Let’s see if I can remember how to do this.
Spoilers ho!
JLA Classified 49 – Every now and again someone comes up with the idea of examining the lives of the companions of the heroes in a comic. The stories are generally pretty predictable; I suppose it would be interesting if the superhero died and we were spotlighting the side characters when it happened, but then there would be an uproar about not giving the main character enough respect to be the focus of attention when he or she died. In this case, the JLA has been summoned to Mars to fight off an invading species and our viewpoint remains on Earth as we follow the loved ones as they wait for information about the battle and its results.
There really isn’t any new ground covered here. It takes a really inept writer to cause a story of this nature to not have resonance with its readers, and Andrew Kreisberg doesn’t do anything that causes the story to fall apart. New readers may be confused by the timeline for the story: Linda Park is still a reporter and Hippolyta greets Wonder Woman upon her return, so it is pretty clear this takes place early in the previous run of Justice League.
No, what really stands out to me about this issue is the outstanding artwork by Paulo Siqueira. Doing a little research I found that is the same artist who worked on the recent Black Canary series, but nothing about it really jumped out at me like this one did. Each face is individual and expressive, and the lines are extremely clean. I really look forward to seeing more of his work in the future.
Green Lantern/Sinestro Corps: Secret Files 1 – The cover says it best: over 200 Green Lanterns described, and quite a few of the Sinestro Corps as well. There’s nothing really outstanding about the work here, although some of the tiny drawings of the characters have fine touches about them. Someone, however, has to recognize the work an archivist had to have done on this. I wonder if these all came from the notes of Geoff Johns, but I doubt it. The information in this comic is a GL fanboy’s dream and something to behold. It will take the longest to read of any comic this week.
Pax Romana 1 – I read about the premise of this Image comic online and felt it was a really strong science fiction story, so I put it on my pull list. In a distant future, the Catholic Church decides to use the recent invention of time travel to go back in time and arrange events so that it can retain its authority and power over the centuries instead of becoming little more than a cult. This first issue deals with introducing all the main players as time travel is discovered and brought to the attention of the Pope. I especially like the throwaway line that the inventors of the time travel process “disproved paradox”; think about that for a bit—how would you know if you had avoided paradox, if time had changed upstream from you so that the past you once knew wasn’t the past any more? But beyond this perhaps minor gaffe, the idea is fascinating.
Here’s the bad news: the author, Jonathan Hickman, is also the artist. And the art is excruciatingly experimental. Reading much more like an illustrated novel than a comic book, the pages are dominated by text set in word balloons or in asides like print-outs, providing background information that could not be delivered by the characters. The font is computerized and not at all inviting, and the art is depressingly static, generally relying on shades of a single color (often brown) in front of a background that is either all white or generic abstract washes of color.
The story in this first issue moves fast in order to cover a lot of ground. However, conflict between the major parties of the time travelers—the church leadership and the military men who are given carte blanche to do what the church decides is appropriate. The conflict is even resolved, a little obviously in hindsight, but I was so busy trying to parse the book that I didn’t see the resolution coming. I also thought that the conflict would last throughout the series, so didn’t expect it quite so early. But this also shows the hand of a creator willing to break expectations to tell an original story, which is always a good thing.
Hickman has clearly spent time thinking about this series and its background. I see a lot of potential here and will continue to get this for a few issues to see if I can adapt to its difficult nature or if, perhaps, it begins to follow a more expected comic book format.
Blue Beetle 22 - Everything has begun to come together. In what would otherwise be a clunky bit of exposition, Jaime (and writer John Rogers) pulls together the strings of the last few issues in a decisive fashion. While the reader may have felt like the story was a series of tenuously connected arcs, it turns out that everything is related, and now Jaime has the evidence he needs to prove the evil intent of The Reach.
One of DC's best ongoing series, despite the pedestrian efforts of the artist, Blue Beetle is headed for a rousing climax, leaving me to wonder what the series can do to go from here. Packed with action and adventure as well as poignant emotional moments with Jaime's parents, the moral fulcrums of the series, being...you know, parental and stuff. Grab this while you can, and if you can't find back issues, get some trades. We'll have to see how well Jaime is written by other creators as he starts spreading out into other titles, but until that happens. revel in what's going on with him now.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Friday, December 28, 2007
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
It always sounds like “damning with faint praise” but sometimes an entertainment vehicle is just an entertainment vehicle. In this case, National Treasure: Book of Secrets is just a fun movie. In the next few paragraphs, I will talk about some of the things that didn’t make sense or just bugged the crap out of me, but ultimately, when the movie was over, I was smiling and wondering about the possibility of another sequel.
For instance, Ed Harris’s character arc made no sense at all. He is set up as the head of a mercenary organization apparently lusting after a huge reward for finding Cibola, the lost city of gold. But in the last third of the movie, he makes it clear that he just wants a place in history for his family name. He acts as a team member and rescues characters he has harassed throughout the rest of the movie. So if his goal was just to find Cibola, why didn’t he approach the Gates family to start with? Why the underhanded accusations of treason? Most of the story could have remained the same, but then we wouldn’t get the car chase sequences we got.
Oh, product placement—how did we ever survive so long without you? At some point, I expected to see a TV commercial saying “The fictional Gates family, intrepid researchers of historical antiquities, drives Mercedes-Benz. Even backwards.” I think it’s lovely that the new Benz has a rear-mounted back-up camera so that a driver apparently doesn’t have to use his rear-view mirror. But does it have to be a plot point for the movie? And when the elder Gates, played by Jon Voight, goes to do research on the internet, is it necessary that we see a completely useless MSN splash screen (which somehow appeared at least twice as big as it does if you actually go to their web site)? Ambiguous search result screens would be fine, I think. And while I couldn’t catch which cell phone the Gates were using, isn’t it nice to know that it can be so easily cloned and used by your arch-nemesis?
Oh, there are plot holes galore. The legend of Cibola that the movie tells says that a Spanish servant was led to Cibola by Native Americans but when he tried to retrace his footsteps for later Spanish explorers, he couldn’t find the city. Never mind that a cursory search for information about Cibola tells a completely different story, but it’s easy to see why the servant failed, especially if he was wandering around Florida and eventually the Southwest when all along Cibola was in South Dakota. And when exactly did the Olmecs make it so far north?
Nevertheless, the movie is a lot of fun, eventually convincing you to set aside your logical processes and go along for the ride. Nicholas Cage has his moments, though none so scenery-chewing as I was led to believe it was going to be. Harvey Keitel and Helen Mirren are under-used but good in the time they are given. Justin Bartha’s comic sidekick role is too confining also, though he makes a good use of it. The interaction between the main characters feels real and unforced, and the humor is also natural. There’s only two extended chase sequences, and they are quickly disposed of.
The real star is the romp through American history. I’m sure Google got tons of hits on “Resolute desks” in the first weekend the movie was out, and there is probably a lot more interest in the Statue of Liberty and Mount Rushmore than there has been in a while. These can’t be bad things, I think.
The movie ends with a clear set-up for another sequel, and I wouldn’t be at all disappointed to see it. Sometimes, it’s enough to escape.
For instance, Ed Harris’s character arc made no sense at all. He is set up as the head of a mercenary organization apparently lusting after a huge reward for finding Cibola, the lost city of gold. But in the last third of the movie, he makes it clear that he just wants a place in history for his family name. He acts as a team member and rescues characters he has harassed throughout the rest of the movie. So if his goal was just to find Cibola, why didn’t he approach the Gates family to start with? Why the underhanded accusations of treason? Most of the story could have remained the same, but then we wouldn’t get the car chase sequences we got.
Oh, product placement—how did we ever survive so long without you? At some point, I expected to see a TV commercial saying “The fictional Gates family, intrepid researchers of historical antiquities, drives Mercedes-Benz. Even backwards.” I think it’s lovely that the new Benz has a rear-mounted back-up camera so that a driver apparently doesn’t have to use his rear-view mirror. But does it have to be a plot point for the movie? And when the elder Gates, played by Jon Voight, goes to do research on the internet, is it necessary that we see a completely useless MSN splash screen (which somehow appeared at least twice as big as it does if you actually go to their web site)? Ambiguous search result screens would be fine, I think. And while I couldn’t catch which cell phone the Gates were using, isn’t it nice to know that it can be so easily cloned and used by your arch-nemesis?
Oh, there are plot holes galore. The legend of Cibola that the movie tells says that a Spanish servant was led to Cibola by Native Americans but when he tried to retrace his footsteps for later Spanish explorers, he couldn’t find the city. Never mind that a cursory search for information about Cibola tells a completely different story, but it’s easy to see why the servant failed, especially if he was wandering around Florida and eventually the Southwest when all along Cibola was in South Dakota. And when exactly did the Olmecs make it so far north?
Nevertheless, the movie is a lot of fun, eventually convincing you to set aside your logical processes and go along for the ride. Nicholas Cage has his moments, though none so scenery-chewing as I was led to believe it was going to be. Harvey Keitel and Helen Mirren are under-used but good in the time they are given. Justin Bartha’s comic sidekick role is too confining also, though he makes a good use of it. The interaction between the main characters feels real and unforced, and the humor is also natural. There’s only two extended chase sequences, and they are quickly disposed of.
The real star is the romp through American history. I’m sure Google got tons of hits on “Resolute desks” in the first weekend the movie was out, and there is probably a lot more interest in the Statue of Liberty and Mount Rushmore than there has been in a while. These can’t be bad things, I think.
The movie ends with a clear set-up for another sequel, and I wouldn’t be at all disappointed to see it. Sometimes, it’s enough to escape.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Strangely Silent: The End of the Year
I haven’t been blogging much in the past couple of months, and I thought I would offer some rationale for the remarkable silence.
First, Mrs. Speculator and I haven’t really seen many movies of late. All the ones we’ve seen, I’ve blogged about. Stuff would come and go, and we might be mildly interested in some of it, but not enough to make a really concerted effort to get out to them. We both regret that, but given the cost of movies and the proportional discourtesy among other movie-goers, we just don’t try really hard. There are a number of holiday movies we are interested in, and maybe some good stuff will come out in the new year, so there may be more movie posts. But I also gave Mrs. Speculator a 40-inch LCD TV for Christmas (thanks for the help Jeff!) and we are really rediscovering the joy of the good movies on our own in-home big screen. This past week we watched some of the best movies of last year, including V for Vendetta, Children of Men, and The Prestige, with the ability to rewind and pause and no one more rude than our cats walking between us and the screen. There is still much to be said about seeing movies on the really big screen, and I know we both want to get to more movies.
Second, there’s not been much on TV to be excited about. About four episodes into Heroes we decided that when the arc was done, we were done with the show. Perhaps I can expand that decision into a blog, but ultimately, I’m not sure the show is intended for people who already read and enjoy comics, but acts more as a lure to get people into the comic form. The show distills the tropes and clichés of the last forty years of comics so that it is very predictable and yet, somehow, ridiculously slow-moving. And, already being fans, Mrs. Speculator and I weren’t being excited by the stories (I especially despise the ridiculous use of Hiro’s time-travelling powers) and the characters just weren’t grabbing us. So we gave up. We watched the pilot of Bionic Woman and we usually try to give a show three episodes, but we couldn’t find a reason to really pay attention to this one for more than the first hour of the pilot.
One of the shows we really do like is Chuck. We really enjoy the goofy lead character and his best friend, Morgan (Organ). And while the individual shows are a little predictable, the arcs are not; and we really like the smart dialog and the geek moments. I about busted a gut after three episodes when I finally realized that the secondary antagonist was named Harry Tang. How they are getting away with some of the wordplay and scenes is beyond me, but we really look forward to every Monday. But now, with the writer’s strike, we have no idea when new episodes will be coming out. Fortunately, we have Lost to look forward to in the spring, but even its season may well be cut short due to the strike. As it is, we are down to about six shows a week, not counting college football….
Third, I made a really bad book decision. I was reading a novel that was getting huge reviews and I was tremendously excited about it. I tried for two months to read the book and ultimately gave up, less than halfway through it. I wonder if that would make a good blog entry, but I’m not comfortable giving a bad review to a book I couldn’t finish. Who knows—maybe that last two hundred pages were brilliant. So I started reading other things, but work has been insane. The last couple of weeks of the year, I was either pulling 11-hour days or coming home emotionally exhausted from the wear and tear of ridiculous corporate processes. I generally ended up being mindless: playing a computer game or just catching up on comics.
The good news is that my own book got finished up in that time as well. Eric did an awesome job with the layouts: I think Mark’s brilliant art was an inspiration for us both. I am actually terribly excited about the book’s impending release, just because I think everyone did a really bang-up job putting it together. My biggest hope is that people who already know Mark and his work will get a deeper appreciation for it, and that people who don’t know him will want to after reading the book. There’s a bit of irony, though; in all the material about the book on the Web, either at Amazon or on the publisher’s web site, my name has been left off the book. The cover being used in the online listings is not the final art. So, even if I link to the book (like this: http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=70&products_id=603&zenid=ad06dd5542972c5aa5a82be5a3d5c3eb), I can still retain something of Internet anonymity until you actually buy the book….
Finally, there’s comics. I read an interesting article on Absorbascon about the differences between Marvel and DC, especially how Marvel appeals to the part of us that likes serialized stories, while DC has relied on variations of the detective story. The article ends up by pointing out that the recent year-long crossover stuff from DC is more like Marvel than historical DC. Reading this brought clarity to my own misgivings about what DC was doing with their characters and universe(s?). Then I read an article on Lying in the Gutters about the bad feelings running rampant in the DC offices about the direction things are going in, and I realized that if the writers aren’t happy, the faithful readers weren’t likely to be either. Frankly, DC’s current direction relies on tight continuity between titles, which worked pretty well during the year-long 52 event. But Countdown has been a disaster. Stories are planned out and then have to be finished in annuals when the deadlines go unmet. Gaffes between the individual titles have been numerous, the most visible being the appearance of the old Aquaman in Justice League when he is dead in his own title. I felt like the return of the multiverse would have opened up the possibilities for story-telling in DC, but nothing is using that potential except Booster Gold, which remains a fun ride. The result is a convoluted impossible mess, which I am enjoying in tiny segments but the overall view just depresses me. I’ve been dropping titles a great deal recently and holding out hope that it gets turned around. I’ve never been an apologist for the current editorial staff for DC, but I also never lambasted them as I have seen on other sites. But now I just have to wonder if there really is a plan.
I think I may have made it clear that I favor DC far above Marvel. Even so, I was buying some Marvel titles for the writers and characters. But World War Hulk ended with the Hulk being moved to another title and not being written by Greg Pak any more. I picked up Incredible Hulk just for his work, and I dropped it as soon as he was gone; I’ll not read anything written by Jeph Loeb if I can help it. I was reading X-Factor because Peter David was writing it, and I loved his original run on the series. But his story-telling has become lost in the continual crossovers that detract from what he was doing, and then I found out that the cast was undergoing a wholesale change, so I dropped that one too. As for the other non-Ultimate titles I was picking up, I dropped almost all of them when the Skrull stuff started. I mean, if I cared about the Marvel universe, I might have an interest in finding out which members were really Skrull spies and which weren’t, but I don’t know the universe and so don’t care. I’ll probably look for updates as to who is Skrully in the next year, but I don’t care enough to spend my money there.
So, yeah, I’m still here. Circumstances have just gotten away with me and I’m not writing as much as I once did or as much as I might like. I’m going to see what I can do about fixing that in the new year. Speaking of which, happy holidays to those who come by. Things will pick up, you have my word.
First, Mrs. Speculator and I haven’t really seen many movies of late. All the ones we’ve seen, I’ve blogged about. Stuff would come and go, and we might be mildly interested in some of it, but not enough to make a really concerted effort to get out to them. We both regret that, but given the cost of movies and the proportional discourtesy among other movie-goers, we just don’t try really hard. There are a number of holiday movies we are interested in, and maybe some good stuff will come out in the new year, so there may be more movie posts. But I also gave Mrs. Speculator a 40-inch LCD TV for Christmas (thanks for the help Jeff!) and we are really rediscovering the joy of the good movies on our own in-home big screen. This past week we watched some of the best movies of last year, including V for Vendetta, Children of Men, and The Prestige, with the ability to rewind and pause and no one more rude than our cats walking between us and the screen. There is still much to be said about seeing movies on the really big screen, and I know we both want to get to more movies.
Second, there’s not been much on TV to be excited about. About four episodes into Heroes we decided that when the arc was done, we were done with the show. Perhaps I can expand that decision into a blog, but ultimately, I’m not sure the show is intended for people who already read and enjoy comics, but acts more as a lure to get people into the comic form. The show distills the tropes and clichés of the last forty years of comics so that it is very predictable and yet, somehow, ridiculously slow-moving. And, already being fans, Mrs. Speculator and I weren’t being excited by the stories (I especially despise the ridiculous use of Hiro’s time-travelling powers) and the characters just weren’t grabbing us. So we gave up. We watched the pilot of Bionic Woman and we usually try to give a show three episodes, but we couldn’t find a reason to really pay attention to this one for more than the first hour of the pilot.
One of the shows we really do like is Chuck. We really enjoy the goofy lead character and his best friend, Morgan (Organ). And while the individual shows are a little predictable, the arcs are not; and we really like the smart dialog and the geek moments. I about busted a gut after three episodes when I finally realized that the secondary antagonist was named Harry Tang. How they are getting away with some of the wordplay and scenes is beyond me, but we really look forward to every Monday. But now, with the writer’s strike, we have no idea when new episodes will be coming out. Fortunately, we have Lost to look forward to in the spring, but even its season may well be cut short due to the strike. As it is, we are down to about six shows a week, not counting college football….
Third, I made a really bad book decision. I was reading a novel that was getting huge reviews and I was tremendously excited about it. I tried for two months to read the book and ultimately gave up, less than halfway through it. I wonder if that would make a good blog entry, but I’m not comfortable giving a bad review to a book I couldn’t finish. Who knows—maybe that last two hundred pages were brilliant. So I started reading other things, but work has been insane. The last couple of weeks of the year, I was either pulling 11-hour days or coming home emotionally exhausted from the wear and tear of ridiculous corporate processes. I generally ended up being mindless: playing a computer game or just catching up on comics.
The good news is that my own book got finished up in that time as well. Eric did an awesome job with the layouts: I think Mark’s brilliant art was an inspiration for us both. I am actually terribly excited about the book’s impending release, just because I think everyone did a really bang-up job putting it together. My biggest hope is that people who already know Mark and his work will get a deeper appreciation for it, and that people who don’t know him will want to after reading the book. There’s a bit of irony, though; in all the material about the book on the Web, either at Amazon or on the publisher’s web site, my name has been left off the book. The cover being used in the online listings is not the final art. So, even if I link to the book (like this: http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=70&products_id=603&zenid=ad06dd5542972c5aa5a82be5a3d5c3eb), I can still retain something of Internet anonymity until you actually buy the book….
Finally, there’s comics. I read an interesting article on Absorbascon about the differences between Marvel and DC, especially how Marvel appeals to the part of us that likes serialized stories, while DC has relied on variations of the detective story. The article ends up by pointing out that the recent year-long crossover stuff from DC is more like Marvel than historical DC. Reading this brought clarity to my own misgivings about what DC was doing with their characters and universe(s?). Then I read an article on Lying in the Gutters about the bad feelings running rampant in the DC offices about the direction things are going in, and I realized that if the writers aren’t happy, the faithful readers weren’t likely to be either. Frankly, DC’s current direction relies on tight continuity between titles, which worked pretty well during the year-long 52 event. But Countdown has been a disaster. Stories are planned out and then have to be finished in annuals when the deadlines go unmet. Gaffes between the individual titles have been numerous, the most visible being the appearance of the old Aquaman in Justice League when he is dead in his own title. I felt like the return of the multiverse would have opened up the possibilities for story-telling in DC, but nothing is using that potential except Booster Gold, which remains a fun ride. The result is a convoluted impossible mess, which I am enjoying in tiny segments but the overall view just depresses me. I’ve been dropping titles a great deal recently and holding out hope that it gets turned around. I’ve never been an apologist for the current editorial staff for DC, but I also never lambasted them as I have seen on other sites. But now I just have to wonder if there really is a plan.
I think I may have made it clear that I favor DC far above Marvel. Even so, I was buying some Marvel titles for the writers and characters. But World War Hulk ended with the Hulk being moved to another title and not being written by Greg Pak any more. I picked up Incredible Hulk just for his work, and I dropped it as soon as he was gone; I’ll not read anything written by Jeph Loeb if I can help it. I was reading X-Factor because Peter David was writing it, and I loved his original run on the series. But his story-telling has become lost in the continual crossovers that detract from what he was doing, and then I found out that the cast was undergoing a wholesale change, so I dropped that one too. As for the other non-Ultimate titles I was picking up, I dropped almost all of them when the Skrull stuff started. I mean, if I cared about the Marvel universe, I might have an interest in finding out which members were really Skrull spies and which weren’t, but I don’t know the universe and so don’t care. I’ll probably look for updates as to who is Skrully in the next year, but I don’t care enough to spend my money there.
So, yeah, I’m still here. Circumstances have just gotten away with me and I’m not writing as much as I once did or as much as I might like. I’m going to see what I can do about fixing that in the new year. Speaking of which, happy holidays to those who come by. Things will pick up, you have my word.
I Am Legend
When I was in San Diego this past summer, Mrs. Speculator and I went to a panel regarding the comics DC was doing in association with the upcoming movie I Am Legend. Part of what was really gratifying about the panel was that Will Smith’s personal assistant was at the panel, talking about how devoted Smith was to doing a good adaptation. In addition, the son of the author of the original story was at the panel describing how good a retelling this version was going to be. So when we went to see the movie, we had high expectations. Sadly, I think most of those expectations went unfulfilled.
Will Smith does a very fine job of playing Robert Neville, dancing on the fine line between sanity and insanity. Until the audience is shown the vampiric remainders of civilization, the story is a fairly solid last man on earth scenario, much like The Quiet Earth. The quiet scenes of the steps he takes to try to overcome the virus that has affected humanity and the daily schedule that Neville keeps with himself are evocative. Despair resonates as Neville travels the empty city with his dog and his memories as his only companions. The story of the evacuation of New York and Neville’s family are told in flashback, but I can’t say what they really add to the story. It’s enough to know that he is alone and that he has lost his family, so the minute details of the crushing car ride through the city on their way to the evacuation point don’t add any information that are essential to the story-telling. In fact, I think we have seen these kinds of crowd scenes handled better, from the likes of the recent remake of War of the Worlds. But it is the Neville that talks to himself that is riveting, as well as the steps he takes to maintain a sense of normality in the most abnormal circumstances.
But then the antagonists show up and things fairly rapidly deteriorate from a story-telling point of view. Part of the problem is that when they are seen full on, they are done in CGI…and it’s not very good CGI at that. I was reminded of the work done on the Scorpion King in The Mummy Returns, very plastic and more animated than life-like. That Neville has somehow found an adversary among the diseased is never explained. There is apparently one really smart vampire in all the world, and it just happens to be where Neville is. We’re not given time to ponder this bizarre coincidence, but his appearance throws off Neville’s carefully maintained timetable so that he is pushed over the line into insanity just when he needs to be at his best.
There is also the unlikely coincidence that Neville is an expert virologist who continues to pursue a cure for the plague, hoping to bring humanity back from its plagued state. The moments when he is working in his lab are when we see him the most sane. Unfortunately, at those moments the movie becomes a procedural, following the steps that Neville takes to discover the cure. Try as they might, it’s next to impossible to make the scientific method exciting.
Enter the plot twist in the form of a young woman and child, led by God to search for a haven for those who have somehow survived the plague. There are some interesting moments where Neville and Anna argue about the presence of God in this post-plague world, but again they feel like part of another movie. Those arguments add very little to the film; we already know how Neville thinks about his world, and Anna is really a plot device more than a fully realized character, so we don’t really care what she thinks. Given the contrived ending of the movie, it’s apparent who the movie wants us to believe won the arguments, but it’s not clear why the writers felt they had to go in such a bizarre direction. Perhaps by contrasting the ineffable actions of a deity with the overreaching actions of man when he first caused the plague that destroyed the population, the movie is attempting to make a statement about our current policies or technological direction. But it’s not clear what that message might be, and it is not constructed very well since it would seem to ignore that mankind would also be the invention of that same deity. As I say, the moments between the newcomers and Neville just don’t play out very well, and it’s not just because Neville has forgotten how to be social.
Also annoying was the opening scene, involving Neville hunting deer in a late-model Ford Mustang. Somehow he races through the city at break-neck speed without ever damaging the car, and rides through the herd of deer without hitting a single one of them. As improbable as that is, what is more astonishing is that for every other scene in the movie where Neville moves about, even when he is hunting, he uses a fully equipped SUV. The Mustang is only ever there as an advertisement (“when the world ends, at least you know you’ve got a Mustang!”).
I Am Legend has a lot of potential, but it just founders at about the halfway point and becomes merely interesting rather than involving or exciting. I can’t say how much the movie resembles Richard Matheson’s original novella, since I have never been able to find it, but given the power and scope of the writing of Matheson’s that I do know, I don’t think it follows all that closely. That shouldn’t matter, I guess, but I use it to point out what a deep source the screenwriters and director had to work with. So, finally, I Am Legend is a disappointment, worth maybe a matinee viewing if not just a rental when it comes out on DVD.
Will Smith does a very fine job of playing Robert Neville, dancing on the fine line between sanity and insanity. Until the audience is shown the vampiric remainders of civilization, the story is a fairly solid last man on earth scenario, much like The Quiet Earth. The quiet scenes of the steps he takes to try to overcome the virus that has affected humanity and the daily schedule that Neville keeps with himself are evocative. Despair resonates as Neville travels the empty city with his dog and his memories as his only companions. The story of the evacuation of New York and Neville’s family are told in flashback, but I can’t say what they really add to the story. It’s enough to know that he is alone and that he has lost his family, so the minute details of the crushing car ride through the city on their way to the evacuation point don’t add any information that are essential to the story-telling. In fact, I think we have seen these kinds of crowd scenes handled better, from the likes of the recent remake of War of the Worlds. But it is the Neville that talks to himself that is riveting, as well as the steps he takes to maintain a sense of normality in the most abnormal circumstances.
But then the antagonists show up and things fairly rapidly deteriorate from a story-telling point of view. Part of the problem is that when they are seen full on, they are done in CGI…and it’s not very good CGI at that. I was reminded of the work done on the Scorpion King in The Mummy Returns, very plastic and more animated than life-like. That Neville has somehow found an adversary among the diseased is never explained. There is apparently one really smart vampire in all the world, and it just happens to be where Neville is. We’re not given time to ponder this bizarre coincidence, but his appearance throws off Neville’s carefully maintained timetable so that he is pushed over the line into insanity just when he needs to be at his best.
There is also the unlikely coincidence that Neville is an expert virologist who continues to pursue a cure for the plague, hoping to bring humanity back from its plagued state. The moments when he is working in his lab are when we see him the most sane. Unfortunately, at those moments the movie becomes a procedural, following the steps that Neville takes to discover the cure. Try as they might, it’s next to impossible to make the scientific method exciting.
Enter the plot twist in the form of a young woman and child, led by God to search for a haven for those who have somehow survived the plague. There are some interesting moments where Neville and Anna argue about the presence of God in this post-plague world, but again they feel like part of another movie. Those arguments add very little to the film; we already know how Neville thinks about his world, and Anna is really a plot device more than a fully realized character, so we don’t really care what she thinks. Given the contrived ending of the movie, it’s apparent who the movie wants us to believe won the arguments, but it’s not clear why the writers felt they had to go in such a bizarre direction. Perhaps by contrasting the ineffable actions of a deity with the overreaching actions of man when he first caused the plague that destroyed the population, the movie is attempting to make a statement about our current policies or technological direction. But it’s not clear what that message might be, and it is not constructed very well since it would seem to ignore that mankind would also be the invention of that same deity. As I say, the moments between the newcomers and Neville just don’t play out very well, and it’s not just because Neville has forgotten how to be social.
Also annoying was the opening scene, involving Neville hunting deer in a late-model Ford Mustang. Somehow he races through the city at break-neck speed without ever damaging the car, and rides through the herd of deer without hitting a single one of them. As improbable as that is, what is more astonishing is that for every other scene in the movie where Neville moves about, even when he is hunting, he uses a fully equipped SUV. The Mustang is only ever there as an advertisement (“when the world ends, at least you know you’ve got a Mustang!”).
I Am Legend has a lot of potential, but it just founders at about the halfway point and becomes merely interesting rather than involving or exciting. I can’t say how much the movie resembles Richard Matheson’s original novella, since I have never been able to find it, but given the power and scope of the writing of Matheson’s that I do know, I don’t think it follows all that closely. That shouldn’t matter, I guess, but I use it to point out what a deep source the screenwriters and director had to work with. So, finally, I Am Legend is a disappointment, worth maybe a matinee viewing if not just a rental when it comes out on DVD.
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