And then the monsters showed up.

I find it hard to believe that anyone with half a brain would think it was a good idea to go with CGI monsters that looked as bad if not worse than the creature from THE MUMMY back in the 90′s. Haven’t digital effects progressed since the, for Chrissake?! What’s more, these were supposed to be former cancer patients that had been horribly mutated, right? So why were they leaping onto rooftops and scrambling up lamp-posts with no less agility than your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man?

Absolutely ridiculous. Like I said, we really, really liked the first half or so. Smith was great, perhaps his best performance in a movie to date (which isn’t saying much, as I’m no fan). But it ended there.

For me, I AM LEGEND was *not* an adaptation of one of the greatest books ever written. It wasn’t even close to a *good* movie. It was a sad glimpse at what could have been, based on that first half or so . . . one half of a potentially enjoyable film. :(

J.N.

To be honest, one thing that really turned me off to this film was the “monsters” themselves. I don’t understand why they couldn’t just use at least SOME real actors for SOME of the scenes, or at least spend the time to make them look somewhat realistic instead of like they were just ripped right from some lame Sunday afternoon Scifi Channel movie.

Finally, the biggest gripe I had was, they had a book with an incredibly deep and smart story attached to it that could’ve taken the whole “apocalypse” genre that’s been done to death recently and added a much needed twist. Instead, they said “fuck that” and basically left everything in the book out except for the title and the name of the main character. Which in turn translated into yet another by-the-numbers apocalypse movie to add to the stack.

I understand that books have to be “adapted” to the big screen and can’t always be spot on to the books, but not all of them need to be changed so dramatically that it loses all essence of the actual story.

Everyone always says the books are better than their adaptations, yet Hollywood rarely listen$.

There were numerous indications that the creatures were intelligent. Some of them were so obvious and blatant that I can’t believe the film never followed up on them. They’re laying traps and marshalling dogs and such…so clearly they’re not just mindless, bloodthirsty fiends. They’re planning and scheming. That made me believe that we were leading up to the “they’re not the monsters you think they are” ending, but it never came. This is arguably even worse than stripping all remnants of the original story from it, because it’s a good deal more confusing.

Anyway, I’m with you on the general conclusion that it’s still a pretty good film.

Also, anyone who doesn’t like Will Smith is a Communist.