So I saw "I Am Legend" the other day and it got me really interested in reading the book. I just finished the book.
LOTS OF SPOILERS AHEAD! Unfortunately this just is just another case of the movie being essentially completely different than the book. Oh, I suppose there are similarities... the main character has the same name in both. In both a plague wipes out much of humanity leaving that main character alone. But it's there the similarities end. The book begins with the assumption that a bacterium creates a vampiric sickness - people can be revived from death, are killed by sunlight or stakes, are allergic to garlic and hate mirrors and crosses. During the day they enter a "coma" of sorts allowing our hero to easily kill any he can find. A war (we presume nuclear) has created country-wide dust storms which give this bacteria unlimited freedom to spread. The movie invents a man-made plague (an engineered virus). The sick still die in sunlight but that's about the only similarity. They are generally active and dangerous in the daytime. They feature no other vampire-like symptoms. The book has our hero as a simple plant worker who, using his time alone, educates himself as he tried to understand the situation and how he might cure the sickness. The disease took his wife and daughter and he is utterly alone. The movie hero is a high-ranking official in the CDC (or army or something) and has a complete underground lab in his home. His family was killed in a helicopter accident (how exciting!) while trying to escape New York (the book sis set in California). His steadfast companion is his son's now-grown dog, Sam. The book features a dog as well - a poor, wounded mutt that takes our hero many weeks to befriend only to have him die a short while after. The book's loneliness is underscored by the fact that the hero's house is surrounded every night with vampires attempting to draw him out (unable to come near because of the garlic spread about). The females attempt to seduce him which nearly drives him insane. The movie's hero lives in secret, not allowing them to know where he lives. In the movie our hero finds a normal human woman child just as he both reaches his limit and seemingly discovers a cure for the disease. We get metaphysical as a rather stupid climax informs us that he "must" die and that she was probably "sent" to him to carry the cure to the last surviving enclave of normal humans. Those surviving normal people don't exist in the book. Rather we see an "evolved" vampire fool him into thinking she's normal. She takes pity on him and lets him know that these vampires have learned to live with the sickness: they're recreating society. To do this they'll be exterminating the "lesser" vampires and any "normal" people they might find. The hero of the movie becomes legend because he struggled, fought and finally cured the disease giving his own life in the process. The hero in the book becomes legend because in this new society, where he's spent his time killing vampires as they slept, he's essentially the monster that goes bump in the day - a cruel and evil creature who needs to be destroyed. He's transitioned from being the only normal person in a world of freakish vampires to being a freak in a world of normal vampires. The movie is a sad tale which ends on a hopeful note of faith and future. The book is a commentary on the evolution of society and a fictional treatise on the scientific possibilities of vampirism. I really don't mind if a movie changes parts of a book. But damn it's annoying when they just throw the source material away wholesale. Jim Davis ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;160198600;22374440;w Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:249333 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
