Arnold Schwarzeneager was considered for Robert Naville. I think he could be a better choice as we have seen him in End of days as psychologically tired alone man. But Will smith also has played his role very well.
Agreed that the thoughts and psychological status of Robert Naville can not be explained in the film as explained in the novel in detailed manner but more emphasis should have been given on showing his fear to zombies and his psychological status, his talking to himself, preparing for night.
The zombies look like successors of gollums of Lord of the rings trilogy. We can’t relate zombies to infected human beings. I think this was best shown in Resident Evil movies.
The house of Naville was not convincing. There should be generators, lights, and fencing shown around his house.
Climax is totally different from novel. Though novel convincingly explains reason of Robert Neville being as legend, the movie explains it quite differently and somewhat satisfactorily.
Tags: arnold, i am legend, richard mathesson, Will Smith
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
I feel that the transformation of books to the visual media is always unsatisfactory to more or less degree. It may be because both the mediums deal with different dimensions. One of the very few movies made with very much loyalty to the original material is The Godfather. But I often have question whether it requires any creative input from the director in cent-percent portrayal of the book. Or may be it is the height of creativity that can make that complete portrayal possible?!!
oh yes I was also put off by the zombies in the film. WS was quite good IMHO. yet to read the book !