Let's guess how they're going to fuck up Richard Matheson's "I Am Legend," now a Will Smith movie!

Will the main character say "aw HELL naw" to an approaching horde of post-apoc vampires? Only time will tell! Yes.

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IMDB message board posters will one day rule our society.

This is going to be so sweet.

I had this idea that in the future we were going to have Pirate Pundits, douchebags who pirated network feeds to rant about politics. I suspect a lot of these Pirate Pundit douches will be IMDB posters.

my friend was in this movie as one of the vampire extas. they had them all made up, filmed them a few times running around washington square park, then decided they looked to fake and needed CGI vampires instead..

she still got paid, though. a lot. THX, CONTRACT :)

Written by 2002 Best Screenplay Oscar winner Akiva Goldsman

This is going to be terrible.

Without question.

Can Smith top Vincent Price?

I've been listening to the audiobook of this lately, having never actually read the novel but only it in graphic-novel form, and i've just realized how this book really is <litcrit=on>science-fiction, even tho it's main point of difference with actual reality is a fantastic creature. Matheson's writing does everything standard sci-fi: sets up a rationalist world, and using science to make the apparently impossible seem probable. You don't just have a vampire horde from some supernatural being going nuts, you have a bacterium and disease, with insects mutated by nuclear blast as the transmission vector. I never realized that massive climate change is part of the book either; the thing is set 20-odd years in the future, after a nuclear war happened in which we "won".</litcrit> (note that I never really saw "The Omega Man", so this might all be bleedingly obvious)

So yeah, more sci-fi, less horror.

Can Smith top Vincent Price?

AW HELL NAW

I actually liked Constantine and thought it was underrated and visually really well done. Wasn't familiar with the source material for that, but I'm not familiar with the source material for this, either, so I'll probably like this movie too, or at least will think it looks cool.

For better or for worse, the dog will be in the flick:

http://www.worstpreviews.com/images/iamlegend.gif

>>note that I never really saw "The Omega Man", so this might all be >>bleedingly obvious)

"The Omega Man" isn't as true to the Matheson original as the "Last Man on Earth," Vincent Price's vehicle, which I prefer.

But both movies are still entertaining.

Charlton Heston chews the carpet as was his talent. Heston was the go-to man for this manner of blockbuster end-of-world sci-fi for a time: Planet of the Apes stuff, replaced by James Franciscus -- a poor man's Charlton Heston, for the sequel where Heston did a smaller role anyway, The Omega Man, Soylent Green.

there aint any vampires
by killinyallsuckas 5 days ago (Sun Jul 22 2007 09:26:59)
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i recentely read in a EW article that its only rumors claiming that vampires are involved....

Re: there aint any vampires
by jleslie48 5 days ago (Sun Jul 22 2007 09:35:27)
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lets call them undead.

vampires, living dead, zombies, rage-infected humans, pro-bush americans, etc.

its all the same thing.

Re: there aint any vampires
by windycity3454-1 5 days ago (Sun Jul 22 2007 12:18:44)
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funny.

Looks like somebody either used sarcasm, or doesnt know how to show pride in their country.

for 1, get over it and support your president and your country.

and 2, yes they ARE vampires. It's based off the book I Am Legend which INVOLVES vampires as a giant part of the plot.

Re: there aint any vampires
by matjusm 5 days ago (Sun Jul 22 2007 13:14:21)
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"and 2, yes they ARE vampires. It's based off the book I Am Legend which INVOLVES vampires as a giant part of the plot. "

Just because thats what they were like in the book, doesn't mean that it'll be that way in the film.

mmm, doughnut...
-Homer J. Simpson

Re: there aint any vampires
by windycity3454-1 5 days ago (Sun Jul 22 2007 13:19:47)
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Well the plot outline seems to back it up

Re: there aint any vampires
by jleslie48 5 days ago (Sun Jul 22 2007 14:06:56)
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If you had any pride in your country you would know that gwb
stole your country and pimped out 9/11 to beat up Iraq.

Re: there aint any vampires
by windycity3454-1 5 days ago (Sun Jul 22 2007 14:31:04)
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9/11 was connected with Osama Bin Laden

Not Iraq

That is why we are in Afghanistan

We are in Iraq because of a dangerous, sick man named Sadaam Hussein.

Thankfully, there is at least one less thing to worry about.

And quit jumping on the crazy bandwagon that our OWN president is a terrorist.

And beat up Iraq?

We are actually attempting to take down the BAD guys.

and help the GOOD guys

I wouldn't call that beating up.

Re: there aint any vampires
by jleslie48 5 days ago (Sun Jul 22 2007 17:44:56)
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"We are in Iraq because of a dangerous, sick man named Sadaam Hussein. "

then why the story about WMD???

I still remember.

taking out sadamm was only the after story when WMD blew up in the
sadists face.

Re: there aint any vampires
by matjusm 5 days ago (Sun Jul 22 2007 21:35:08)
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Nobody is going to argue against the fact that Saddam Hussein was a sick man but it is the excuse that was used to go into Iraq that bothers people.

mmm, doughnut...
-Homer J. Simpson

Re: there aint any vampires
by jleslie48 5 days ago (Mon Jul 23 2007 05:17:49)
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UPDATED Mon Jul 23 2007 05:18:32
"Nobody is going to argue against the fact that Saddam Hussein was a sick man but it is the excuse that was used to go into Iraq that bothers people. "

Exactly.

If GWB were an honest, caring person this is how he would of sold the war as such in the first place. Instead he tricked America by scaring the folks half to death.

And if you dared to speak out against it, you better not have a wife in the FBI.

Face it GWB is nothing but a brainless bully who thought he could mop the floor with saddam in 6 months, and be a hero. Couldn't think his way out of cardboard box.

Re: there aint any vampires
by tilo1166 3 days ago (Tue Jul 24 2007 10:01:38)
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So you have to support the president just because he managed to get the job? That's the least patriotic attitude you could possibly have.

You know what a fake news show on Fox News should show? Real news!

Re: there aint any vampires
by xWickedHeartx 3 days ago (Tue Jul 24 2007 09:57:19)
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There is a huge difference between vampires and zombies.
Vampires are susceptible to a myriad of things, and crave only the blood of humans, while, depending on the source, zombies can be anything from living corpses with no minds, to living corpses with intelligence (both which may hunger for human flesh, organs, blood, etc), to living corpses which work on African plantations.
That's the mythical reference guide. The literal sense has vampires as people who prey upon others, such as scam-artists, lechers, etc. while zombies are slothful or dull people.

Re: there aint any vampires
by killinyallsuckas 3 days ago (Tue Jul 24 2007 22:47:59)
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LOL i originally made this post about the movie, and yet somehow it turned into a political debate...LOL...i love message boards...

Re: there aint any vampires
by windycity3454-1 1 day ago (Thu Jul 26 2007 18:56:26)
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Actually I made this post?

Re: there aint any vampires
by blaqueknight2000 1 day ago (Fri Jul 27 2007 00:12:01)
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Vampires, like the ones who run our country are different from zombies like the ones who voted for the ones who run our country.

This movie will contain fictional characters that will be killed by a hero, unlike like the real life ones that run our country that will not.

I actually liked Constantine and thought it was underrated and visually really well done

Oh, the guy that made Constantine is doing this? He managed to take what looked to be the worst adaptation possible starring the last person I would want to see in the starring role and make a decent, somewhat creepy thriller. Perhaps he'll repeat the trick here.

^

I thought Constantine was actually a pretty good adaption, despite the horrible casting.

Trailer

Has anybody seen this yet?

Will finally has a vehicle whose title matches up well with his self-image.

Have Matheson paperback on table to read.

Does the dog survive in the movie?

I DOUBT IT. BUT he and the dog will bond fiercely (play fetch, sleep in bathtub together awww) and then the dog will die and Will Smith will be all "NOOOO!!!" holding its lifeless body. And then it will become a vampire zombie cannibal and he will be all "aw HELL naw" and then shoot it.

The part with the dog in the book is the best part. That book is just amazing in general. I am probably going to go see this in IMAX for The Dark Knight preview footage.

Just finished the book - loved it. Can anyone recommend anything else by Matheson?

A sentimental favorite is Bid Time Return, which was later filmed as Somewhere in Time.

I was at a screening (of something else) w/ folx who have seen this, and apparently it goes to hell once the mutants show up.

exact same thing with 'juno'.

Saw the midnight screening, which weirdly I did because I wanted to see a movie, not because I am a fanboy in this particular way.

It was really good! Will Smith was great, and the dog part was really well-done. Girl behind me started crying.

I thought it was scary as hell, but then I am extremely frightened by zombies.

NYT review.

Screenplay wasn't too much of an issue--Smith and the visuals really carried it.

Eppy, are you Jada Pinkett Smith?

No, just a man who watched the E! True Hollywood Story: Will Smith.

Screenplay WAS an issue, but I still thought it was worth viewing due to the visuals. And the dog.

and he will be all "aw HELL naw" and then shoot it

eppy can you confirm?

he did not shoot dog, I will not spoil what he does do though

Yuck, he fucks it????

HE SETS IT ON FIRE DOESN'T HE??

I Am Kerosene

I was at a screening (of something else) w/ folx who have seen this, and apparently it goes to hell once the mutants show up.

Who? Slant crew?

I AM FIRESTARTER

http://www.lysator.liu.se/~eribr/prodigy/pics/keith_firestarter_bw.gif

I think he was sorta "Aw hell naw" to the zombie vampires at one point. But I mean hey, wouldn't you?

the best part of "independence day" is when he goes hand-to-hand w/ a saucer pilot in the desert and then gets all attitudinal when he wins

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3lmo5Qp-ac&feature=related

oh looks like i had it backwards

76 million in the US. So did anyone see this thing?

... Is the word "here" missing from that question?

Haha. Yes, yes it is.

My sis liked it.

I heard surprisingly good reports from people. Will probably see this when it hits the cheapie beer theaters.

this was...ok. better than i was expecting. the book is so good that even a half-assed adaptation can reap some rewards.

smith was pretty good, he carried the film well.

the creatures really kind of blew though. cgi should be reserved for things like robots and dinosaurs and aliens and shit, not humanoids that could easily be portrayed by people in make-up. fuck, even the makers of "30 days of night" understood that.

i also had to leave early and switch to a later showing because the people next to me were talking at FULL FUCKING VOLUME and i wanted to kill them.

i also had to leave early and switch to a later showing because the people next to me were talking at FULL FUCKING VOLUME and i wanted to kill them.

oh it's fun when this happens. You can go straight to management(assuming they're there/not stoned) and complain yer ass off, and maybe you'll get free passes to later shit.

The first glimpse of the zombie reverse vampires was awesome, but yeah, after that the close-ups were pretty meh. I thought the more distant group shots were still well done.

I wonder how long it'll be before they finally get an idea about the proper amount of CG to use in a flick, seeing as how we've now had the stuff for about 15+ years. Flicks like The Fountain or the new Indy movie are deliberately keeping/kept the CG to a min, but everybody else(incl. Lucas) seems to think we need that shit slathered on everywhere. I think the only decent effects-heavy CG movie event that's properly used the tech was the LotR series, but that was mainly b/c it was so obvious that the WETA crew actually gave a shit about what they were working on.

The weird thing is that old FX people knew that shit wasn't perfect so you had to use tricks to cover up the tells, esp. lighting. Do FX people now think that CGI looks realistic even when it doesn't?

I dunno. You'd think that guys like Dennis Muren or Phil Tippett, who grew up in the Harryhasen years before bringing ILM into being, would be able to have a better hand on all this stuff, but perhaps it's a corporate thing, where some exec figures that the more dosh poured into the FX budget, the better, regardless of outcome.

^^
Exactly.

The other problem is that CG can look great in the right hands but it's so overused in areas where it's not needed. Humanoid characters tend to suffer with it because we are genetically wired to naturally recognize human faces, subtle expressions, etc. It's not so much a problem with non-humanoid beings.

CGI is cheaper, easier to control, and safer. Plus, a lot of people love that look. I hate how CGI humans/humanoids look, but I think most people just suspend their disbelief and go with it.

There's that, and also the that they still haven't gotten the look done; w/ mini's or stop-motion, the thing actually looks real b/c it has a real solidity to it; it's a physically real thing, not some flat-shit/2-d rendering composited into 3-d space.

Wouldn't it be easier just to slap some makeup on a guy's face, though? There are lots of contemporaneous examples of good zombie makeup. I can understand using it to duplicate figures to make crowd scenes seem bigger, but for closeups, geez...

they move so rubbery, too. they can get King Kong to look fairly real but they can't make a zombie not look like Stretch fucking Armstrong.

Wouldn't it be easier just to slap some makeup on a guy's face, though?

Not if you want the head to look distorted, or to move in a way that a head normally couldn't move. It seems from the trailer like the zombie/vampires have a mutated head shape that would have been hard to pull off with just prosthetics. I'll have to leave it to the folks who have seen it to say so with any certainty, though.

no, they're human-sized typical zombies in this. the only reason i can think of why they'd need CGI zombies is for some of the superhuman movements they do, but for most of the shots they could easily be done with actors in prosthetics/make up.

could be a shooting schedule thing? like, it may actually be quicker/cheaper to shoot raw footage and add the "makeup" in post than it is to spend hours each day getting teams of artists to put shit on the faces of hundreds of extras

That might be true, or not. I don't really know what the filmmakers' thought process was.

It wouldn't be a problem if not for the fact that the bad f/x just took me out of the film. They spend so much time setting up this gritty realistic-looking environment then suddenly plop in some baddies straight from Resident Evil 2.

If lower-budgeted films can come up with hundreds of scary zombie extras why can't this mega-budget event movie?

This is really good, even though the CGI (animals and 'human') looked shitty and a major plot point involves someone knowing Damian Marley but being completely clueless about Bob's existence.

yeah that shit was completely wtf

why does will smith hate america?

Vampires, like the ones who run our country are different from zombies like the ones who voted

hahahaha

I really like this movie, Will played a good part. I agree that the cgi mutants were pretty rubbish, and there's no reason why humans in costume couldn't have been used here seriously - it's not as if they were in every scene.

Having said that, I think I prefer this style of mutant to the clerical madmen in Omega Man.

Loved the scene where he's looking for the dog in that dark building, pretty tense stuff.

Yeah, this was better than I expected. The infected people were corny as hell, they were like bad Lord of the Rings monsters (esp. the lead dude). The ending (and how the meaning of the title was flipped) was Hollywood-ized, but I pretty much expected that. Everything else was surprisingly well-done.

I really want to see Last Man on Earth again.

Loved the scene where he's looking for the dog in that dark building, pretty tense stuff.

That scene is off the hook. The dog is the best character in the movie.

The first hour was EXCELLENT, really tense and surprisingly restrained. The dog deserves an Oscar. All the god/Bob Marley bollocks pissed me right of though, and that woman was obviously a loon.

i am l.ron

This was better than expected. It wasn't popcorn-ized like I thought it'd be, nary an "aw HELL naw" in sight. I loved the long silent bits, the eerie overgrown Times Square, and of course the dog-in-the-building sequence. Liked that Big Bad motivations stayed implied. Every frame of Fred was classic, and Smith "keeping his promise" was actually kinda moving. Opening sequence was breathtaking.

Disappointed at how they flipped the title. Infected much scarier when they're in the shadows than in Gollum mode.

Last half hour or so was a bit crap, must admit.

Smith also confirmed alongside director Francis Lawrence that an alternative ending will be included on the I Am Legend DVD, calling it “less commercial” and hinting that six seconds of it were included in one of the teaser trailers. Could this new ending be more faithful to the forever bleak conclusion in the eponymous Richard Matheson novel?

didn't like this much. as well as the aforementioned annoyances like the Marley 'joke' and the ill-conceived/executed CGI mutants I was initially troubled by the prolonged use of Shrek but then thought if it had been something older I may not have complained. the decision to go for something contemporary and near to the time of the disaster makes some sense, but then why pick something as old as that Bob Marley song if not just to set up the crappy joke?

no-one mentioned the Batman vs Superman movie poster i see

Very disappointed by this. Watched The Omega Man a few days later, and while that was just as, if not more, unfaithful to source, and also pretty rubbish (oh look, an ego-vehicle for Charlton Heston to take his shirt off in), it was, at least, far BRAVER than the Will Smith version.

I have a very strong feeling that, if done totally faithfully, the novel would actually prove to be very cinematic in it's own right, without having to add all the focus-group, test-audience shit.

I remember the Last Man on Earth (the Vincent Price version) being extremely faithful to the book?

I enjoyed the film a lot, but thought the CGI baddies looked like something from a rubbish videogame. Why can't they have real baddies in films any more?

the mutants didn't even squawk with british accents

was hoping the leader would be super smart jeremy irons

dressed up like a member of Dimmu Borgir

http://youtube.com/watch?v=vIq69GyQX54

^^^^ ALTERNATE ENDING

gonna be on the dvd but its already on the internets

makes me like the movie a bit more than i did already

garbage

Less garbage than the one they showed in theaters.

All the reviews said the same thing: the first 20 minutes are good but the rest sucks. I went to see the first 20 minutes and they were not good.

just watched this today. the bit when smith is looking for his dog and he comes across a bunch of the mutants standing in circle - what's that all about? they're kinda just standing, heads bowed, sort of bobbing and they don't notice him even when he flashes the torch on his gun.

The scene in the building was fucking amazing.

did anyone discuss why his video store friend dude was in the middle of the street? did the scary dudes dudes from grand theft auto: back from the dead get smart for a minute and they decided not to explain that further?

i thought it was like yeah, they were showing like signs of intelligence (hence the trap, and the use of the rabid dogs) which was proper scary because before that it was like lolololol they're all thick as shit.

yeah i thought the whole point of that was that they had been observing his methods of catching them and they used those techniques on him, i.e. during the night they got the mannequin and set up the trap. i thought the setup for that was dumb - when neville catches the female mutant and that other mutant kinda half leers out of the dark and gets burned - he made an observation later that this showed as another example of complete devolution from normal human social behaviour, but it seemed patently obvious that it was just the opposite: one member of a tribe outraged by the capture of another member of the same tribe.

I thought it was a trap he had set up himself to a catch an infected that he had forgotten about.

but if it was for an infected, it wouldn't be out in broad daylight, right?

I thought it was part of him going crazy when I saw the movie - but after reading the book, I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be a sign of their new intelligence.

In the building they were eating, right? Huddled in a circle snacking on the flesh of whatever.

that part was kinda dumb, when they unleash teh dogs on him. the monsters looked so cgi video game lame in this movie.

that said... kinda liked the first half

I haven't seen this yet but it's on my netflix queue.

should I just read the book?

the book is substantially different from the movie and you should read it regardless. that said, the movie was a lot better than i thought it would be (though i totally agree with slocki re: the effects).

http://www.firstshowing.net/2008/03/05/must-watch-i-am-legends-original-ending-this-is-amazing/

alternate ending still up here

i thought that circle thing was a feeding too, at first, but they're standing upright - it's just their heads that are bowed. anyway, whatever they were doing, it really creeped me out.

circle jerk

sorry, that was meant for the circle jerk thread

I found out the other day that Mike Patton did the voices of the undead monsters.

whoa, really?? you mean that kind of bellowing noise?

I guess so - there's a clip about it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsK0GKajlsI

When he finds them in the circle in the building while searching for his dog, are they not just resting, doing whatever counts for sleeping for them, given that it was daytime outside? As they are supposedly active during the nighttime I thought that they would lie low during daylight hours, hidden in the dark of course. I thought that they're unlikely to be running round and round inside darkened buildings all day just waiting for it to get dark outside again. Even an infected mutant gets tired sometimes.

I found out the other day that Mike Patton did the voices of the undead monsters.

as most of you already know, but for those that don't, he also did the 'gurgling' noises for the last monster in the recent hit game Portal

typecast or what

would it have been really that hard to film real lions for the scene near the start, instead of those atrocious cgi things?

I thought Will Smith was terrific in this.

I don't even remember the lions.

the beginning was soooo fake CGI.. it really annoyed me.

rest of the movie sucked as well heh.

saw this last night, finally. Smith is good and it starts well - I liked the cutting between outbreak and aftermath as a way to tell the zombie story. But it completely goes to pieces in the last third, as has been pointed out upthread and elsewhere (I thought the alternate ending was even worse than the one they went with), which leaves you feeling that the whole thing is disposable crap.

Anyway, mostly came here to post this news story which is coincidentally currently on the BBC website:
'Anti-cancer virus' shows promise.

I like the LMFAO remake better.