Ever since I saw Children of Men, I was pretty much assured that science fiction in big-budget movies have grown absolutely mature and deserving to stand with its literary counterparts – that is, with filmmakers and production companies starting to realize that SF is a thinking man’s genre, not merely a vessel for high profile action set pieces. There are others that came before that were great SF, such as Gattaca (Andrew Niccol), Code 46 (Michael Winterbottom), V for Vendetta (James McTeigue and the Wachowski brothers) and War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg), but Children of Men was the last nail that secured SF movies to a better place. They are now being used as a tool to express worldview, to explore the possibilities, the “what if?”s of history and everything that could be. Behind the visions and the wonders and imagination, it all boils down to what science fiction really is at its highest form: a study of humankind given a fantastical premise.
There was no surprise that more movies would come out with these good qualities. The surprise was with finding the next in a Will Smith movie.
I have always considered Will Smith as a good actor best suited for action movies, nothing more. (Granted I have not seen much of his more serious ones.) I had no idea he is this good playing the last human being in New York. And the thing is, I Am Legend is NOT an action movie. It is a horror movie, sure. But for the most part its horror is not of the infected zombie-like mutants – it is the nightmare of having the world all to your lonesome self.
(NOTE: Possible spoiler from this point!)
What would it be like? What would one do? The movie captured this with its well-realized settings, a supposedly bustling New York City now a cornucopia of emptiness. No scene was wasted establishing how Robert Neville, the main.. er, only character, dealt with living his day-to-day, with nobody to talk with but his best friend Sam the german shepherd. Neville is a hero, but not exactly a hero. (He has become a bit crazy too.) And owing to these scenes was one where Neville has had a tragic loss that was too much too bear not just for him but for me too.
(Spoiler ends!)
Will Smith carried with him the responsibility of making it believable, and he played his character with great aplomb by not treating the material as if it were standard action fare with standard hero-type overacting. The I Am Legend world IS the real world, just as how Tom Hanks in Cast Away could have crash-landed his FedEx plane and ended up in a deserted island.. It’s as simple as that: the science fiction treated seriously and with respect.
I also now give more respect to the movie’s director, Francis Lawrence, for exhibiting the restraint the story deserved, and the absolutely well-placed, well-paced shots throughout. Not exactly an unknown (he also did Constantine, among others), but goes to solidify my belief that you would get a much better movie made by someone less popular than with someone that you know has already disappointed you in the past. (Statement made with a few exceptions in mind.)
My only disappointment with I Am Legend is that it did not sustain its greatness until the end; there was a point about two-thirds of the way through where it started to devolve into the usual zombie-fighting flick, with appropriate hopeful ending. But perhaps the story was already becoming too dark for mainstream audiences to handle? I for one could feel the dread, darker than in any other normal genre movie, but I would still have preferred it to go the deeper path if it ended up a much better tale. This is still Hollywood, anyway, so I guess there is a need to happify the script. As it stands, though, I Am Legend makes for very good science fiction.
P.T. Anderson is one of my favorite filmmakers. That is why my film buff senses coma-a-tingling at the release of 