I Am Legend (2007)
Directed by Francis Lawrence
Epidemics; Evolution; Extinction; Genetic research; Mutations; Repopulation; Science fiction; Thriller
Immune to a viral epidemic that has killed most of humanity and turned the rest into animalistic mutants, Dr. Robert Neville is the last man in New York City and must fight to survive and find a cure.
The film opens with a 2009 interview with renowned scientist Dr. Alice Krippen (Emma Thompson) describing her miraculous cure for cancer. Her team has taken the measles virus and engineered it at a genetic level to make it helpful rather than harmful to humans. We then flash forward three years to find New York City deserted and overrun by nature. Dr. Robert Neville (Will Smith) is introduced racing a car through the city hunting deer until a pride of lions steals his prey. A virologist and the lone NYC survivor, Neville spends his days working out, hunting and gathering food, broadcasting on radio frequencies to call any survivors to his location, and experimenting to find a cure for the epidemic in his basement laboratory. He spends his nights hiding in his home from the rabid, mutated humans who’ve been infected. His only companion is his German Shepherd, Sam. A series of intermittent flashbacks show the events that led to this state of affairs. The Krippen cure for cancer became the Krippen Virus (KV) when 5,000 patients began to exhibit rabies-like symptoms and 25 died. Neville was then put in charge of combating ongoing mutations of the virus, but before he could find a cure, the virus went airborne and the government quarantined New York City. Neville lost his family in the evacuation and, ultimately, the virus killed 90% of the world’s population of six billion people. Less than 1% (12 million) were immune and those that survived were mostly killed by the 588 million that did not die from the virus, but became “Dark-Seekers” instead. Neville has various encounters with these mutants throughout the film, some of which he captures in order to test potential cures, formulated from his own immune blood. These rabid, enraged mutated humans are hairless, thin, and red-eyed, have superior strength and speed, and are unable to endure the sunlight. After Neville loses Sam in a battle with the Dark-Seekers, he grows desperate and attempts to kill himself while avenging his companion’s death; he is saved by Anna (Alice Braga) and her son Ethan (Charlie Tahan), who have come in answer to Neville’s radio broadcasts. Anna has come from a Red Cross Evacuation Center in Maryland and is on her way to the rumored “survivors’ colony” in Vermont. In the climax of the film, the Dark-Seekers infiltrate Neville’s stronghold just as he has found a cure for the Krippen Virus.
The DVD of I Am Legend features the original theatrical ending as well as an alternate, “controversial” ending. In the original ending, Neville, Anna, and Ethan hide behind a Plexiglas barrier in Neville’s lab with the cured Dark-Seeker as Neville tries to communicate with the attacking mutants to tell them that he has found the cure and can save them. In this version, Neville has been correct all along in asserting that “social devolution is complete—typical human behavior is totally absent”: the mutants cannot understand him and wish only to destroy and feed. Neville extracts his test subject’s blood (the “cure”) and sacrifices his own life to defend that formula and the companions that will carry it to the outside world. The film ends with Anna and her son reaching the survivors’ colony with the antidote and Anna’s voiceover reveals that the cure effected the “restoration of humanity.” In the alternate ending, Neville realizes that he was wrong and that the Dark-Seekers have not lost all human characteristics: the rampaging group has come to save the test subject Neville kidnapped. As if recognizing that the Dark-Seekers are the way of the future and humanity as it had existed is destined for extinction, Neville reverses the cure of his test subject—in essence, curing her from his cure—and returns her to their leader with apologies for taking her and for “murdering” the others he has taken. The leader in turn prevents his comrades from attacking Neville and the group leaves, allowing the doctor and his companions to live. This darker ending suggests that humanity’s time on earth is finished and a new race is taking over.
Evaluation: I Am Legend is a very teachable film with its provocative synthesis of blockbuster action entertainment and genetic science. Genetic experimentation and theorizing remain at the forefront of the film’s focus throughout, and the biological, moral, and ethical questions the film’s science raises would be great for classroom discussion. In particular, the DVD's alternate ending provides a useful pedagogical tool for instructor's who might like to have students discuss the message and implications of each denoument.
– Lauren Wood Hoffer