I Am Legend

In the 2007 adaptation of I Am Legend the story followed suit with a lot of the basic plots we have seen in the movies in this class. The world is over run with a zombie epidemic and the main character must try to survive in this apocalyptic new world. What causes the zombie like characters is an interesting topic in itself in this adaptation because it is explained that the cause is a mutated strain of a cure for cancer. What is interesting about this is that in the world we live in today lots of drugs are being put out on the market without being thoroughly tested. It is scary to think that with the prevalence of cancer in our world and the profits a cure for cancer would produce, pharmaceutical companies would rush a cure on the market without knowing the long term ramifications.
The actual zombies are quite different than the ones we have seen in the previous two movies. They are different than the clumsy slow moving zombies we saw in Night of the Living Dead and also different than the albino vampire like zombies we saw in Omega Man. In my opinion the zombies in I Am Legend look much more like monsters than the previous movies and that contributes to how scary they are. Another interesting thing I noticed was it seemed the zombies in this movie were stronger and faster than zombies we are used to seeing. When the zombies were trying to break into Dr. Neville's Plexiglas safe room the lead zombie seemed to be a big strong monster fueled by rage and almost super human strength and endurance. I think the discussion of the almost super human abilities the zombies seemed to gain after they had turned from human would be an interesting one in this class. The last thing I thought was interesting in this movie was at a point in the movie Robert Neville actually did give up unlike any of the other characters we have seen thus far. He went out after dark knowing that the zombies would eventually kill him, after they turned his dog forcing him to kill his only companion. Had it not been for Anna showing up and saving him he would tried to take out as many zombies as he could as well as himself. What I think would be interesting is the discussion of how far a humans instinct for survival would last when put in the situation Robert Neville was in. I wonder if a humans survival instinct would eventually break if all hope was gone of having another companion.