I Am Legend: The Abridged Script
By: Rod Hilton on Jan 8th, 2008 | Movie Rating: 
FADE IN:
EXT. NEW YORK CITY
WILL SMITH walks around the deserted NEW YORK CITY.
WILL hunts for animals poorly and generally collects resources for his home, which is an old house with secured windows rather than, say, an abandoned military base.
WILL SMITH
Well, it sure does suck being the only survivor of a disease that wiped out most of the human population. It’s a good thing I have an unexplained immunity.
WILL SMITH’S DOG
Woof.
WILL SMITH
At least I have a dog around, so that I have someone around to talk to and the first hour of the movie isn’t complete silence.
WILL SMITH’S DOG
Bark.
WILL SMITH
I should also set up mannequins everywhere so that I can pretend they are people. It’ll be just like those scenes from Castaway where Tom Hanks befriended the volleyball, except my worn-out Fresh Prince sassy shtick will play it up for laughs.
MANNEQUIN
…
WILL SMITH
Now that’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout!
WILL walks around more of NEW YORK, mostly so we can see how empty it is because AMERICAN AUDIENCES didn’t grasp it when it happened to LONDON in 28 DAYS LATER.
WILL SMITH
Damn, Times Square is now filthy, covered in garbage, and overrun with animals willing to kill each other to survive.
(pause)
I guess it’s pretty much the same.
In the background is a poster for a Superman/Batman crossover film, which is the highlight of the movie.
Suddenly, WILL’S DOG runs into a dark building.
WILL SMITH
Oh no! My one best friend ran into a building infested with vampires or zombies or monsters or something! You’d think I’d have trained him better than that, given the fact that I’ve had three years to do so!
WILL goes in after his dog to rescue it. We finally see the MONSTERS, which are apparently grayish brown blobs in semi-human shapes.
WILL and his dog return home. WILL SMITH checks what he is supposed to do next by reading the “I Am Legend” novel.
WILL SMITH
It says here that I’m now supposed to go around killing vampires at night while they sleep, but that it turns out a bunch of the vampires managed to hold off the infection and are just regular people that look like vampires. Thus, rather than vampires being the evil stalkers of the night killing innocent children in their beds, it is I who have become the deadly evil.
WILL SMITH grabs a stake and some garlic before nightfall, but then notices that he is on the cover of TIME magazine.
WILL SMITH
Oh wait, this magazine says that I’m actually a scientist and I helped create this virus by accident, giving me a strong social responsibility to find a cure. And everyone who is infected is an evil zombie vampire thing, so there’s no moral ambiguity about my role after all. What a wonderfully common premise!
The movie turns into a mindless action/horror flick, trading suspense for cheap scares and story for explosions.
WILL SMITH
So basically this movie has turned into a tired remake of 28 Days Later, but in New York and with shitty special effects. Pretty much the only thing this movie accomplishes is needlessly using the title from the I Am Legend novel, so that nobody can take the far more interesting story it contains and make an actual adaptation of it for a long, long time. Great.
WILL SMITH falls for a trap set up by a monster, indicating they are actually intelligent, fully contradicting everything else in the movie and making it extremely clear how many rewrites the script has gone through.
In the process, WILL SMITH’S DOG dies, giving him absolutely nobody to talk to. Saddened, he decides to kill himself by being eaten by vampires. Because if you’re going to kill yourself, you may as well make it the most painful, terrifying suicide possible.
Suddenly, SOME GIRL, ALICE BRAGA, shows up and saves him. She is accompanied by SOME KID, CHARLIE TAHAN, who is probably either ALICE’S SON or BROTHER, but they are so unimportant that the movie doesn’t bother explaining which.
ALICE BRAGA
I am a survivor. I have come because of your radio message. We should go to the survivor’s colony together. I believe it is a sign from God that I just happened to show up the day after your dog died.
WILL SMITH
Sign from God? No, the filmmakers are terrified of the idea that I’d be carrying the movie based solely on my emoting ability. Without my dog around, I had nobody to make wisecracks to, so they wrote you in.
WILL SMITH defends his brick-and-wood house against an invasion of vampires. Surprisingly, this goes POORLY.
WILL SMITH
We have to get to my lab! I’ve been working on a cure for the disease so I can turn the monsters back into normal humans!
ALICE BRAGA
They’re supposed to be human? I thought they were just generic monsters. If they are supposed to be people, why didn’t we just use skinny people in makeup? Why did we bother going the CGI route with such embarrassingly poor special effects?
WILL SMITH
That’s not important. What’s important is that I’m a big, important scientist as well as a top military official and I’m going to find a cure.
ALICE BRAGA
What? The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as a military drone I can buy, but a top scientist? I find all the vampire shit more believable.
WILL SMITH
I MUST find a cure. It has been extremely important to me ever since my wife and child died.
ALICE BRAGA
How tragic! They must have been killed by vampires or turned into vampires or something, given how important it is to you that you find a cure.
WILL SMITH
Close. They died in a completely unrelated helicopter crash. It has virtually nothing to do with the actual plot of the movie.
ALICE BRAGA
…
CHARLIE TAHAN
This movie is stupid as hell.
WILL SMITH
Now that’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout!
ALICE, CHARLIE, and WILL are cornered in WILL’S LABORATORY, which has been reinforced with the strength of glass. MONSTERS try and break in.
WILL SMITH
I suddenly remember some random thing my kid said to me before the helicopter crash which indicates to me that I should care about Alice even though I already care about her. Clearly I’ll have to sacrifice myself.
WILL pulls the pin from a grenade and runs into a throng of MONSTERS, killing himself along with a bunch of MONSTERS that he wanted to cure instead of kill just 1 hour ago. The force of the explosion against ALICE AND CHARLIE’S hiding place shatters their bones, and the resulting fire robs them of any oxygen in the underground lair, seemingly resulting in their painful death.
Somehow, they live. And they manage to drive to the survivor’s colony. And they find a cure. Everything turns out AWESOME.
ALICE BRAGA (V.O.)
If you are sitting through the movie just to find out if there’s ever any kind of justification for the grammatical disaster that titles this film, you’re not going to get it. Even the title sucks. I Am Legend.
The movie finishes and a DVD screener leaks to the internet, indicating the filmmakers were circulating the film for Oscar consideration. This is fucking HYSTERICAL.
END
[…] Publicado en Cine by Imperator on Enero 8th, 2008 The Editing Room ha publicado un guión resumido de la última parida de Will Smith, que pretende titularse como la novela Soy Leyenda. Podéis leerlo si leéis en inglés y os dan […]
January 8th, 2008 at 8:57 amThe Screener bit at the end is classic…so’s the MIB line. I’ve loved your scripts for years and been repeatedly asking you to do “HEAT”, but you were kinda harsh this time around. The movie kicked ass and showed off Will’s acting chops a bit more than “Ali” or “I, Robot”. You’re also right about the “28 Days” bit, what the hey, if it doesn’t happen in New York or LA, Americans don’t care, LOL. Keep up the good work, man…
Peace
January 8th, 2008 at 9:17 amGood one, Rod! You were being surprisingly nice to the movie though. You didn’t even pick up on all the pathetic religious themes in the movie (making it more like Signs and even less like the novel), and all that product placement that came close to “I, Robot”.
January 8th, 2008 at 10:01 amRod;
Loved the line about the Superman/Batman crossover poster being the highlight of the movie! How sad that it actually was!
January 8th, 2008 at 10:12 am*cough cough*
It says in the book that Smith is supposed to go around killing vampires *during the day* while they sleep, not at night.
Man, I tried my best to appreciate this movie on its own terms, but the book was just so much better.
January 8th, 2008 at 11:25 amThank you. You justified my refusing to go see this movie on account of wanting to wait for the abridged script. It would be spectacular if you did Heat.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:12 pmYet again Rod, you insist on giving your opinion of the film mid script.
Eg: “The movie turns into a mindless action/horror flick, trading suspense for cheap scares and story for explosions.”…”with shitty special effects”
With statements like that you’re trading cleverness for arrogance.
You’re scripts used to read like ridiculous proposals for films, now you break the illusion of me actually reading a real script.
The only indication of what you personally think of the film should be in the star rating at the top.
Also, at the end, he took a sample of the vampires cured blood, not his own.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:26 pmAnd apparently this was a very popular movie that lots of people enjoyed? Maybe I’m just too stupid to comprehend its “ub4r 1337ness.”
January 8th, 2008 at 12:27 pmI think I would have appreciated this movie a lot better if they didn’t pretend like it was based off of Matheson’s novel.
And if they took some of the hundreds of extras they had in the pointless flashback sequences and made them the vampires.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:39 pmWait a second! The filmakers actually thought this abortion of a movie should be considered for an Oscar? Man, that idea is more entertaining than the movie can ever hope to be.
January 8th, 2008 at 1:54 pmStephen is right, at the end he takes a sample of the Vamp’s blood, says the cure is in THEIR blood, not his, he was looking at the wrong spot.
Glad I’m not the only person that thought EACH AND EVERY INSTANCE of “special effects” in this movie came off like a B-rate movie from the late 80’s. What. The. Fuck. What, Jurassic Park was 15 years ago. With the exception of the Matrix (original), has any sci-fi film come close to matching the seamlessness of JP (or Matrix, itself almost a decade old)? It’s like Hollywood special effects studios are defiantly marching backwards or something. Dammit, if I go and pay $10 a ticket to see a “big budget film,” I don’t want Made-for-TV effects, assholes.
Even the damn car scenes were clearly CGI’d to death. And the damn lions, etc looked like Animatronics out of the 60’s washed with bad CGI soap or something. What the fuck!
****
And also, Yes I agree that the scripts are going away from the “here’s the premise for a movie” that they originally had oh-so-long-ago, and heading towards a more “arrogant” summary instead. I liked the original scripts on the sight because a lot of the overall humor was understated; we ‘got’ that it was laughable that Keanu is cast as an all-important techno guy (KEANU REEVES: dude; whoa).
Sigh. It’s still funny of course, but not in the same way. Would love to see a return to the old style, but will continue to enjoy what I can get.
January 8th, 2008 at 2:03 pmGreat and funny script as usual. I think you could have been harsher in some parts as opposed to what you made fun of. The certainly didn’t do enough to merit the same title as the book. I’m surprised this movie hasn’t brought The Omega Man more mentions. If The Omega Man was going to mentioned anywhere, I thought for sure it would be here.
Still, I enjoyed the movie, although it obviously didn’t leave me with a happy, ‘Hooray let’s go enjoy life!’ feeling. Keep those hilarious scripts coming!
January 8th, 2008 at 2:03 pmI actually liked the movie better than the book (I found the book so. damn. boring!), but I agree that the movie should not have had the book’s name. It had very little to do with the book except for two things: the main character is immune to the virus, and he eventually meets a chick.
I would have really liked to see that useless damn kid get eaten or something, though.
January 8th, 2008 at 2:45 pmRemember when the movie suddenly became Signs?
Fuck Akiva Goldsman.
January 8th, 2008 at 5:44 pmyeah the plot was really weak on this movie. I was unaware that it was based on a book until shortly before the film was released, and decided that I’d not read it in order to not ruin the movie experience.
lol on that, I guess. Funny, the whole movie I was thinking to myself that it’d be cool if it turned out that it was the case that the “mutants” were evolving, and he was indeed the lone holdout to “evolution” anymore. And for a few scenes, I thought that they might actually go with that! (when the lead mutant guy braved the Sun to show his distaste in Smith’s capturing one of his own, the setting of the trap, etc…)
Then of course I find out that by and large, that’s the direction the book ’sort of’ went.
New Title:
I Am Hack.
January 8th, 2008 at 5:52 pmOkay, I’ve been waiting for this one, and like others have already said, you went way too easy on this piece of shit. I understand the word ‘adaptation’ as much as the next guy, but come on, they threw every last interesting scrap of the novel away, even totally warping the significance of the title. Then again, Will Smith re-killing his own wife, drinking nonstop, fantasizing about vampire pussy, contemplating suicide, or otherwise mildly exhibiting the psychological symptoms of THREE FUCKING YEARS OF SOLITUDE would probably affect that ‘likability’ thing of his.
The Batman/Superman billboard was indeed the highlight.
January 8th, 2008 at 9:37 pmI wonder why this film wasn’t titled “The Omega Man”, as it shares way more similarities with that movie than with the Matheson novel.
January 8th, 2008 at 10:09 pmGreat job with your abridged version- you sum up all the problems quite nicely.
Huh. I totally misunderstood that. Nice catch. I’ve fixed the error in the script.
January 8th, 2008 at 10:21 pm…also the dog was a female.
anyway, as always thanks for a hilarious read. i enjoyed smith’s acting (yea sue me) in this but it’s just not easy to fill in vincent price or charlton heston’s shoes.
January 9th, 2008 at 1:14 amI found the cure. 800,000+ Sunscreen
January 9th, 2008 at 2:26 amFun to read as always :)
Also something in the spirit of The Editing Room,
January 9th, 2008 at 6:28 amhttp://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=HISHEdotcom
(How It Should Have Ended)
…also, the kid was female.
I saw the screener and actually enjoyed it. Smith delivers an interesting turn. This isn’t Ali territory, a movie designed solely for him to get an Oscar nomination. He doesn’t crack wise constantly either as in I Robot (reportedly his choice). It’s as though the A-list star is saying, “just cut the crap and let me act for a change!” Bless him, because he does it fairly well here IMHO (though the emotional scene in which his family dies is shown twice).
Hey, at least the first six minutes of The Dark Knight play right before the film, and those truly are a sight to behold. Which of course I saw on the net because my date “doesn’t like violent movies.” Geez.
January 9th, 2008 at 7:13 amWhy do people still insist on giving Will Smith roles in films? He can’t act, he can’t emote, all he does is make the same idiotic quips over and over.
January 9th, 2008 at 9:09 amMarsten, the reason, according to Premiere magazine, Dec. 2006 is that at the moment he’s the A list star that generates the most income.
January 9th, 2008 at 10:28 amConradbrean;
The kid wasn’t female. His name in the movie was Ethan, played by Charlie Tahan. But yes, the dog was female, which shocked the hell out of my audience…most of whom went “What the fuck?!” when Will called it “Maxine”. Bizarre choices in the film, all around.
January 9th, 2008 at 11:11 amConradbrean;
Misinterpreted your statement; you meant Will’s kid, which was indeed his real-life daughter. My bad.
January 9th, 2008 at 11:19 amAt first I tought that the “zombies” made the trap too.
But watching a second time it’s clear to me that it was actually Will Smith’s character who made it in order to (probably) catch more zombies to his research, like he did in the port. But he was so confused that he forgot about it and start arguing with the doll.
Anyway, it’s nice to know that I’m not the only one who tought that the SFX are so bad.
As for the guy who asked about movies that topped Jurassic Park or The Matrix SFX, I think that the CGI in “Transformers” were incredibly well done.
January 9th, 2008 at 11:25 amLook like a lot of silly fun, but yeah, they should just call it “Omega Man, the remake” and leave the rights for the masterful novel to talented filmmakers. At least I guess that Richard Matheson got paid a lot for it, which is a good thing in my book. That man’s name should be up there with the likes of Steinbeck, not just a cult horror writer.
January 9th, 2008 at 1:51 pmHa ha. This was great. I really didn’t like the movie very much. This script was hilarious. Now I’ll have something to argue against all the dumbasses I know.
January 9th, 2008 at 3:24 pmNice one, Quality Script as always..
a few plot holes I thought you would’ve picked on though..
- Since when were there Lions living anywhere near New York? (and why would a wild Animal choose to live in an empty city?)
- How did Will Smith still have running water and electricity after 3 years!
- If the virus was already airborne.. what was the point in destroying the bridges into New York?
Maybe these things were somehow explained in the book.. but they seemed pretty ridiculous to me when watching the film!
P.S. what was with all the DC comics references.? as well as the Superman/Batman poster.. I’m sure i saw posters for both a Wonder Woman & Teen Titans movie in the DVD shop..
January 9th, 2008 at 4:24 pmThere’s nothing strange about the idea of Best Picture going to a really lame movie that completely ignores the whole point of the book upon which it was based. Have you ever actually /read/ Forrest Gump?
January 9th, 2008 at 6:27 pm“Then again, Will Smith re-killing his own wife, drinking nonstop, fantasizing about vampire pussy, contemplating suicide, or otherwise mildly exhibiting the psychological symptoms of THREE FUCKING YEARS OF SOLITUDE would probably affect that ‘likability’ thing of his.”
These movie writers just try too hard to make their characters likable and end up turning them into Mary Sues.
“But yes, the dog was female, which shocked the hell out of my audience…most of whom went ‘What the fuck?!’ when Will called it ‘Maxine’.”
I thought it was “Sam”… and what’s so strange about the dog being female?
“Since when were there Lions living anywhere near New York? (and why would a wild Animal choose to live in an empty city?)”
Break-out at the zoo, I guess?
January 10th, 2008 at 12:56 am“If the virus was already airborne.. what was the point in destroying the bridges into New York?”
They just added that for the movie. Which is rather a shame because in the book they did something logical: burning the bodies of everyone infected in a big heaping bonfire. Too bad they didn’t spend their special effects budget on that.
January 10th, 2008 at 2:07 amI just want to know how or why you avoided the fact that the last 15 minutes of the film is just a short take on “Signs.”
“God will save us!”
January 10th, 2008 at 8:34 am“There is no God!”
“My kid made a butterfly shape with his hands before he died. I guess there is a God.”
BOOM
Rod, I’m totally disapointed in this script. When I saw movie, first thing I thought was how you’re going to pwn it. But it seemed somehow mellow to me and you missed several points in movie that deserves major asswhipping. Like the fact he was trying to kill a deer with a sniper while driving a new mustang or having a gym in his house… I know you can do better then this.
January 10th, 2008 at 12:00 pmPlease do “Juno” next.
January 10th, 2008 at 7:12 pmRyan Ferneau;
Yeah, you’re right…the dog’s name was “Sam”, short for “Samantha”(which still shocked the hell out of my audience). This just goes to show how hard I’m trying to block this movie out of my mind.
January 10th, 2008 at 10:49 pmCandy Cane:
Why do you hate Juno so much?
January 10th, 2008 at 11:12 pmFor all the people who criticize him for talking about the movie inside the script, maybe you should realize that this is free entertainment, and bitching and moaning because he doesn’t write the way you want him to is a little much. I don’t think Rod would mind constructive criticism, but you guys are literally bitching in every script he posts now about things you don’t like. Lay off him, sheesh. I’ve enjoyed every script of his that I’ve read, and even if I didn’t, I’m not about to put him down for doing something for free that he doesn’t even have to do.
January 10th, 2008 at 11:14 pmSamantha, that’s right, where the hell did you get Maxine from?
January 11th, 2008 at 1:18 amAlso, she was a German ‘Shepherd’ adding to the religious context of the film.
We had quite a debate after seeing the film about whether the trap he got caught in was built by himself or by one of the clever monsters, I assumed it was set by the monster leader character who was mimicking Will’s previous trap.
Nice one, Rod. For me this film basically fell apart as soon as the monsters were revealed. Cheap looking, unscary CGI bullshit. The last hour was worse than dunking your balls in a mug of hot coffee. Avoid.
January 11th, 2008 at 10:30 amPatrick - I assumed the monsters had set the trap too (especially as you see the lead monster dude holding back those dogs), but friends disagreed and said that Neville must have been snared by one of his own traps. I prefer to think it was the monsters that did it, as at least then they would have some intelligence like in the book. However for the monsters to have done it pretty much goes against everything else we are told about them in this lousy movie (though, for the sake of balance, I thought Smith did very well in the scene where he spoke to the dummy in the video store).
January 11th, 2008 at 10:32 amDude, do “No Country for Old Men” next. I’d like you to review a movie that you enjoy for once; you used to do that, judging by the archives.
And yes, I’m assuming you liked “No Country” because it is awesome and if you don’t like it, you fail.
January 11th, 2008 at 6:42 pmIt’s just that the spine of this film is way too shallow. Will Smith stuck in a nicely rendered abandoned city battling monsters for an entire movie intrigues me, in much the same way that 1408’s John Cusack stuck in a haunted room battling ghosts for two hours intrigued me. But both executions were so off the mark that there really is no reason to ever watch the films a second time. Once the best moments are over and dumb things proceed to happen (stupid plot twist in 1408 followed by unsatisfying ending/dog dies and more people show up followed by unsatifying ending) I know I’d be like ‘fuck this’ and turn it off. Oh well.
And you keep your filthy fucking clevermitts off of No Country for Old Men, you.
January 11th, 2008 at 11:52 pm“Hells Says:
For all the people who criticize him for talking about the movie inside the script, maybe you should realize that this is free entertainment, and bitching and moaning because he doesn’t write the way you want him to is a little much. I don’t think Rod would mind constructive criticism, but you guys are literally bitching in every script he posts now about things you don’t like. Lay off him, sheesh. I’ve enjoyed every script of his that I’ve read, and even if I didn’t, I’m not about to put him down for doing something for free that he doesn’t even have to do.”
Hehe, straight outta Pillowpants’ bucket of broken logic:
Criticism Control #1: Let’s see you do better.
Criticism Control #2: You’re just a hater.
Criticism Control #3: This isn’t Shakespeare!
Criticism Control #4: The Poochie Defense
“They’ve given you thousands of hours of entertainment for free. What could they possibly owe you? If anything, you owe them.”
- Bart Simpson
Criticism is not a bad thing, it can be useful or sometimes funny as long as you’re not a total pussy about it.
January 12th, 2008 at 6:50 amInteresting how the RSS feed formats your “Criticism Control” paragraph correctly, but the actual page doesn’t.
January 12th, 2008 at 1:26 pmWILL SMITH
Close. They died in a completely unrelated helicopter crash. It has virtually nothing to do with the actual plot of the movie.
ALICE BRAGA
…
CHARLIE TAHAN
This movie is stupid as hell.
WILL SMITH
Now that’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout!
Classic!
January 13th, 2008 at 4:06 pmThe movie was slow and boring, except for a loud cheap scare now and then. Even at only 100 mins (short for most modern movies) time seemed to drag.
Will’s character got caught in his own trap. He was becoming delusional and a bit crazy and just got confused (where his AR-15 rifle disappeared to while he was unconscious is a mystery, though; it would’ve just dropped to the ground below him).
How this movie is getting such rave reviews is bizarre. Did everyone else see an extended cut with a better ending and no seen-it-before-Mummy-CGI or something?
January 13th, 2008 at 9:11 pmWhen I read that Will Smith would be playing a “brilliant scientist”, the movie lost all credibility with me. Nevertheless, “I Am Legend” was actually an bit of alright - nothing to make you rethink cinéma, but entertaining enough to keep your eyes occupied for a couple of hours while your brain took a nap.
Good call on the awful over-use of CGI. CGI used sparingly can make some truly awesome visual effects (see “Forrest Gump” for example). CGI splashed all over the screen (see “Star Wars” prequels, or just about every single movie that comes out these days, including dramas where you’d think there’d be no need for CGI, but they still find a way to get it in there somehow) completely destroys the illusion that the movie is trying to create. It’s like seeing the string tied to the top of the space ship - you’re not supposed to know that you’re seeing great visual effects (or “awful” visual effects, as the case may be). Look at the “Bourne” films for example: plenty of fantastic visual effects - not that you’d ever know. Brilliant.
Robert Zemeckis, back in the day, knew how to intergrate the use of visual effects into his movies (see the aforementioned “Forrest Gump”, or “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”, “Back to the Future”, “Death Becomes Her”, etc). James Cameron, too. And even Paul Verhoeven to a certain extent. For directors these days, jizzing their cancerous CGI every which way over their work has become an industry standard.
January 14th, 2008 at 12:59 amYeah, what’s Robert Zemeckis doing directing motion-capture cartoons? When’s he gonna do another REAL movie?
January 14th, 2008 at 8:43 pmFunny, but not your best. I think you strayed a little too far from the actual plot of the movie in writing the script. But still, not bad.
January 16th, 2008 at 3:12 pmIt’s hard to tell who the tarp was set by. The monsters only seemed intelligent enough for organizing a hunt (ie Raptors). It would seem the monsters set the trap since he kept yelling/asking why he was out there and how how got out. Assuming the only dressed manikins are from that store, the monsters couldn’t have taken it since the store is locked and they didn’t have a key (otherwise they’d have to break the windows).
He had the new mustang because the movie is actually set in the future by a few years (when the virus broke out) so he would have access. As for them blowing up the bridges, it may not have been known it was airborne as the wife asks “is it airborne?” and so they did what any military does with so little ground intel, blow shit up ;)
I never saw the posters of all the DC hints but since they put the Dark Knight thing in before the movie, it would make sense (same production company?)
I enjoyed the movie personally. I thought CGI was on par with the first Mummy movie and wasn’t a bit impressed. The lions didn’t make any sense since there would be no way for the lions to get out of the cages. In Day After Tomorrow something crashed into the cages and let the wolves out, but I doubt that would be the case.
I did hate the ending a lot. I’m not even in the military and even I know how to set up a boobytrap grenade. He took it out the drawer
January 18th, 2008 at 2:08 am1. Pull the pin
2. Pinch it in the drawer
3. Escape
4. Monsters come plowing through and jaw the table letting the grenade come loose.
5. ???
6. Profit
When Will has his first flashback, he falls asleep in the bathtub, yet wakes up in bed. Am I missing something here? They clearly show him asleep in the tub with his dog and gun, yet when he comes to he’s in bed.
Another question: If they blew up all the bridges and ’sealed off the island’ then how in the hell did the deus ex survivors drive into town. And would whatever generator Will is using for his power really give him enough signal power to broadcast a radio signal that deus ex survivors could pick up in … where did they say they were? Maryland? I think that’s a bit of a distance from New York. And my geography sucks, but if they are heading to Virginia, from Maryland, isn’t New York a long detour in the WRONG direction?
One last, and very minor, nitpick. At the films opening there is a sports ticker thing at the bottom, and it says something like “Giants beat Patriots for the second time this season.” So did the film makers A. Not realize that isn’t possible in the regular season B. Assume that within 2 seasons time there has been re-alignment, or C. Assume that that is actually what the ticker would say and not “GIANTS WIN SUPERBOWL XLIII”?
January 20th, 2008 at 12:09 amGood movie, surprisingly scary at points. When Will enters the darkened building for the first time in search of his dog, he is so scared that he cries. Sent chills down my spine (Will Smith is supposed to be cool under pressure! Whatever’s hiding in there must be really bad!!) The flashbacks were quite tragic and helped explain why he was kind of crazy. Also, I didn’t find the ending “twist” religious at all; he was under pressure and had an epiphany, that’s all. Happens to people in stressful situations all the time. Overall, not your best script Rod.
January 21st, 2008 at 2:45 pmCounting down the weeks until May 2010!
January 21st, 2008 at 2:52 pmThe movie started in an interesting manner but it completely devolved in a big pile of bullsh** “Oh yeah, God told me : drive 2 hours on the highway, then take the second exit, drive 20 mins, turn after the second abandonned macdonald and there you arrive at the church protected bastion of true believers” Sorry the death of the scenario replaced by religious force feeding was a bit to nauseating… that and the ridiculous thick skulled nemesis.
January 23rd, 2008 at 8:42 pmI have 6 words for you….
The Omega Man starring Charleton Heston.
Both movies based off the same book, but The Omega Man was good because it was so cheezy and Hestons over the top acting style.
January 24th, 2008 at 3:02 pmWhile Hollywood’s on this wrecking NYC kick, please, PLEASE tear Cloverfield a new one next, quick-like. Thanks. :)
January 26th, 2008 at 10:06 pmThe trap that caught him was set by the monster, based on the trap it observed him setting that caught the female. Will Smith’s trap was a tarp, whereas the monster’s was a simple foot-loop. Obviously, the monsters were intelligent, but Smith was delusional from being alone for so long and had dehumanized them.
February 3rd, 2008 at 9:17 pmOh, and remember kids: God has a plan. It just happens to involve rabid mutant zombies destroying 90% of the population.
February 3rd, 2008 at 9:18 pmXiphos, sorry small correction:
God has a plan: man invents virus that mutates and kills 90% of the population, turns 9% into rabid mutant zombies that is intent on eating the last 1% of the population that was immune.
February 4th, 2008 at 10:22 amI have two problems with the idea that the monsters set up the trap:
1) How did they know what to use as a bait? As far as the movie shows, they didn’t see Will with the mannequin. They didn’t know Will had placed it in the front of the video place, and that he expected it to remain there.
2) How did they know where to set the trap? New York is huge, and they didn’t know where Will would be passing through.
It makes more sense to have Will setting up the trap, and then forgetting about it because he was turning delusional. This is evidenced by the fact that he saw the mannequin move his head when he was passing by at first.
I really liked the movie up to the point where the woman showed up on the bridge. They were doing fine till then, the scene where the dog goes into the building full of monsters is very good. But then that deus ex machina came over and the movie just went downhill. Everything from that point on was terribly stupid. Why would the woman wait until night at the bridge and risk being caught there by the monsters? And why didn’t Will just crawl into that space with the woman and the boy, threw the grenade at the monsters and sealed themselves in? Just silly.
And the FX looked like they were reused from Silent Hill.
February 5th, 2008 at 1:16 amWell, at least he found a cure… So if someone feels like trying to administer the cure to a population of bloodthirsty monsters, then maybe they can get that 9% back. HOORJ
February 5th, 2008 at 3:26 amDidn’t enjoy this one, Rod. Even when I like the movie you’re mocking, I usually enjoy your scripts immensely, but on this one you tried too hard. The humor’s constantly obvious, like the dog saying “bark” and the mannequins saying “…”. Also, when you mock the plot holes of a movie, you’re usually efficient but not here.
The joke about Times Square and the “God” sequence of the movie are excellent, though.
February 6th, 2008 at 7:38 amJR:
I assumed that after Smith captured the female, the male, who got a very good look at him, started stalking him. You’ll note that the trap he gets caught in is right by a dark building (the one the male comes out of when the sun starts to set), which would give him access to set the trap as well as a hiding place to wait for Smith. If the male was tracking him intelligently, he’d know his routines well enough to use the manniquin as bait (altho granted Smith is delusional when he sees the head move), as well as where to set it along Smith’s usual travel path.
. . . This is way too much thought to be putting into a movie this badly written. :P
February 8th, 2008 at 3:47 pmI had never gessed Rod was a man of books:
“Pretty much the only thing this movie accomplishes is needlessly using the title from the I Am Legend novel, so that nobody can take the far more interesting story it contains and make an actual adaptation of it for a long, long time. Great.”
Actually these were my thoughts when I saw “The Fellowship of The Ring” for the very first (and last, so far) time.
February 9th, 2008 at 2:55 am@49 “When I read that Will Smith would be playing a ‘brilliant scientist’, the movie lost all credibility with me.”
See, this is funny/ironic, because Smith is a huge nerd and was considering applying to MIT - though it’s not entirely clear that he would have gotten in. In any case, had he not gone into entertainment, the likelihood is that he would have wound up an engineer of some sort.
February 18th, 2008 at 10:07 amActually, I thought this movie was pretty good, as far as zombies go. The CGI was, admittedly, terrible on the zombies, but it had good explanation of the plot. Granted, the virus does not in any way, shape, or form obey the law of optimum virulence, but it had a few good touches, i.e. the zombies respiratory system constantly on overdrive in order to deliver lots of oxygen to the body so they don’t get tired from running. The zombies’ strength was pretty realistic. Unfortunately, the virus itself was not. As well as not obeying optimum virulence, (No parasite wants to eradicate it’s host completely) it also went from fluid borne to touch transmition to airborne in less than a fucking year.
Also, lots of irrelevant subplots. Like, as pointed out, the wife and kid (Who I thought was a boy for the first half of the movie) dieing in a helicopter crash instead of from the virus or being zombified. Also, can _anybody_ explain to me what that ‘butterfly’ shit was at the end? Seriously, what the hell?
February 26th, 2008 at 8:25 amI have to say this didn’t cut it. Putting your own opinion of the film into the characters’ mouths defeats the whole purpose of the thing. I was under the impression that these were supposed to be scripts boiled so far down they become parodies, ala Scriblits. If you want to write a review, do that. Otherwise, keep the critic out.
March 11th, 2008 at 8:47 pm[…] The Editing Room » I Am Legend: The Abridged Script (tags: abridged script movie) Ron’s Things […]
March 12th, 2008 at 5:43 pm[…] The Editing Room » I Am Legend: The Abridged Script (tags: abridged script movie) […]
March 12th, 2008 at 6:24 pmToo long, the film was too crap to be worth so many words. 28 Days was so much better. Getting rescued by a UV grenade/torch was such a deus ex.
March 15th, 2008 at 5:21 amOh God, the “Deus Ex Butterfly” at the end… *TWITCH*
March 31st, 2008 at 5:40 pmFirst time visiting your website. I was the only one out of all my friends who thought this movie was a horrible failure. I have found my new favorite website.
April 19th, 2008 at 6:36 pmCheckout the alternate ending that’s floating around the web (or look at the dvd). It closes with the “head vampire” actually demonstrating intelligence and will smith realizing at the end that he had misunderstood them.
BTW, the maniquen used in the trap was the one positioned outside the video store. It’s obvious the trap is set by the vamp because it copies will smith’s earlier trap that he used to snag the girl (which the head vamp saw and screamed at him about). Also keep in mind that the vamps were established as having a good sense of smell (hence why will was covering his tracks to his house every day) so it would have been easy for them to figure out bait: just find what smells the most like Will.
By the way, a few corrections just off the top of my head (feel free to watch again and correct me if I’m wrong):
Ummm…. in that scene it’s pretty clear that the rabid humans caused the helicopter to crash (you can see a few of them hanging off it). So it wasn’t exactly unrelated.
Ummm… plexiglass anyone? Or… any one of the other half dozen materials which are clear but extremely strong and resilient against impact (such as… plastic even).
They mentioned they were on a boat. Probably just boated up and then grabbed one of the bajillion abandoned cars littering the area.
Now a general question just to pose to everyone: What’s the line between “plot hole” and “respecting the audience”? (although a lot of people confuse “plot hole” with “loose end”) Seems to me a lot of people complain about how some movies “beat us over the head” with the point but then they complain about “plot holes” when the movie lays out most of the answers but let’s the audience connect the dots (see above). Pretty much the golden standard I use for plot holes is the boat scene from Jurassic Park 2 (for which there is NO explanation to be conceived from anything in the movie). The whole “God” and “butterfly” thing… yeah that was pushing it there.
April 21st, 2008 at 8:09 pmThe DVD alternate ending is definitely better than the cinema ending — it reflects a little more of the book — and is definitely worth watching.
But one thing is off about the mock script… The movie does explain Alice Braga’s relationship to Charlie Tahan. He was on the Red Cross boat with her. They aren’t related.
April 27th, 2008 at 6:42 amGoing with the Billy Wilder formula:
Leading the Audience - 2+2=4
Plot Holes - 2=4
Wilder thought it was important to give them 2+2 but to let them come up with 4 on their own. I guess it’s a pretty hard line to determine, especially when a viewer is hellbent on hating a film and doesn’t bother connecting the threads.
And yeah, the alternate ending is far more satisfying than the theatrical ending, but it’s a little late for apologies at this point.
April 27th, 2008 at 2:59 pm