I Am Legend

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I watched the film. For the first hour I was thinking: "this is pretty good, quite scary and entertaining". Then it all went to shit just as I thought it was getting good. I don't want to go into detail, because I don't want to spoil it.

Then I thought: "the book is a classic of SF, and horror - surely this must be a case of Hollywood tinkering with a good story, improving it for focus groups and merchandising purposes". So I read the book.

It kicks arse, specifically vampire arse. If you've seen the film, read the book and think: "why the steaming fudge did they not just film this?". If you haven't seen the film, and don't want to, read the book. It is a classic, and rightly so. If you want to see the film, read the book afterwards. Not before. Otherwise you will sit there thinking: "oh fuckety-arse, they've shat all over the great story and now the title of the film makes no fucking sense".

In the book, Robert Neville smokes a pipe, grows a beard and uses paper plates instead of doing his washing up. Damn straight the last man on Earth is absolutely going to do those things. Will Smith didn't. I rest my case as to the relative merits of the two versions.

Comments

  1. Unknown31/1/08 21:50

    I read the book ages ago, and thought it was awesome. However I thought the film was okay, the first half was really quite good. No, it's not really the same story as the book, but I think I had such low expectations that I came out feeling positive.

    Surely "Come out Neville!" would have been brilliant on film though?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Gareth1/2/08 10:54

    Yeah, the first half was made of awesome and I was glad I hadn't read the book before seeing the film.

    ReplyDelete

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