Not to get academic on you, but Fredric Jameson's Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions makes an important point about science-fiction in the late twentieth century. Jameson notes that sci-fi has a habit of "finding visions of total destruction and of the extinction of life on Earth. . . more plausible than the Utopian vision of the new Jerusalem." Based on personal observation, I can say that Jameson's postulation holds more than a little water. In the early twenty-first century, a perfect world is not as engaging, or as seemingly likely, as a post-apocalyptic world. In no medium has this maxim held as true as in cinema, and in no genre as science-fiction. Richard Matheson's I Am Legend is the poster child for this phenomenon. Francis Lawrence's new adaptation marks the third time this story has hit the screen. It is also Lawrence's debut as a promising filmmaker.
I Am Legend defines itself as science fiction from the outset, painting a near-future world where science has brought an unfortunate fate to humanity. The film opens with a convincing morning-newscast interview with a doctor who has bioengineered a strain of measles that can effectively cure cancer. It's a subtle and understated way to open a movie carried by single performer, and it immediately engages its audience. The movie then flashes to three years in the future, where Robert Neville — Will Smith, shedding his identity as the Fresh Prince and showing true growth as a performer — is the sole inhabitant of Manhattan. The engineered virus has decimated humanity, leaving less than one percent of the population alive and less than that wholly human. Smith is excellent as a man at the very brink of sanity, but Lawrence's Manhattan is the other star of I Am Legend. The special effects deserve praise. But special effects also cause the movie's most significant problem. The predatory zombie-vampires that prey on Smith are terrifying when off-screen, but silly and distracting when visible. In a movie devastating in its moments of quiet realism, it's too bad the antagonists look like cartoons. Put them aside, and you should enjoy the haunted Manhattan of I Am Legend. — John Constantine