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Reviews136
counterrevolutionary's rating
Oh, it'll be another twenty or thirty years, but someday, some smart young filmmaker is going to read Richard Matheson's novel and make the low-key, modestly-budgeted, intellectually serious, and CGI-free film it cries out for. At least, I hope so.
*The Last Man on Earth* came closest, but even there, the filmmakers completely missed the point of the novel's ending (which is as necessary to the story's meaning as the ending of *The Sixth Sense* or *The Caine Mutiny*). Then, somehow, it became de rigeur to "reimagine" Matheson's quiet, intelligent novel as a Big Dumb Action Movie.
This version is the worst by a wide margin. Will Smith plays a scientist/action hero (yeah, we all know lots of those guys) who for some reason has survived the CGI Virus, which transforms its victims into unconvincing computer animations. Then some stuff blows up, and some coincidences happen, and some more stuff blows up, and the filmmakers throw in a dumb plot device to justify keeping Matheson's title even though they have discarded the events which justify the title.
Why even bother? Surely they could have made this movie without paying Matheson for the rights to his novel, which this film in no way resembles. Just change the main character's name and call it *Fresh Prince and the Not-Scary Zombies* or something. Then someone else could have given *I Am Legend* the cinematic treatment it deserves. The Coen Brothers, maybe. Or give me $20,000,000 and let me make it. I could do better than this.
*The Last Man on Earth* came closest, but even there, the filmmakers completely missed the point of the novel's ending (which is as necessary to the story's meaning as the ending of *The Sixth Sense* or *The Caine Mutiny*). Then, somehow, it became de rigeur to "reimagine" Matheson's quiet, intelligent novel as a Big Dumb Action Movie.
This version is the worst by a wide margin. Will Smith plays a scientist/action hero (yeah, we all know lots of those guys) who for some reason has survived the CGI Virus, which transforms its victims into unconvincing computer animations. Then some stuff blows up, and some coincidences happen, and some more stuff blows up, and the filmmakers throw in a dumb plot device to justify keeping Matheson's title even though they have discarded the events which justify the title.
Why even bother? Surely they could have made this movie without paying Matheson for the rights to his novel, which this film in no way resembles. Just change the main character's name and call it *Fresh Prince and the Not-Scary Zombies* or something. Then someone else could have given *I Am Legend* the cinematic treatment it deserves. The Coen Brothers, maybe. Or give me $20,000,000 and let me make it. I could do better than this.
You watch this movie, with its depiction of humans (with a single exception) as either mindless order-following automata or mustache-twirling stock villains, and you have to ask yourself: Is this what the filmmakers think people are like? Well, no, of course not. This is what the filmmakers think *other* people are like.
And that, far more than decreasing budgets or continuity errors, explains the inferiority of the APES sequels to the original.
Great satire--indeed, great art--is always an examination of *us*, of what *we* are like. This is what the original film did so well and why it is still remembered so fondly. By this point in the series, however, the filmmakers were simply sneering at "them," defined as all those people who didn't attend film school or vote for McGovern. It's a nasty, bigoted little piece of hackwork which tries to pass itself off as clever satire.
And that, far more than decreasing budgets or continuity errors, explains the inferiority of the APES sequels to the original.
Great satire--indeed, great art--is always an examination of *us*, of what *we* are like. This is what the original film did so well and why it is still remembered so fondly. By this point in the series, however, the filmmakers were simply sneering at "them," defined as all those people who didn't attend film school or vote for McGovern. It's a nasty, bigoted little piece of hackwork which tries to pass itself off as clever satire.
