The living adults in the film, Neville and Anna, both had reasons to keep fighting to stay alive. While Neville looked for a way to bring the zombies/vampires/people back to humanity, or to "cure them", Anna sought a colony of other humans who were not infected. This, I think, made for a much more plausible story and made the characters much more relatable, and gave me something to root for as an audience member that I did not feel as a reader.
Monday, April 28, 2014
Film: Giving Neville A Purpose
There were many significant differences between the novel and film adaptation of I Am Legend--the story was in modern day New York City, the nature of the vampires was more animalistic rather than vampire-like, and the "germ" was actually a mutation of a human-made virus. I thought that many of these changes made the whole story seem more intentional and less random. For one, the virus was generated as a cancer treatment that mutated into something dangerous. This puts the blame on us and makes the infection seem more of a "disease" than a mutation that could be a part of evolution. In the novel, the vampire germ is random and leads to a new dominant species that overthrows humankind. The film makes the virus unnatural and something to be "cured"--by the protagonist, Robert Neville. One of my main issues with the novel was that Neville didn't seem to have any goals or purpose; he spend day after day trying to survive with no real reason to. In the film, Neville is constantly trying to find a cure, which was his reason to have hope for the future.
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I actually liked Neville's lack of a purpose in the book more than Will Smith's driven nature in the film. I think the Neville in the novel felt much more human and this gave the book more meaning. The book explored Neville's frailty, showing the effects of his solitude. He was constantly drunk, angry, and depressed. To me, this was a much more realistic and meaningful portrayal of the last man on earth in a post-apocalyptic world infested by vampires.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Alex - I find the film's portrayal of Neville as incredibly unrealistic. Faced with an eternity of loneliness, the Robert Neville in the novel falls into a depression with a dash of an existential crisis. Although he does have routine, his lack of deadlines (considering he is the last human being) gives him wiggle room to take some days off - like the rainy days he mentions. In the film, Neville is the epitome of an American hero. He is disciplined, a decorated military officer, a doctor, a strategist, possibly an up and coming bodybuilder - a true Renaissance man, a Herculean champion. I found this version of Neville to be too perfect and off-putting. In this sense, he was made into a "Chosen One" trope. With every special skill of Neville's that was revealed to us, I kept thinking, "Right, of COURSE he would be the last surviving human being. I felt a disconnect; ironically, I viewed him as not very human. In the novel, however, I always found myself realizing that, yes, that would be me. With every rant to himself, with every lazy day he had, I connected with him more. Neville could have been anybody.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Alex and Irene. I think that Neville in the book had reasons to live that we can relate with more easily than those seen in the movie. Neville in the book was living in the hopes that he might find other humans that had survived the germ's spread and just for the sake of living. To live for humanity's sake is not so terrible a thing. I think that in the movie, they made Neville seem a little too motivated to make a lot of the loneliness believable. In the book the loneliness was palpable and felt very real, whereas in the movie he didn't seem lonely at all. The mannequins were one of the only indicators and even that seemed a little forced - not in an awkward, I-haven't-spoken-to-another-human-in-forever way, but in a we-have-to-show-you-that-he's-lonely way. Neville in the movie just had too much going well for him.
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