I Am Legend (The Book)

Note: this post contains spoilers. I wrote the revealing and spoilish parts in white font, so you will need to highlight them to read. If you do not highlight your text you probably won’t get spoiled, but proceed with caution

Over the weekend I saw I Am Legend with Will Smith. You probably read my review, and perhaps participated in the mannequin debate (yes, go there now and tell us who moved Fred – we are loosing our minds over it). One of the disappointing things about the movie was lack of the big twist in the end. Everyone kept telling me how the book, and the earlier adaptations have this loopy ending so I decided to find out.

It turns out that I Am Legend is not really a book. It’s a collection of short stories. Btw, before I forget I should probably warn you not to read the main Amazon.com blurb about this book as it contains spoilers. I know, it’s retarded – I have no clue who writes these things.

Only the first, titular story is about Robert Neville. While it is one of the longer pieces in the book, it’s actually a fast read. Depending on your edition, you are looking at around 160 pages. In other words, you can read this in a single sitting. And you probably should, since if you take a break you will probably start pondering the ending, analyzing it, juxtaposing it with the movie and and in the end over think it. I kinda did that, and I pretty much figured out what this twist was going to be. I simply expected it – it’s not that hard to guess. If you saw the movie and you know there is a twist in the book that is different then there is a limited set of possible surprises that would work in this framework. And no, it’s not a dream – I will tell you that much. If you have an analytical mind, you will probably be able to deduce it from here. Personally, I saw it coming, but I still liked it. It is a much better ending than the one in the movie. In fact, if they managed to work this ending into the movie it would be spectacular, serious and profound picture.

But I guess the direction they took with the dehumanized CGI zombies instead of actors in makeup probably forced them to do things differently. The infected in Masterson’s story are vampires in the classic sense of the word – not Dark Seekers or whatever they decided to call them. They go comatose during the day, fear crosses and mirrors, are partial to garlic can be only killed by staking (bullets do not harm them). As the story progresses Neville slowly figures out that vampirism was indeed caused by some strange plague but it takes him a while. He is not a doctor or a scientist – he is just a regular, blue collar worker and a family guy.

Very different from the movie, eh? In fact the only thing the book and the movie have in common is the title, the name of the lead character, and the central theme of “last man on earth”. Everything else in the movie is just a creative interpretation by the writers and the director.

I do realize why movie makers changed the way vampires worked in the adaptation. Everyone does that. It is one of the inalienable, constant TV and movie tropes – your vampires must work differently. That’s the law. What I don’t understand is why they have changed them so much.

Matheson is not afraid to call vampires by their proper name. He gives pseudo-scientific speculations about causes of specific vampire traits – the allergic reaction to garlic, vulnerability to light, the fear of the cross. Why do vampires recoil when they see it? Is there biological basis or is it purely psychological? Wold a Jewish vampire fear the cross? Neville finds out when he tortures captured vampires with various religious regalia.

This Robert Neville is a far cry for the good natured, if quirky Will Smith and his faithful dog. He is a simple and lonely man. He is unstable, he drinks excessively and fights with demons of the past. In comparison, Will Smith’s character could consider himself lucky. His family died quickly and painlessly. The hardest thing he has to do is killing his dog after he gets infected. The Neville from the book has to bury his wife twice. First time when she succumbs to the disease and dies, then once again when she digs herself out of her grave and tries to kill him. It that isn’t something that would seriously fuck you up for life, then I don’t know what is.

He is a broken man who has been brutally raped by fate. To make it worse, all the vampires gather around his house at nights to taunt him, throw rocks at his windows and try to get past his defenses. Their attacks are viciously personal spiteful. And so he spends most of the days searching local neighborhoods and clearing out houses out of their undead inhabitants. The vampires are not as dehumanized as the Dark Seekers. They look as normal people (often deceptively so) and during the day they often sleep in their own beds making them easy targets. Their day sleep is so deep that Neville can easily try out different methods of vampire slaying on them. He stakes them, the gives them garlic injections, he drags them into sunlight, slits their wrists, shoots them point blank to see how they heal and etc… He is not really a good doctor looking for a cure – he is more of a modern Van Helsing in training. Of course he does want to find a cure, but he lacks in resources, knowledge and education.

So what is this twist I talked about at the beginning? Well, it turns out that (highlight for spoilage) there are two types of vampires. Those who haunt Neville’s house at night are the crazy, ones. They were driven mad by the disease, or had their brains affected. They reverted to bloodthirsty animal stage and they hunt for living prey. But they are a minority. The majority of vampires somehow managed to enter symbiosis with the virus/bacteria and kept their sanity. They slowly rebuild their society and they even start producing drugs that controls their cravings for blood, and let’s them walk in daylight for limited amounts of time.

These survivors are the folks that Neville is slaughtering in their sleep. They wake up every evening and find yet another family member or friend brutally killed by this strange, phantom that operates in daylight. Instead of a sole human survivor fighting against monster Neville turns out to be the monster. When the sentient vamps finally capture and confront him, he sees fear in their eyes. He realizes that he somehow became exactly what he was trying to destroy – a bloodthirsty, inhuman beast. He became a legend and his name will forever live in infamy. The movie flips this on it’s head and makes Neville into a hero.

You can probably agree that this is probably the superior ending. Much darker, much more twisted and ironic. It makes you wonder – what if Neville knew. What could he have done differently? What would you do if you were in his shoes. This is why Matheson’s book is a renowned literally masterpiece that was adopted for big screen 3 times, while Lawrence’s movie will just be a blip on the radar – a forgettable action flick with good stenography, and strong performance by Will Smith but not much more.

[tags]i am legend, richard matheson, books, book review[/tags]