I Am Legend (film)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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I Am Legend is a 2007 film directed by Francis Lawrence and starring Will Smith. It is the third feature film adaptation of Richard Matheson's 1954 novel of the same name, following 1964's The Last Man on Earth and 1971's The Omega Man. Smith plays virologist Robert Neville, who is immune to a vicious man-made virus originally created to cure cancer. He works to create a remedy while living in Manhattan in 2012, a city inhabited by violent victims of the virus. The film's plot is an example of a zombie apocalypse story.
Warner Bros. began developing I Am Legend in 1994, and various actors and directors were attached to the project, though production was delayed due to budgetary concerns related to the script. Production began in 2006 in New York City, filming mainly on location in the city, including a $5 million scene at the Brooklyn Bridge, the most expensive scene ever filmed in the city at the time.
I Am Legend was released on December 14, 2007, in the United States, and opened to the largest ever box office (not counting for inflation) for a non-Christmas film released in the U.S. in December. The film was the seventh highest grossing film of 2007, earning $256 million domestically and $329 million internationally, for a total of $585 million.
Plot
In September 2012, U.S. Army virologist Lieutenant Colonel Robert Neville (Will Smith) is left as the last healthy human in New York City. Three years earlier, a cure for cancer made from a re-engineered virus was developed with a 100% success rate. However, the virus mutated into a lethal strain that spread worldwide and killed 5.4 billion people (90% of humanity). Of the 600 million survivors, only 12 million people were naturally immune to the virus. The rest degenerated into bald, pale, aggressive beings referred to as "Darkseekers," who hunted down the immune humans as prey. The "Darkseekers," so called for hiding in buildings and dark places during the day due to a painful intolerance to UV radiation, exhibit increased speed, agility, aggression, and strength. Despite their primal behavior, the Darkseekers seem to retain some basic problem-solving intelligence, animalistic cunning, and the capacity to organize themselves.
Neville, who lost his wife Sarah (Salli Richardson) and daughter Marley (Willow Smith) in a helicopter accident during the chaotic quarantine of Manhattan in December 2009, has a daily routine that includes experimentation on infected rats to find a cure for the virus and trips through an empty, decaying Manhattan to collect supplies from abandoned homes and hunt deer that have moved into the city. He also waits each day for a response to his continuous recorded AM radio broadcasts, which instruct any uninfected survivors to meet him at mid-day at the South Street Seaport. Neville's isolation is broken only by the companionship of his German Shepherd Samantha ("Sam") and interaction with mannequins he has set up as patrons of a video store.
When one of his experiments on rats shows a promising treatment, Neville sets a snare trap and captures an infected woman; an enraged male Darkseeker, the alpha male of the pack, locks eyes with him. Back in his laboratory, located in the basement of his heavily fortified Washington Square Park home, Neville attempts to cure the infected woman without success.
The next day, after finding one of his mannequins was apparently moved to the front of Grand Central Terminal, he is caught in a trap and passes out. When Neville regains consciousness and manages to get free, it is dusk and he is attacked by a pack of infected dogs set on him by the alpha male. Although Neville and Sam manage to kill the dogs, one of them bites Sam. Initially Neville brings Sam home and injects her with a strain of his serum, but when she shows signs of infection and tries to attack him Neville is forced to strangle her.
Later that night, overcome by grief and rage after burying Sam, Neville attacks a group of the infected with his car, intending to end his misery by killing as many as he can. Despite killing a large number of Darkseekers, they overwhelm Neville and nearly kill him before he is rescued by a pair of immune survivors, an adult woman named Anna (Alice Braga) and a young boy named Ethan (Charlie Tahan), who have heard his radio broadcasts. Anna and Ethan take the injured Neville back to his home, where Anna explains that they are making their way to a putative survivors' camp in Bethel, Vermont.
The next night, the alpha male leads a group of infected in an attack on the house, having followed Anna and Neville back the night before. The Darkseekers force Neville, Anna, and Ethan to retreat into the basement laboratory. They seal themselves in a room with the infected woman, where they discover that Neville's treatment is working: the subject has reverted to a more human form. Unfortunately the infected break in and the alpha male begins to break through the acrylic glass separating them by ramming it. Discovering that the last treatment has been successful, Neville draws a vial of the woman's blood and gives it to Anna before shutting Anna and Ethan in a safe. Then, when the glass finally breaks, he uses an M67 hand grenade to wipe out the attackers at the cost of his own life. Anna and Ethan escape to Vermont and locate the survivors' colony, where Anna hands over the cure. In a voice-over, Anna claims that the survivors are Neville's legacy, as his fight for a cure became legend.
