the legend of the legend of legend

so, like all city-dwelling rubes, i am susceptible to viral and mass marketing done by corporations that have more money then most small countries ... the one that has been on-going-ly been making me wonder "just what IS that about" is "i am legend" ... obviously, it wasn't nagging me to the point of actually doing something, as it's the day of the opening (in chicago) and i only knew THAT cause NPR did a little review of it ... but i did do a lil research, and here's what i learned ...

1. its a book from 1954 orginally called "the last man on earth"
2. this is the 4th movie version of the book, the first version being an italian production starring vincent price
3. another version from the 70s called "the omega man" starred charlton heston

i don't know what the full plot of the new movie is, but the original book version sounds pretty happening ... not only is the premise of the book a sort of psychoanalyzes (obviously projected) of someone going mad from loneliness, but contains a twist i think is really clever ... spoiler warning (for the original which doesn't follow the will smith version) ... coming up on the next line ...

so basically the protagonist robert neville is the only person fully immune to a virus that has killed or transformed everyone on earth ... the people transformed are more or less vampire/zombies ... however, unbeknown to neville, some of the transformed are still "living" and are not "crazy go-for-broke" movie vampire/zombies ... since these "living" vampire/zombies retain the qualities of the crazy vampire/zombies neville cannot distinguish between the two kinds and thusly never even hypothesizes that there is a difference ... so each day neville goes around killing sleeping vampire/zombies, "living" or "dead" ... the "living" vampire/zombies finally get tired of being killed in their sleep, and dispatch a young girl (ruth) to neville who takes her in (as a prisoner at first) but the two eventually form sort of relationship, presumably based on neville's incredible loneliness and his hope of curing the world of this virus ... neville runs tests on her, and upon learning that she is not "carrying" the virus is abruptly knocked out (by ruth) allowing her escape ... neville continues in his daily routine of killing vampire/zombies until they attack his home in full force, not killing him, but taking him captive to be executed in a public display in front of the entire society of vampire/zombies ... for you see, he had become the freak, the dracula, the "legend" of evil in the day (originally night) ...

and



and this is insanely accurate, i recommend you try it, it nailed mine ...