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/lit/ - Literature

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5013268 No.5013268 [Reply] [Original]

There have been three adaptations of I Am Legend (four if you count The Asylum's mockbuster), and all of them deliberately avoided the book's central theme: that Neville realizes and accepts that the vampires are the future of the human race, and that he has become nothing more than a relic of the past that must be destroyed for their peace of mind. Why have so many people tried to adapt this story if none of them want to face its message?

>> No.5013298

>>5013268

Will Smith being portrayed as an obsolete relic of the past would be racist.

>> No.5013304

Didn't the Will Smith adaption have the original ending and then the studio bosses wanted it out because it's too bleak for a Hollywood movie? It's on the DVD.

tl;dr: capitalism

>> No.5013315

>>5013304
The Will Smith one did have an original ending and a (worse) revised ending, but neither one was the book's ending.

The best adaptation of the book is The Last Man on Earth, though of course it flubs the ending too.

>> No.5013333

>>5013268
>Last of the Kyptonians, arrives to a planet where he is alive, last of his race, a relic...
>why hasn't superman just flown into the sun knowing humans have created a crapsack world.

Not sure, not sure. He is just too dumb I guess.

>> No.5013337

>>5013304
Will Smith's had an alternate ending where he gives the vamp his waifu back, and the humans and vamps go their separate ways. Closer to the ending that the other movies had, but not really the same as the book's ending

>Robert Neville looked out over the new people of the earth. He knew he did not belong to them; he knew that, like the vampires, he was anathema and black terror to be destroyed. And, abruptly, the concept came, amusing to him even in his pain.
>A coughing chuckle filled his throat. He turned and leaned against the wall while he swallowed the pills. Full circle, he thought while the final lethargy crept into his limbs. Full circle. A new terror born in death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever.
>I am legend.

>> No.5013520

>>5013268

Because putting Vincent Price in a horror film/Charlton Heston in a nuclear action film/Will Smith in a virus themed zomboe film is more bankable. We'll have to wait another 30 years or so for another adaptation and hope that's decent. The main problem is that the only people who adapt Matheson are big producers instead of people that actually appreciate the books.

>> No.5013558

how could they not make it work in a film? it's such a simple and perfect ending even a hollywood blockbuster should be able to pull it off.

>> No.5013597

>>5013558
Name a recent "blockbuster" in which suicide was an ending, I can't think of a single one

>> No.5013605

>>5013597
More recent than Donnie Darko?

>> No.5013613

>>5013597
Snowpiercer

>> No.5013616

>>5013605
Donnie Darko wasn't really a blockbuster, it was only released in limited theaters, plus that particular death isn't really suicide - it's a sacrifice

>> No.5013625

>>5013613
For Koreans, everything is about suicide

>> No.5013857

>>5013597
>>5013605
>>5013613
>>5013616

Looper.
ForFuckSakes

>> No.5013869

>>5013597
Oblivion.