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What's that? The Fresh Prince is Matheson's ultra-protagonist? No thank you. I'll just watch 'The Last Man on Earth' with Vincent Price or 'Ol Moses himself Charlton Heston as 'The Omega Man'.

That was my reaction when I first heard of this movie. Actually, I yelled out in a Saw IV screening when this trailer came up, "It's already been made twice" Someone responded, "Yeah but not with Will Smith!" to which I replied, even louder, "No but a real legend Vincent Price and Moses himself Heston have!"

So I very begrudgingly watched this a few nights ago, really curiosity got the better of me and I was avoiding some actual films (Bergman) that need written analysis. And well, I am still right, Will Smith does not pull off this role. The antagonists also disprove the popular notion that "faster is scarier". Many cite in their reviews that the problem is the CG; I say that those are the same people who say Romero's Dawn of the Dead is ineffective because the zombie makeup and the fx blood and guts are not realistic looking in terms of color. No, these creatures, the plague victims that hover ever around Robert Neville's peripheral thoughts and physical territory, are not effective in this version of Matheson's story because their human element is completely removed.

In Omega Man, the antagonists are conscious and retain their intelligence, but embrace a radical culture which creates the film's central conflict. In "The Last Man on Earth", there are two factions of functioning human plague victims, and Neville's backstory of his wife re-animating is quite chilling. "I Am Legend" did not embrace any of these ideas; the creatures are mindless, and as Smith's Neville says, have "totally lost all of their humanity". The family scenes are not resounding - the "butterfly" thing is equivalent to the "water and swing thing" in Signs: it's annoying.

One Final big gripe, I would have completely changed the dog scenes to be far more effective; this is also where Smith's inability to rise to the part really shows.

All my dissing done, I will say that this movie had great production values and excellent cinematography; it is in the pantheon of a new wave of apocalyptic and post apocalyptic scifi-horror effects-centered movies (examples of the genre: Children of Men, War of the Worlds, 28 Days Later, The Day After tomorrow). In that respect, I get plenty of great images and see a believable devolved world, so it's worth fast-forwarding through this movie to see the set design highlights.

Learn more about this author, Webster Wade.
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