I Am Legend (film)



The 2007 film adaptation (and only one to bear the name) of Richard Matheson's novel.

A group of scientists tries to repurpose the measles virus to fight cancer. It goes horribly right: the virus cures cancer, and it kills people. Ninety-nine percent of the world's population dies, and the left are divided between the "vampires", cannibalistic hunters of their own kind, and the rare people who are immune, that are hunted down by the vampires to near-extinction.

Lieutenant-colonel and virologist Robert Neville is one of the the immune, and now lives on a deserted Manhattan along his dog Sam. He constantly tries to contact someone over radio while trying to hide from the vampires. He also has been slowly driven to madness by his isolation and a constant fear he is really the last man on Earth, and desperately tries to cure vampires he captures in the slight hope someday he will manage to cure them back to normal and end his isolation.

With its release came four short animated movies which tell unrelated side stories about the rest of the world.

Directed by Francis Lawrence, which also did the Constantine movie. Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures.

""FRED? WHAT ARE YOU DOING OUT HERE, FRED?""
 * Actor Allusion: Will Smith and his Marley, particularly "Three Little Birds", which he earlier mangled in Shark Tale.
 * The Aloner: Dr Neville.
 * And Then John Was a Zombie: The DVD short "Shelter".
 * Bat Family Crossover: Referenced by a billboard in the abandoned Times Square, which depicts the Batman films' symbol with the Superman "S" in the middle..
 * Big Applesauce: As noted on that trope's page, the setting was moved because the visual impact of an empty New York is more effective than Los Angeles, the book's setting.
 * Booby Trap: Dr. Neville's zom... er, infection victim traps. The Darkseekers eventually learn to set traps themselves.
 * Catapult Nightmare: Averted; Neville wakes up from a nightmare by quietly opening his eyes, as a normal person would do.
 * Chewing the Scenery:

""Don't worry... 'bout a thing... 'cause every little thing, is gonna be alright...""
 * Contrived Coincidence:.
 * Cozy Catastrophe: Robert Neville lives in relative peace and luxury in his house, even playing golf and browsing through video stores. Of course, that is only during the day. At night.
 * Crazy Prepared: Dr. Neville, going home at night and also . He also keeps a rifle in an umbrella stand, and hides weapons in random drawers throughout his house.
 * Cure for Cancer: The start of the zombie apocalypse.
 * Different World, Different Movies: A poster in Times Square shows a Batman and Superman logo indicating a cross-over between those two properties was being planned for 2009.
 * Evil Brit: Averted; Dr. Krippen didn't mean to create a virus that nearly annihilates the human race.
 * Fatal Flaw: Sam is a dog, so of course it's Undying Loyalty..
 * Flashbacks: Tells how.
 * Focus Group Ending: Infamously so, ruining most of the Foreshadowing and creating a few Plot Holes. Originally, In the final version of the ending . The original ending was eventually included as bonus material on the DVD, where it was named the "controversial" ending.
 * Foreshadowing: The film demonstrates a bit of it, but the ending's change rendered the Foreshadowing null.
 * Ghost City: New York. The DVD extras show Hong Kong also became this.
 * He Who Fights Monsters: Done more subtly than in the novel,
 * Hellish Copter:
 * Hollywood Atheist: Neville refuses to believe in God due to the events after the outbreak.
 * The Immune: Dr. Neville.
 * "It" Is Dehumanizing: Anna watches Neville experiment on a captured zombie, and asks whether what he's doing will "cure her." Neville responds "Actually, it will probably kill it," with the second "it" slightly emphasised.
 * Living Prop: Ethan. He has no lines and never does anything other than not die. Only thing that he's used for is Neville showing how much time he's had on his hands when reciting Shrek by heart. This trope is justified: he's very probably very shell-shocked thanks to all the horror he saw.
 * Mad Scientist Laboratory: Dr. Neville's basement lab, which requires several generators to power and is quite impressive for a post-Zombie Apocalypse lab.
 * Manly Tears:

""I... I promised a friend I would say hello to you today... Please say hello to me... Please say hello to me...""
 * Also:

"Neville: God didn't do this, we did!"
 * Mayor of a Ghost Town: Neville, more or less.
 * Men Are the Expendable Gender: Used to make sure the audience would have the maximum emotional impact to.
 * Mind Screw: Fred the Dummy. Neville is less than pleased to see him outside the store.
 * My God, What Have I Done?: Similar to the He Who Fights Monsters entry, it's rather subtle in the original ending;
 * Never Trust a Trailer: The commercials suggested the film was an action thriller instead of the slow horror-drama it is.
 * One-Scene Wonder: She has about 1 minute and a half of screen time at the beginning of the film (and isn't listed in the credits), but Emma Thompson as Alice Krippin is so delightful you desperately want to know more about the women who inadvertantly created The Virus.
 * Our Vampires Are Different: The infected creatures. They display characteristics that are a cross between vampires and zombies.
 * Race Lift: Neville is black in the film.
 * Ridiculous Future Inflation: Gas costing $5.95 a gallon.
 * Sanity Slippage: Mostly happens before the "current" time of the movie, though it gets really sliding after Talking to your pet? That's fairly normal even now. Talking to a mannequin? A little odd. Expecting, nay, begging it to talk back? (See Manly Tears) Yeah you're pretty far gone. Spending three years as the only uninfected human in New York City, hell the entire world,  will probably make you a little unstable. There's also the fact that  he still seems a little broken. Among which being the refusal to think that other humans even could be out there or that the infected aren't the mindless beasts he thinks, despite ever-growing mountains of evidence otherwise, and going blank as he spoke along with the movie Shrek in a way that would make Pavlov proud.
 * Samus Is a Girl:
 * Scenery Gorn: Much of the movie dwells on the spectacle of New York returning to nature and the traces of the desperate last days e.g. the blown bridges. The portrayal of the vegetation, contrary to popular belief, is actually quite conservative. In reality it's likely that the speed of New York's reclamation by nature would be much more thorough by three years later. As one example, if such an extinction were to occur there would be no one to man the water pipes underneath the city, the subways would flood within a week and almost all of the surface streets would cave in from the erosion. As a rich pool of nature right in the middle of Manhattan, Central Park would also increase the rate of reclamation.
 * Science Is Bad: The vampire/zombie plague began as a cure for cancer.


 * Shoot the Dog: Literally. Alright, literally figuratively:
 * Shout-Out: The aforementioned Batman-Superman billboard.
 * Staking the Loved One:
 * Strapped to An Operating Table: Dr. Neville uses steel manacles to do this to a vampire while searching for the cure. Several, in fact.
 * Survivor Guilt: So, so much.
 * Synthetic Plague: The mutated cancer cure rage virus.
 * The Last Man Heard a Knock: Dr. Neville meets up with the other survivors.
 * There Is Another:.
 * The Voiceless: Ethan never says anything throughout the movie. Well, he does say "It's cold." at one point.
 * Where It All Began: A variant; Dr. Neville refuses to leave New York City because it's ground zero for the virus, and he will not let it win in his backyard.
 * Workout Fanservice: As part of his daily workout, Neville usually starts his exercises shirtless.
 * Zombie Apocalypse: With Vampire Fast Ghouls that aren't really vampires. Close enough, even if the film is Not Using the Z Word and instead calls them "dark seekers".