The Last Omega Legend

This blog entry title is just a major mashup of three movies and a novel which started it. I watched a movie which is technically the third version of a film adaptation of a novel. The novel in question is "I Am Legend" by Richard Matheson. The earlier movie incarnations of this movie before the latest Will Smith starrer is "The Last Man on Earth" starring Vincent Price in 1964 made by the Italians and "The Omega Man" starring Charlton Heston in 1971. I watched the Charlton Heston movie on TV twice, one in its near entirety and other somewhere halfway or so. It was sheer chance that I came across this film on TV during my childhood years along with the channel surfing that goes with it.
The 3 films all have different discrepancies if one were lay all three films side by side as well with the novel to compare. The technical details of these discrepancies would be best left for the reader to look up the links I embedded in this post for your reference.
The 2007 film version, I Am Legend, which stars Will Smith of ID4 and MIB/MIB2 fame plays the same role that Charlton Heston played with a few slight tweaks. The shots of New York overrun by weeds and being abandoned lends a surreal sense of wonder, beauty and tranquility in spite the grim downfall of mankind wrought, in this case, by man's genetic tampering in their quest to cure cancer. The menace in the film are mostly represented by CGI as opposed to real actors with prosthetics/make-up done in the earlier 2 movie incarnations. Reason for CGI menace is because the adversaries are quasi-vampiric which is more attributed to having overdriven adrenal glands which floods their systems with adrenaline which makes them hyper as in skittish, aggressive, stronger and granting a higher pain threshold. The usual vampiric weaknesses and schticks are pretty much minimized to non-existence. Sunlight hurts them, check. Garlic, wooden stakes and crosses, forget that. The adversaries are referred to as dark seekers and are more like packs of wild feral predators which were former humans debased by the disease that infected them.
I would also say that the import of Robert Neville's isolation is presented very strongly for the viewers to identity the kind of life he lead after the outbreak spread beyond New York and the death of his family as depicted by flashbacks which gives some background into the personal life and history of Robert Neville, though in scant supply. I would also say that the 1st half or so of the movie is also very much a major draw for dog lovers in the audience and pulls the sentimentality into it as well. The movie got me more thinking about being with my sister's dog for the duration of the day.
The movie is pretty much good without delving too much into all the details in one sense. It is still a thought-provoking and heart-touching film given some modicum of lessons it presents to the audience about empathy and listening.
The enough from this dog for this post. Next time and keep on listening.