I Am Legend

Babsi: Lets discuss “I Am Legend”. We watched it in Nelson two weeks ago now and I sort of expected the typical creepy zombie movie with freaks around and that sort of stuff. Which it kind of was in the end as well. I thought Will Smith’s performance was excellent. It was really good the way he talked to the dog at the start and then when the dog is dead he is alone, that was excellent. The flash backs were very clever but in the end it turned a little bit religious and strange.

Brett: That scene where the serum, the blood reaches the settlement, reaches safety, the town that is going to save everything, and it is such an American stereotype of a place.

Babsi: Yep. The Americans always have to do that. They always have to chuck in this type of thing somewhere.

Brett: There is this white-painted wooden church with the stars and stripes flying. But I still loved the movie, I really, really enjoyed it. It scared the daylights out of me.

Babsi: It didn’t scare me.

Brett: You weren’t scared?

Babsi: Mmm, it was a bit predictable. There were some good bits, very arty Ideas with the manikin. The zombies used the manikin to trap him. That was very cleverly done.

Brett: Yeah the manikin he said hello to every day. The zombie took it and used it as bait in a trap after he’d used blood as bait in a trap for them.

Babsi: That was really clever and sort of unpredictable in a way.

Brett: Yeah. I even had seen a photograph from the movie of him hanging from the lamppost, and it still caught me by surprise.

Babsi: The photography was absolutely outstanding. In the beginning New York overgrown by jungle, I mean that is just a cool image, stunning. In cities like Singapore and Sydney you don’t have to do that because they are overgrown by jungle anyway, so it doesn’t really matter, but in a place like New York it’s more like a concrete jungle. And all the animals at the beginning, that was well done.

Brett: Although I think the animals were a little bit computer graphicsey sometimes.

Babsi: No, I didn’t think so.

Brett: They would move too fast for a real animal, turn corners that were too tight.

Babsi: It wasn’t too bad I thought.

Brett: No they were good. It wasn’t too bad, I’ve seen a lot worse.

Babsi: It was a clever story but the problem is that these films are good at the beginning and in the middle sort of just go a bit off.

Brett: What was that point in the middle that…?

Babsi: When that woman appeared, it just didn’t really work.

Brett: Yeah, I agree, up until that moment it was all absolutely hanging together and then when she effortlessly rescues him, off screen, just by setting off a few fireworks.

Babsi: That was absolutely ridiculous. I didn’t trust her either. I thought she was spy for the zombies.

Brett: She was so unbelievable, you didn’t trust her. As if she was so unbelievable on purpose. She was so well groomed. I thought he was fantasizing her for a moment.

Babsi: She kept talking about the colony, and how the colony actually existed. I thought “What’s that all about?” But there were lots of interesting details in the movie that I liked. For example, he liked listening to Bob Marley. It was a good scene and his apartment is really interesting. He kept watching the old news which was interesting and confusing at the same time.

Brett: The only clue that it was old news was a tape counter box at the bottom of the screen and other than that it wasn’t explained at all. I liked that touch.

Babsi: And there was this cartoon bit, what was it? Shreck. Where he knows the words of the Donkey character.

Brett: Why was that interesting?

Babsi: Because I guess it was a film he had watched with his daughter. Maybe that was the reason, it was a light little touch.

Brett: Alright I get that now. I didn’t get that at the time.

Babsi: And that cinema in Nelson is kind of cool.

Brett: Yeah, it’s a nice little Art Deco cinema. So, you said you liked Will Smith’s performance.

Babsi: I really liked his great speech scene. When people have a speech like, “Friends, Romans, countrymen,…” that’s a speech, to the audience. If they have a few people there, which would be the case in “Julius Caesar”, and so they can address these people but he is on his own. I guess that's why he used a video camera, it helped his performance a lot.

Brett: His acting, on his own, in the lab with just the recording equipment …

Babsi: …was very, very believable. He’s the lead character so he has to make it believable. The movie stands and falls with him. They still managed to spoil it a bit with her performance which did not work and was not believable and he again became unbelievable because it’s like a game play really. As an actor you use the partner and you throw a ball at them and they throw a ball back at you, more friendly, more violent, whatever you want but you need that. If you don’t have that partner it’s harder, a lot more difficult. You use the audience, ok so the theatre has the audience which is something that can be used, but if you don’t have an audience, well I guess you could use the camera people of course, anyway he’s come a long, long wayfrom those "Fresh prince of Bell-air" days.

Brett: You know what I think was going on in that? Because it was supposed to be where he was taken to safety, and he’s supposed to spend this beautiful relaxed day with her and then the danger is supposed to start again at nightfall. And I think the director was trying to make it very, very safe. To make her relaxed. To make her kid relaxed. So he made her well groomed and beautiful. So you begin to relax and think this is a new part of the movie, a new safe place, and then when danger comes again you’re supposed to be even more shocked maybe. Maybe that’s what they were trying to do.

Babsi: Maybe, but it didn’t work. The energy became saggy in the movie.

Brett: Yeah it totally drained out.

Babsi: A typical Hollywood blockbuster, half of it worked, half of it didn’t.

Brett: I don’t think this was the typical Hollywood blockbuster though. I mean there were elements of it that were but they were trying for something more. Something more like classic science fiction from the 60s, something like Omega Man or…

Babsi: It wouldn’t be in my top ten but the photography was good and I did enjoy it but American Gangster was better.

Brett: I liked about this movie that the skyscrapers were full of threat. The zombies were hiding in the dark in the skyscrapers so he had to stick to the streets and zoom through quite quickly in cars.

Babsi: I bet he enjoyed that, I bet it was fun to be the only person who can zoom round. The beginning was sort of funny because he played golf and did all these strange things.

Brett: I think it was a very beautiful movie like a painting. Almost like they had limited their pallet of colours, I remember it very brown, very Naples yellow, very yellow ochre.

Babsi: I remember it very green. There were a few scenes that were very impressive when he went out in the car to shoot food. I still think that Twelve Monkeys was a lot better – even though it was crazy.

Brett: This film was scarier.

Babsi: No, no I don’t agree.

Brett: What do you mean by scared, this one was “Oh I’m shocked!” scary and Twelve Monkeys was “Oh dear the world is a strange place!” scary.

Babsi: No Twelve Monkeys was scarier and more touching somehow, because even though in "I am Legend"he loses his wife and his kid.

Brett: This one wasn’t touching – the emotions.

Babsi: The energy of the actors really worked in the play we saw recently (As You Like It, see previous post) worked really well and Will Smith was such a strong link on his own but he couldn’t just hold it somebody bad came in – her, and she really wasn’t any good – and it fell apart.

Brett: Was she bad or was she given bad direction?

Babsi: She had a really strange part but she could have made it stronger. A Cate Blanchett would have probably made it quite strong and quite believable, but she didn’t.

Brett: No she seemed too relaxed, she was supposed to have saved him from zombies and driven him across New York.

Babsi: And you know, people out there feel free to comment on this, and maybe tell us you’re opinion because we want to make this open and let people get involved. In my opinion he was really good by himself, you see this a lot in the theatre as well, people are really good and strong and then a bad character comes in and really messes it up. I mean Johnny Depp was almost too strong in Pirates of the Caribbean, even those two whelps Keira and Orlando couldn’t mess it up.

Brett: So we were talking about I Am Legend and Twelve Monkeys.

Babsi: Twelve Monkeys is an old film, but Terry Gilliam really thought about what he was doing and Twelve Monkeys is altogether more scary. There is more threat, and they both are about viruses and stuff but in Twelve Monkeys the rhythm is better, and the photography. Although the photography isn’t all “Oh I’m an arty movie and I have to be all arty in my photography”, which I Am Legend was, it was purposely arty. Twelve Monkeys was arty by accident almost, bleaker, greyer.

Brett: I think Twelve Monkeys must be arty on purpose. You have to give Terry Gilliam that, he puts together stunning visuals, often on limited budgets. Watching that Man from Lamancha documentary he got some amazing visuals with just some little people and a handycam.

Babsi: But it was so clever because of the music from the group Gotan Project, who were very successful when Twelve Monkeys was out. It is such great, fantastic, haunting music.

Brett: When we are talking about Twelve Monkeys, we are talking about what Terry Gilliam did and when we are talking about I Am Legend we are talking about what Will Smith did.

Babsi: That’s really interesting actually.

Brett: When we are talking about Twelve Monkeys we aren’t talking about what Bruce Willis did.

Babsi: No, he was good, he was fine but there were lots of them – Madeline Stowe was really good, Brad Pitt was really good. Actually Brad Pitt was surprisingly good though I’m not the worlds biggest Brad Pitt fan, but he was good in that. Whether that has got to do with the directing or him, I don’t know.

Brett: I don’t know he can be good sometimes. I thought he was good in Ocean’s Eleven. So why was Twelve Monkeys scarier?

Babsi: It was interesting, because the funny thing was it was all set up about this group of people, and it just turned out that the rather nice funny people we were just trying to save the animals and the threat was from somewhere else and that’s frightening. And the way it’s between the future and the past, it was very timeless. I think Twelve Monkeys will always have a bigger status than I Am Legend even if the title of I Am Legend which is a bit pompous and Twelve Monkeys is a more modest title.

Brett: I think the two films have a different view of American society. When you are watching Twelve Monkeys, American society is some kind of strange monolith, like a Kafkaesque or Orwellian society which doesn’t know what it is doing even to itself.
And in I Am Legend it seems to be a benevolent society that is trying to cure cancer, but makes a mistake, and if it believes in the stars and stripes and white wooden churches it can get back from those mistakes. It’s gone too far with science and .. I Am Legend is much more conservative, probably. It would be the sort of movie Charlton Heston would have made back in the 60s – like Omega Man or Soylent Green.

Babsi: I can’t tell you how much one of Terry Gilliam’s other movies, Brazil scared me. It scared me so much I didn’t even want to go to Brazil. ( I saw it when I was 15 and had no clue that it was not about Brazil) I don’t even know why on earth it’s called Brazil, it’s not set in Brazil, whatsoever. It was really frightening. It’s about a mistake in administration leading to the dude being taken away, and these people come through the ceiling. It’s really, really scary.

Brett: Twelve Monkeys was like Brazil 2, it was almost the same society.

Babsi: The difference was that I Am Legend was a different type of scary. It was scary but not scary enough.

Brett: It was trying to say "don’t worry, our society is basically good and it will survive, no matter how bad it gets". The films have almost the same subject but they are done completely differently. Will smiths character is very disciplined and methodical, he was watching every video in the video store from A to Z.

Babsi: That was actually funny, even if you are alone in the world you still have to be disciplined because of the threat. How would the story work if he was just alone in the world with nobody else? What would could you do with the story then? They had to create a threat other wise… Take out the zombies altogether and you get a castaway kind of situation which could work.

Brett: I think that would be a really interesting movie. It might even be scarier.

Babsi: The way he recorded his diary on video and talked about himself. “I am doctor …etc.” That was good, and arty in a "Lost" kind of way. Even film directors must be fans of Lost, scary. To sum it all up, it was good when he was alone, the photography was good, I can still see pictures in my mind’s eye.

Brett: Me too, the destruction, emptiness and desolation stay with you.