History Fridge / IAmLegend

* At first the movie adaptation of ''I Am Legend'' could be interpreted as a lame plot shadow of the book, until you realize that in the post-apocalyptic movies the action almost always centers around heroic characters searching for safety, or even a mythical promised land, and before they get there, they almost always have to meet an eccentric, borderline crazy hermit who gives them an important piece of information or item, helps them on their way, and then gets killed. The young woman and boy were the typical hero characters, and Will Smith was a minor supporting character, but for once, we got to see his story instead of theirs. And it turned out that his story mostly involved waiting around for something to happen. -Unwinder

* This depends on one's interpretation: When Neville mimics the lines from ''Shrek'', on one hand, it could simply show how [[{{Adorkable}} Neville's lost his social skills]]. On the other hand, it becomes his fitting way of [[RuleOfSymbolism expressing his thoughts]] to the young woman and the boy (how he finally has someone to talk to, his admiration for how they rescued him from the dark seekers, his recent loss of Sam, and that they should form an alliance).

* When you look deeply at it, I Am Legend is the story of a man who has failed at many things, and his descent to insanity. And that makes it all the more sadder...

* This depends on one's interpretation: When Neville mimics the lines from "Shrek", on one hand, it could simply show how [[{{Adorkable}} Neville's lost his social skills]]. On the other hand, it becomes his fitting way of [[RuleOfSymbolism expressing his thoughts]] to the young woman and the boy (how he finally has someone to talk to, his admiration for how they rescued him from the dark seekers, his recent loss of Sam, and that they should form an alliance).

** The ending is essentially about him being humble enough to realize he wasn't meant to fix the problem: [[spoiler: he was meant to lend the tool (the cure) to fixing everything to someone who has hope left to try.]]

*** This. Essentially, it's a role-reversal: to the non-savage vampires, Neville is "Dracula", stalking them as they sleep and are powerless to fight back. He even tries to turn an innocent woman into a day-haunting "monster" like himself, when she falls into his clutches.

* This depends on one's [[YMMV interpretation]]: When Neville mimics the lines from "Shrek", it becomes his fitting way of [[RuleOfSymbolism communicating his thoughts]] to the young woman and the boy (how he finally has someone to talk to, his admiration for how they rescued him from the dark seekers, his recent loss of Sam, and that they should form an alliance).

*** At first, I was angry about the fact that the original, book-based, ending was the controversial one, but then I realized, they wiped out humanity. They didn't deserve to live, and making peace with them would be like making peace with cancer, AIDs, or bullets, that is to say, disgusting.

* FridgeHorror: In the movie, Neville's wife is nearly stopped at the checkpoint because the eye-scanner gave a false positive when it checked her for infection. How many ''other'' perfectly-healthy people were turned away for the same reason, and needlessly left trapped in the quarantine zone, if false positives are so common that we see one happen out of just seven people scanned in that scene?

* FridgeHorror: In the movie, Neville's wife is nearly stopped at the checkpoint because the eye-scanner gave a false positive when it checked her for infection. How many ''other'' perfectly-healthy people were turned away for the same reason, and needlessly left trapped in the quarantine zone, if false positives are so common that we see one happen out of just seven people scanned in that scene?

* FridgeHorror: Neville's wife is nearly stopped at the checkpoint because the eye-scanner gave a false positive when it checked her for infection. How many ''other'' perfectly-healthy people were turned away for the same reason, and needlessly left trapped in the quarantine zone, if false positives are so common that we see one happen out of just seven people scanned in that scene?

* FridgeHorror: Neville's wife is nearly stopped at the checkpoint because the eye-scanner gave a false positive when it checked her for infection. How many ''other'' perfectly-healthy people were turned away for the same reason, if false positives are so common that we see one happen out of just seven people scanned in that scene?

* When you look deeply at it, I Am Legend is the story of a man who has failed at many things, and his descent to insanity. And that makes it all the more sadder...

* FridgeHorror: Neville has a military rank of some sort, and seems to have been one of the lead scientists working on the virus in the first place... ''what exactly were the American military planning to do with it?'' If so, [[GoneHorriblyRight it worked]]

* Neville has to have his own methods for obtaining gasoline and electricity, but ordinary plumbing still works fine 3 years after the collapse of civilization.

* I responded initially as most people did to the finale of the recent WillSmith ''I Am Legend'' adaptation. I thought that the empty New York was interesting, and I liked everything up until Will Smith's rescue by the idealistic adventurers, but I resented the fact that it tossed aside the literary source, and I thought it was lame how generic it got at the end. Soon after I thought back to all the apocalyptic/post apocalyptic movies I've seen, and I realized that the action almost always centers around heroic characters searching for safety, or even a mythical promised land, and before they get there, they almost always have to meet an eccentric, borderline crazy hermit who gives them an important piece of information or item, helps them on their way, and then gets killed. The young woman and boy were the typical hero characters, and Will Smith was a minor supporting character, but for once, we got to see his story instead of theirs. And it turned out that his story mostly involved waiting around for something to happen. -Unwinder

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