I Am Legend (film)/Headscratchers


 * How did Anna and Ethan get to NY City proper not only in time to save Will Smith's character but when every bridge to Manhattan was wiped out? Also, how did one woman and a small boy manage to fend off an enormous hoard of zombie/monster/vampires?
 * They probably got there by boat (didn't they say that?) and just grabbed the nearest car. And they didn't fend off the creatures so much as they escaped until the dawn was at hand.
 * Okay, that's how they got there. Given, however, that they are in the midst of a vampire monster attack, how likely is it that they would manage to escape, especially considering the liability of a small boy? I mean, there were- how many, fifty superhuman monsters?
 * The last thing Neville sees in that scene before passing out is a really bright light. And we already know you can use very bright artificial light sources to make the monsters back off. Presumably Anna chased the monsters off with one.
 * As for the timing part, God apparently told Anna to turn on the radio at the last possible moment. Apparently, God is a procrastinator.
 * Or you can say to yourself that Anna was just lucky since only Anna believes it was God, as any religious person would *shrug*
 * Ha!
 * Still doesn't explain how they were able to pilot a boat from Maryland to NYC and how a car sitting for at least five years would even start. Or run very long if it did start.
 * If you take the 'controversial' alternate ending which is similar to the book (the 'monsters' end up being intelligent and storm Will Smith's lab to rescue the infected he kidnapped), then quite simply, they had no need since the infected never meant them any harm to begin with.
 * the "dark seekers" as Anna calls them still try to kill humans I'm pretty sure.
 * Anna might just be an angel in disguise. Just my crazy idea.
 * Besides using a boat to get into Manhattan, the alternative ending shows that the George Washington Bridge (at least the upper level) was still accessible by car. She could've used that to get onto the island. She would've just had to drive around the military barricade and stalled cars to get there.
 * In addition, instead of waiting for the vamps to break through the glass and kill him, why didn't Robert Neville simply hide in the coal chute with Anna and Ethan (Anna even tells him there is enough room for that), throwing the grenade out before he closes the door? The monsters would have no way of knowing he didn't die- after all, their sense of smell can't be that great, as they haven't found him in the three years he has been conducting his experiments, and all of the baddies in the immediate vicinity would have been dead.
 * Actually, the monsters are depicted with an incredible sense of smell. The reason they didn't find Neville's house in three years is because he was very careful to mask his scent trail with bleach every time he entered or left his house, as he's shown doing in the early scenes of the movie. Look at what happens when Anna and Ethan failed to take this precaution once when dragging Neville back home—shazam, the monster horde follows them.
 * I was also under the impression that even if they couldn't detect him, they would stay in his dark lab.
 * A;ready said, Neville had been masking his scent on his way home, which is how he managed to stay hidden. On top of that, I think the monster attack was more of a vendetta between the leader and Neville, so they really didn't care about the girl, they just came to kill Neville.
 * How did Neville manage to put up all those defenses by himself, particularly the stadium lighting? And why didnâ€™t ANY of it work- at all?!
 * Why wouldn't the infected just have been able to track him to the one building in Manhattan that SMELLS OF BLEACH???
 * Lots of time, patience and referential literature. Also, some of the work might have been done at the earlier stage of the infection by the government troops to ensure that the man who is left behind has everything he needs in his research. I think that explains the hidden lab, at the very least. It all worked quite well, but the enemies outnumbered the defenses in too large ratio and showed no fear, which apparently wasn't expected, since they had feared light, before.
 * My real question is why his defenses were so sucky. Seriously, he should have his house rigged up with UV *everywhere*. The exploding barrels were barely effective and caused a lot of collateral damage. And just pouring bleach on the last five feet of the trail? How is that at all effective, given how good the monsters' sense of smell is portrayed. (If nothing else, a car that's been driven recently smells different).
 * Probably UV bulbs are harder to hunt down and/or make on your own than barrels full of explosives. You could probably look a long time in New York before you found a warehouse that happened to be stocked with blacklights or tanning beds.
 * Who needs a warehouse? You can hardly walk a block in Manhattan without tripping over three tanning salons, and we know Neville isn't shy about looting when he needs to.
 * After believing all of humanity to be wiped out, Robert Nevilleâ€™s reaction to see a woman and young boy in his kitchen REALLY bug me.
 * Really? It was to be expected that he couldn't deal with them, initially. He had been alone for ages, thinking he is the only human being alive. Is it any wonder that he acts like that?
 * Of course, how people react traumatic situations is purely individualistic, but I was shocked that he didn't immediately ask where she the two had come from, how they had managed to escape from the monsters, and if any of the monsters could possibly have seen her arriving at his home. If not immediately (due to shock), surely within the hour. For someone who has spent hours upon hours preparing his self-defense not asking that last question seems a glaring omission.
 * Not really. The key of Neville's reaction here is that initially, he thinks he's hallucinating. Remember, this is the same guy earlier who was begging a mannequin to 'Please say hello!'. Neville isn't asking them any serious questions at first because he thinks he's finally lost his mind and is talking to people who aren't there, after somehow staggering home on his own. It isn't until after he has his freakout and realizes that there are actually two other people left alive in the world that he starts asking them questions, and before he can finish he gets distracted by an argument on the nature of faith.
 * Cut him some slack. He was saving that bacon. Also, after years of isolation, he's having a little trouble dealing with people. It's like acquired autism; he's been living in his own world too long and can't handle new things very well.
 * Right folks I think you may have missed a lot of key points. The bacon was for the DOG who recently died. Did you miss the bit when he basically says to the dog who has to eat crap that he's going to be getting something better for him and that the dog died on its birthday. That's why he was upset.
 * I don't think there is an answer to this, but it seems to me that if there's a virus which makes you bald, hunger for the flesh of the living, superhuman strength, allergic to the sun, and functionally brainless (mostly), how would a vaccine featuring blood from an immune man reverse the effects?!
 * The creatures aren't brainless, the hunger and rage just overwhelm their conscious minds. If suitable antibodies were developed, they probably wouldn't return completely as they were, but they would become reasonable and intelligent, again. You can see them do a bunch of smart things during the movie; most notably, they set a similar trap to Neville as he had set for them, earlier.
 * I remember an allusion to the onset of the disease being similar to rabies. As far as I know, rabies causes permanent brain damage. There's pretty much nothing you can do about that, and even if you can renew brain tissue through some unlikely cure, wouldn't you be left with masses of people with no memories or knowledge, etc.? Admittedly, said allusion was just one sound bite from a news report in the early stages of infection.
 * I came out with the impression that it might also have use as an actual vaccine rather than a cure. I mean, okay, humanity's still kind of screwed, but at least then a single injury wouldn't mean effective death.
 * And besides, there has been a single case where rabies has been cured (rather than the person just getting immunized before symptoms set in). It boils down to putting the patient into a coma. So, Truth in Television, I guess.
 * This cure worked specifically because the girl's doctor adhered to a then-radical theory that the rabies virus does not actually damage the brain, it merely causes a form of inflammation that keeps the brain from working properly—remove the virus and the brain will return to normal functioning. The fact that the girl did recover full normal brain functioning once they beat back the virus proves him right.
 * Its not really much of a cure though. It needs you to strap a vicious bloodthirsty zombie to a chair, lower its body temperature and keep it there for two or three days before it starts healing. Sound difficult? There's only 599,999,999 more zombies left to cure!
 * The language they use about his vaccine is that it's only a starting point, a source of hope, not the absolute final solution. Now that they know there's something that works, other scientists can work on making it work well.
 * Vaccines only work if you don't have the disease yet, or possibly if you just got it. If you're already developing symptoms, it's too late. I suppose he could have been referring to the cure as a vaccine, which would fit the description better (you can't make a vaccine from someone who doesn't have the disease). I have a similar problem. How come the zombies don't get better on their own? If they're just suffering from brain damage, they wouldn't be able to spread the disease. If the disease damages their immune system, how come they haven't all died of the common cold? If it's just impossible to develop an immunity, how did "less then one percent" manage it before they got the symptoms?
 * The "vaccines only work if you're not sick yet" thing is not an absolute truth. There are different kinds of things we lump under the term "vaccine"—a direct injection of antibodies into someone who doesn't have them can cure or at least speed the cure of a disease. (This is what was in the old days referred to as a "serum" in contrast to the usual kind of vaccine you're thinking of, one that merely provokes the body's own immune response.)
 * The "less than one percent" already had an immunity when the disease broke out, probably from a preexisting genetic trait (they lacked receptor sites, had a certain protein or something that inhibits the activity of the virus, etc.). There are several examples of this in real life. A few people have a genetic immunity to AIDS. Sickle cell anemia providing immunity to malaria is an extreme example. The 10% that got turned into dark seekers may have a similar but less potent trait, one that fights off the virus enough to stay alive, but not enough to destroy it completely and prevent various symptoms. Once the virus is cured, their body can start to repair the damage.
 * Ok, so we see Neville bait a trap for one of the creatures with a tiny bit of blood that has one of them rushing headfirst into it due to the aforementioned keen sense of smell as well as hunger. However, earlier when he's exploring the same damned building looking for Sam, he happens across the corpse of a deer which has bled all over the friggin' stairs. Shouldn't it have attracted a veritable swarm of the vampires?
 * They had already gnoshed on it, possibly marking it with some scent or imprinting its own scent. Either way, the deer is old blood, they want something fresh and new.
 * Better question: Since it's clear that the dark seekers don't eschew animals in favour of humans, why are there any deer or lions left alive in the city? Why aren't most of the dark seekers dead or dying of starvation?
 * Populations of animals are perfectly capable of surviving despite the presence of predators that eat some of them every now and then. Especially if the predators only come out at night. By the same token, if there is enough prey, a population of predators can survive. It's how food chains work. They could also have eaten the food that was left in houses and grocery stores, and during the first days, the bodies of the people that were killed by the virus.
 * Why did he not try another vaccine on Sam after the first one didn't work? It definitely seemed like a reckless moment to me.
 * Looks to me like he didn't have a whole lot of other vaccine samples handy. He'd try one out, it wouldn't work, and he'd move onto another vaccine.
 * He was injured and couldn't walk well. He tried the only thing he had on hand, and his dog was rapidly turning into a serious threat. He didn't have the time or strength to lock her up in one of his experimental cages, and if he didn't kill her, she'd kill him.
 * Plus, this was his DOG! He loved her, raised her since she was a puppy. She was the last reminder his old life, and more importantly, his family. You think he'd suddenly lock her up in an experimental cage and begin poking her with needles in the hopes to bring her back to normal? No. He was going to have to kill her. (Although I wish he had just decided to do it via euthenasia rather than strangulation. He had time to prepare a dose.)
 * I know this may seem odd, but some people would regard killing with bare hands to be more personal and worthy than death by poisoning. Warrior cultures are often this way.
 * Where does he find the time to wash his cars and keep them in perfect shape?
 * Come on, the last thing that he'll face a shortage of is spare time.
 * Yeah really, I mean he has time to climb to the top of aicraft carriers to play golf, and he has enough free time to steal movies every day; I'm sure he would be fine with missing a day of golf to wash the blood off his car.
 * Considering the fact that he has to forage for virtually everything he needs, vehicle maintenance is probably one of the top 5 most important things he does every day.
 * Was it just me, or did the vampire/zombie things seem a lot like the Reavers from the Serenity movie and Firefly TV show?
 * The movie was based on a book written in 1954. Serenity was made in 2005. Firefly started in 2002. It may be more accurate to say that Reavers seemed a lot like the vampire/zombie things from the novel I Am Legend.
 * On the other hand, the book ones weren't extra fast, and spoke coherent english. They weren't much like reavers at all.
 * Both the Reavers from Firefly and the "Darkseekers" in this movie are at the end of a long path of evolution that probably starts with I Am Legend and wends through the various zombie films started by Night of the Living Dead. This variant of "fast zombie" or "crazy zombie" has a long pedigree, including the Resident Evil games, 28 Days Later, etc.
 * If the blood of the woman who they cured of dark seekerism is a vaccine, why didn't they hide her as well instead of blowing her up?
 * Because she's strapped down to the table and connected to a bunch of tubes and probably isn't fully cured yet?
 * I know this is probably Fridge Logic, but where did he get gasoline from? In Real Life, petrochemicals of that octane expire after about a year. Considering it was 2012, and that none of the cars were from dates later than that of the movie's production, that means that he either produced his own gasoline, or the writers Did Not Do the Research.
 * The lifespan of gasoline can be extended by adding stabilizing agents and keeping it in airtight cold storage (of a kind too expensive for ordinary gas stations to bother with). It's not that much of a stretch to think that a top military survivalist might have such facilities.
 * But the movie shows him pumping gas out of a regular gas station's tank.
 * He seemed to go to a decent amount of length to try to make some things still feel 'normal', i'd be willing to bet he'd regularly fill the gas stations just so it would feel authentic.
 * Wouldn't the Darkseekers have starved to death? They clearly have a very fast metabolism, and there doesn't seem to be an abundance of food left on Manhattan. They don't grow or harvest crops, and leave the canned goods in the homes alone. There's nothing to suggest that they've resorted to cannibalism yet. What do they eat and drink?
 * Animals, most likely. Assuming the horde of Darkseekers we see really is all of them, and assuming that deer and cattle and other big animals have begun to recolonize the city (not as unlikely as you might think), they could've hit a kind of ecological equilibrium by now. (Note that the original I Am Legend novel and various of the adaptations made a bigger deal of this, stipulating that they actually did need to drink human blood to survive and going into some detail about how the shriveling up of their food supply has affected their society.)
 * IMHO the animals are from Central Park Zoo, so it's more a case of escaped animals rather than ones migrating in. Other observations on this page have established that Manhattan Isalnd had been cut-off and subways would have flooded.
 * There's more than animals to feed on, as well. Remember that 90% of the victims of KV simply died outright, which means well over a million corpses lying around in Manhatten alone. The dark seekers (of whom, if the average held, would number about 9000 or so at first) probably fed on them plus any live humans and animals too slow or stupid to hide at night-time. Moreover, for all we know, they have had a population crash - as mentioned above, there were probably around 9,000 of them initially, but the group that attacks Neville looks like it probably doesn't number more than a couple of dozen.
 * Remember Neville's zombie lab rats? Manhattan's bound to be crawling with those things. With their whiskers fallen out, they wouldn't be as aware of their surroundings as healthy ones, so they'd be easy pickings too.
 * How the hell did Neville not get in contact with other groups of survivors? He surely has access to some of the higher level communications equipment, as well as at least some motivation to find out what is happening to the rest of the world. Why not try to get help, even for his own peace of mind?
 * "My name is Robert Neville. I am a survivor living in New York. If there is anybody out there...anybody. Please. You are not alone." Broadcasting on all AM frequencies sounds suspiciously like an attempt to contact other groups of survivors. Watch the movie please.
 * It sounds to this troper like the point that was being made was, if there is a small town full of survivors up in the mountinas, wouldn't thye have fliped on the AM radio once in a while? this guy isn't saying that neville never tried to contact people, but that no one tried to contact him back
 * The impression I get from this is, "Why is he limited to just using AM radio? Wouldn't he have access to other forms of communication?"
 * On that note, why AM radio? FM radio signals travel farther with less chance of breaking up or degrading, which seems like a plus if you're trying to find other survivors.
 * AM travels further, and goes around solid obstacles better than FM. It's also easier to set up.
 * Well Neville says multiple times that New York was ground zero. Generally speaking, when a massive disaster hits, say a plague, people try to get as far away from ground zero as possible. So it would stand to reason that nobody would intentionally be heading into New York.
 * Bit of a dark theory here, but maybe the base did pick up his transmissions, and simply deemed an excursion into New York (ground zero, as mentioned above) too dangerous for the rescue of a lone survivor. Hell, maybe other survivors heard him, too, but just opted not to answer, either because they couldn't or wouldn't get to him.
 * Shouldn't any of a great number of things have happened the very first winter after the infection? For one thing, food must have become rather scarce. If they didn't starve outright, the lack of food combined with lack of clothing should have taken a great many of them out due to exposure. This Just Bugs Me. In addition, I have a personal theory related to winter. IIRC, the captured vamp/zed had a very high temperature, 106 or 7 or something. Increased body temp causes increased oxygen consumption by the brain, which explains why they were panting so hard and fast. However, with a temp that high they still wouldn't be getting enough oxygen to the brain, which would explain their stupor and loss of brain functionality. The cold of winter should have lowered their body temp enough that they would have regained functionality. Either that, or the long lack of oxygen caused permanent brain damage and rendered a cure hopeless.
 * Good points, but perhaps even a bunch of zombies who weren't the most rational still might migrate when it got cold; there are subway tunnels still so....Also given that in the movie they demonstrated they still possessed intelligence and problem solving skills, huddling up together when it got cold or even killing animals and making some makeship blankets or coats out of the skins might've been an option.
 * Huddling together, yes; subway tunnels, no. The tunnels below NYC would flood if there weren't people to operate the pumps and keep the Hudson River out of the subways. But they might scrounge fabrics and build crude nests out of them, someplace dark and sheltered.
 * I was extremely annoyed that the filmmakers chose such a clunky way for Neville to tell the Bob Marley story. I would buy someone not having heard the story of the concert before someone having heard of Damien Marley but not Bob Marley.
 * Agreed. Also, they couldn't use a studio album? They use a Best of?
 * How did the snare traps that Robert and the monsters built actually work? I can understand the basic "Weight on the end of a snare" element, but how were they triggered?
 * Presumably along the lines of a snare. Large force held in check by simple trigger mechanism.

I'm not buying that the second trap could work. It's setup all wrong, are we supposed to believe that the infected rigged a whole convoluted series of pulleys as well? How is it we can't see any cables yet Will Smith is lifted straight up? What makes the car teeter off the bridge? Where is the cable from the car?

Completely faked by Hollywood that second trap.
 * What was Robert Neville's role with the virus pre-apocalypse? There's a quick shot of him on the cover of TIME magazine (on his fridge) with the caption "Savior?" The nurse says "So you're *The* Robert Neville" in a manner suggesting it's more significant than just "The guy who does the radio broadcasts." And he has a very This Is Personal vibe about wanting to stay in Manhattan and fix the virus rather than move to a safe area. Is he he somehow responsible for its mutation from a cancer cure?
 * It's either in one of his flashbacks or on one of those recorded television broadcasts he watches, but at some point you hear some news reporter or announcer say that he's basically the lead figure assigned to deal with the once-promising Krippen virus. The Time cover supplements that. What that means is that before the Crash, he was probably a reknowned and genius virologist (which actually makes sense, since the US military plays an important role in dealing with anti-biological warfare efforts) who was given the task of trying to deal with the mutated Krippen virus (up until the destruction of the bridge, the virus seems to have only been spread by blood-to-blood contact, hence his wife's remark "is it airborne?".
 * Odds are he was the best virologist the US could throw at the problem. All his research was probably located in the area, and since his family died at the docks nearby, specifically THE ONE HE FREAKING BROADCASTS FROM, it is very personal.
 * Perhaps he helped make the cancer cure? That's what I got. It would explain the fame and the whole it's personal vibe.
 * Yeah, that's what I thought as well.
 * Also, IJBM that Will Smith is a virologist. In the army.
 * What's the problem with that? The US Army is one of the largest researchers of infectious diseases.
 * Is it just a coincidence that the movie takes place in 2012, the next rumored date for the end of the world?
 * Probably a mix of that and Twenty Minutes Into the Future.
 * I'm still waiting for Batman/Superman movie teasers (pretty please?).
 * For me, the appearance of Anna and Ethan completely spoiled the whole "the only person in the world" vibe. The part where they waltz into Neville's house uninvited and then act annoyed when he's standing right there wondering what their deal is didn't help at all.
 * I've heard this is a good movie until the two scrappies show up. Anyway, the whole movie is from Neville's POV: he's been alone on an island for several years with only a dog and some mannequins as his Companion Cubes. The only other living things on the island are animals and nightwalkers, who are no longer human to Neville (Anna refers to the captured nightwalker as "she" while Neville always uses "it") so naturally the sudden intrusion of a real live woman and child - especially since he once had a wife and child of his own - is incredibly jarring.
 * "I've heard this is a good movie until the two scrappies show up." It was good until the infected came into plain view.
 * What bugs me is that they kept all the signs that the nightwalkers had adapted to The Virus and gotten a bit of their minds back only to blow them up to save the two scrappies (and the human race but whatever). The truly irritating thing is that not only does the alternate ending allow Neville to become The Atoner for what he's done to the nightwalkers and humanity it also sets up a potential sequel (they're still looking for the hidden survivors, who may yet be bastards or maybe the nightwalkers in the northeast developed thick hair and claws), but audiences or executives inexplicably liked a Downer Ending Made of Explodium better. You'd think the potential for a sequel or even a series would've been enough to keep this ending, but I guess it only exists in the same world where Twilight is My Immortal and My Immortal is inexplicably popular among teenaged girls.
 * You consider "humans suck, so they should all die" to be the happy ending? That point aside, whether or not they'd gotten bits of their minds back, they were still a threat. If this whole "evolution/survival of the fittest" concept appeals to you, you shouldn't be upset that a human did a bunch of killing to preserve his own species, now should you?
 * Okay, so, to answer to most of the scrappy questions: In the original novelette Neville has been living alone when this mysterious woman shows up. During the day he gets supplies and stuff, but he also kills vampires. Sound familiar? However, in the novelette, this woman turns out to be a different mutation of the vampires, and sometimes he kills other mutants like her during the day. In other words, he, a normal human, has become the bogeyman that kills the vampires in their sleep. Thus, his last thoughts when she betrays him and the smarter mutant vampires hang him is "I am Legend" referencing that they will be telling stories of him as the thing that goes bump in the day. The entire point of the story is lost because they wanted to have less of a downer ending. And it had been going so well up until the terrible ending...
 * That's not the only thing they lost when they changed the ending for theatrical release. When you watch the movie with the original ending, it's very, very obvious that Neville is both delusional and perilously close to madness. The world has moved on, yet he's still working in his lab "ground zero", still saying "I can still fix this". It's not until the end that he finally realizes that the Infected aren't just mindless monsters, and reality comes crashing in. It's a powerful scene (particularly after the bit where he was wailing "Let me save you! Let me save you!") and it was all lost because of the audiences in the pre-screening.
 * In case you hadn't noticed, Humans Are the Real Monsters is losing popularity among the general public. There's only so much "you suck so go drop dead" people should have to hear.
 * The alternate ending makes no sense. They murdered nearly every human. They do not have their own society. They have no emotions. They are predators with primal instincts. After they've slaughtered everyone who wasn't one of them, there's no way they're just going to be "Hey, you kidnapped one of our friends. Can we have her back?"
 * The whole point of the alternate ending is that they are not "predators with primal instincts," and they do have emotions. They didn't "murder" every human—they were themselves victims of a disease that drove them to do it. Murder implies forethought, and intent, and in the beginning of the outbreak they had neither—at first, yes, they were predators on instinct, but they adapted and gained control of themselves. It's only after a while that they develop their society, but Neville is too blind to see it. That's the whole point of the original story: Humans aren't killed off by the plague and replaced by the vampires/whatever. Humans adapted to it and are continuing on.
 * Okay, so I got into a argument about this movie when we saw it in class a couple years ago. The question is, are the creatures vampires, or zombies? Or, rather, which archetype do they fit better?
 * Yes.
 * They're vampires. Zombies could never be found in such large numbers (or at least not under the control of another person) in the original myths the modern day zombie was based on the vampires of I Am Legend. Furthermore the first "zombie" flick "Night of the Living Dead" the Z word was rarely if at all used, and rumor has it Romero never thought of them as Zombies older zombies were corpses resurrected as servants by Voodoo Shamans an the Afro-Caribbean areas. and from the fact that corpses were needed and particular rituals used i doubt they were ever in very large "outbreak" numbers Take That Hollywood. In fact these vampires save for the sunlight thing are closer to mythical vampires then anything.
 * Which completely ignores the fact that there's no one definition of a vampire or zombie to begin with as there are multiple mythos that feature such things. And many 'classic' vampire traits are, in fact, modern additions - as modern as Bela Lugosi for some things or books like Bran Stokers Dracula and Anne Rice. The voodoo zombie is just one of many sorts of zombie (or zombie-like) creatures from just one culture just like the whole sunlight thing is only prevalent in one specific myth of vampires; even within the same mythos there can be disagreement. Vampires and zombies, after all, are Older Than They Think.
 * This Troper's Horror Lit. class has taken to calling them "zompires".
 * Night of the Living Dead was not the first zombie flick.
 * The fact that they're, like, still alive disqualifies them from both categories, in this troper's opinion.
 * there have been several "still alive" zombie movies before, it makes for both a more "realistic" approach in that there is no virus bring the dead to life but is instead a virus that makes people flesh hungry and insane. but also give cause to have "running" zombies that are fast and dangerous, but can be killed with any means a normal human would die. It helps with the whole action thing. just look at "zombie land" and "28 days later"
 * Maybe I just missed something, but shouldn't they have spent, y'know, a very long time testing the cancer cure, with maybe some patients being in a controlled environment for extended periods of time for testing and extensive research of the side effects (such as hair loss, increased metabolism, decreased brain function, cannibalism, and evil vampirism/zombie...ish...ness)? Seems like that could've prevented the whole damn thing (unless of course there was some unexpected turn of events).
 * Once the word was out that there was a "cancer cure," even an experimental one, the public demand to release (even unfinished) would have been deafening. There's definitely been some bad science done when people cannot or will not be patient enough to get it right. Also, clearly the cure mutated at some point, because the crap hits the fan when it becomes airborne and there would be no reason to engineer it that way.
 * Besides, stuff like this happens all the time in real life - I mean, obviously people aren't turning into zombies and vampires, but drugs are very often rushed through production and clinical trials, especially in the U.S. This is why there are always huge news stories about recalls when longer-term problems develop - clinical trials may last 6–8 weeks when serious side effects may take months or years to emerge. Pharmaceutical companies make lots of money and a cancer cure? Not only would the public be crying for them to hurry up and finish it, but the pharma companies would've been biting at the bit to get it released so they could make the big bucks. The clinical trials were probably really sloppy and the trials might not have lasted long enough to see the real consequences. Or maybe the pharma companies simply hid it, not realizing what a huge problem it would be.
 * Why are the infected CG'ed? They simply look...are humans with greying skin and some anger issues. Don't tell me make-up and costuming could not have simply used actors in prosthetics. The effect in the movie just makes them look creepy in the wrong way and looks too fake.
 * Don't tell me make-up and costuming could not have simply used actors in prosthetics.  Actually, we can tell you precisely that. The infected were originally actors in prosthetics, but they couldn't get the full range of needed movement from them.
 * Not to mention that the infected don't wear shoes, which would be very uncomfortable for real actors before you factor in some of the scenes having broken glass or what not around. CGI was just the better option for all involved.
 * Also, when we first see the infected standing still, you can see that they are constantly hyperventilating, which would be difficult for real actors to keep up for a long time.
 * You don't have to pay CG characters.
 * Yes you do. It's called "Motion Capture".
 * No, you don't. You don't have to use motion capture; you could simply animate them the old fashioned way.
 * But CGI which has the level of detail used for the Infected would have cost a lot, possibly more than just hiring extras to play them.
 * Not necessarily. Those extras have to be trained, made up, directed, and each individually paid; they're not just standing around in their street clothes, after all. CGI gets cheaper with each movie made; the same can't be said for paid extras and actors. And, as mentioned above, the extras simply would not have been able to match the physical abilities they wanted for the creatures in the film.
 * Why did the filmmakers set the film in NYC,particularly Manhattan? Only the constant pumping of water keeps the lower areas and the underground tunnels from flooding,it's not a particularly large piece of real estate and it it's not a very defensible position (since Neville is presented as being a military man, this would have been a paramount concern)being an island extremely close to the mainland.
 * I believe they moved the setting to New York because it was more visually recognizable to a larger audience, and seeing an iconic city like New York abandoned and ravaged by nature and time would have more impact to said audience. LA is a well known city, sure, but not as visually distinct in the country's consciousness.
 * Also consider that most people probably don't even know about the pumping (I live in NYC and had never even considered it - for the tunnels yes, but the subway? No) and the lack of defensibility only serves to heighten the stakes. I kept thinking about what would happen if the infected could swim across the Hudson. Screwed!
 * From the book: Why does Neville have such a hard time(no pun intended) finding a way to deal with the women who strip and pose suggestively to entice him out of his house? It's emphasized that this is one of the most difficult things he has to deal with, and that he has no way to combat "the feeling". Uh, Neville....you do. Has this man honestly never heard of masturbation before? He can even peep out at the vampire girls while he does it!