The View

In 1953 Richard Matheson wrote a novel on the inevitable events further to come in the book I am Legend, written about a man and his ways to survive being human among a sea of vampires. The vampires aren’t his only obstacles he has to overcome, loneliness, depression and purpose. In 2007 Francis Lawrence attempted to adapt this myth/legend to spark people’s interests on the projector. Casting Will Smith as Neville the main character of this epic adventure, Lawrence puts you in Neville’s shoes to save mankind and become a “legend.” Lawrence did a swell job in sparking the eyes of the beholders and staying on the same plot as Matheson, but overall I would give Lawrence a B for his adaptation of Matheson’s novel.

Watching the movie and then reading the book was a huge transition for many readers including myself. In the movie I am Legend Robert Neville is a well known face and is suited very well for the role he over takes by becoming the last “hope” of mankind. All though this is very appealing to the human eye and makes the movie flow better, Lawrence didn’t catch the whole reason why in the book he is just an “Average Joe.” This is one reason he deserves a B because having Neville just being an average guy helps readers relate to him better and is able to compare themselves more to him rather than a man who is cut out for the job.

On the plus side though Lawrence catches all of the emotion you feel when you are reading the book. Both in the movie and the novel I wanted to cry when the dog died. Even if the dog was with him for a week or years they still captured all of the emotion that took place in this horrific event. An addition to the plus side in the movie you could see the look and feel the loneliness that Matheson intensely wrote about, along with the relationships they had with the creatures of the night. The movie had more of a distant relationship with the vampires and the book had more of a personal relationship. Lawrence probably did this so there would be more conflict and action to appeal to the eye. So I think Lawrence did a keen job adapting the reluctant novel to a faster pace to keep interest.

People often say the book is better than the movie but this one is hard to say since they have two different perspectives of the same catastrophe. Reading the novel and then watching the movie can show that you can interpret the same thing differently since the plot was so similar but the overview was so dissociated from each other. As Roberson Davies said, “A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.”