I Am Legend
On Thursday, James and I went to the cinema with Mum and Matthew to see the new Will Smith movie, I Am Legend. I am quite fond of large-scale disaster movies such as The Day After Tomorrow, 28 Days Later and Independence Day and I Am Legend did quite well.
I quite like Will Smith. He’s a good actor and is quite versatile, doing action, comedy and serious drama all equally as well. I do hope he doesn’t go down the Tom Hanks route and get all serious for every movie though. I Am Legend would be a seriously challenging film for any actor because for the majority of the film, Will Smith is the only person in it! The down-side seems to be that not a great deal happens. Most of the film is just that - this one character going about his business. The movie’s sub-title could just have been “Will Smith does Acting“.
If you are really sensitive about spoilers, don’t continue reading this post but to be honest, there isn’t much to ‘give away’ because not much happens. Will Smith’s character is living alone in New York because he is immune to a terrible air-born disease that has either killed, or infected the rest of the world. The disease came about due to a doctor trying to harness the power of an existing virus (the measles), to enhance the immune system and therefore cure serious afflications such as cancer. This virus however, mutated and sent people’s metabolisms into hyper-drive to a point where their bodies could not sustain themselves without getting more blood. It spread massively due to also mutating to an air-born strain. Everyone who was infected became a bit crazy due to their body’s changes and thirst for the blood of others therefore even though there were quite a few survivors who were immune, they were all killed by the infected. All the senses of the infected were hightened, breathing became faster and skin became far more sensitive to UV rays forcing them to stay in the shelter during the day. Sounds all a bit vampire-like doesn’t it. Apparently in the book they are vampires however this isn’t expressly mentioned in the movie I Am Legend.
Anyway that explanation of what the hell is going on is all skirted over very quickly in the movie and you don’t really get enough explanation of what’s going on. I always think part of the true scariness of these types of movies is seeing the fall of the human race. In this film though, it is relegated to a few very short flash-back scenes. The scenes of the deserted city are very impressive though and are understandably used as much as possible.
My major gripe is one that I have with quite a few movies recently - the overuse of CG for characters that could have been played by real people. I am willing to admit that computer graphics are very very good nowadays and can be very successfully integrated into live action sequences. I do however think that some film-makers are deluding themselves into thinking that they can churn out anything in CG and it will look believable. Wikipedia notes that some reviews of the film said that “the infected just aren’t that scary” and they are right. The reason for this is that the depiction of the infected has lost all association with a recognisable human origin. I understand that the affects of the virus are supposed to have changed the body’s abilities etc but what was presented bore no real resemblance to the human it supposedly started as. The movement was very strange and the sounds the infected made didn’t sound anything like what would come from even a mutated human voicebox. There is no way that these characters could be truly scary in the intended manner unless you can look at them and have at least a tiny recognition of something human and be able to say ‘oh my god, look what’s happened to that person as a result of their infection’ rather than ‘what the hell is that? Oh, it’s another gross movie monster.’
The way that CG is executed is not yet good enough to have fully computer generated characters in my view but we see it all the time. It is good enough to add effects, but the characters just aren’t good enough alongside live action characters. The technology may well be there, but the people doing it haven’t got it yet. The close-ups should have been actors and CG used to complement this in wider scenes. In the context of CG, it was fantastic. In the context of trying to look real and scary, the movie bosses are deluding themselves if they think they’ve got it spot on yet. I still think we are years away from that.
