I Am Legend: A Comparative Study Part 2

Richard Matheson's I Am Legend (Graphic Novel), a 1954 novel written by Richard Matheson

The Last Man on Earth, a 1964 movie staring Boris Karlof; written by William F. Leicester, with screenplay by Richard Matheson (as Logan Swanson), Furio M. Monetti, and Ubaldo B. Ragona

The Omega Man, a 1971 movie staring Charlton Heston; Screenplay by John William Corrington & Joyce Hooper Corrington, based on the novel by Richard Matheson.

I Am Legend, a 2007 movie staring Will Smith; written by Mark Protosevich, Akiva Goldsman, based on the novel by Richard Matheson.

Part 2. Curing Versus Killing

In this section we will take a closer look at the protagonist, Robert Neville, and the antagonists, the infected humans, the virus, and human nature. We will look at Robert’s attitude and his actions toward these forces and analyze how they reflect the shifting views of society and address the struggle between science and superstition.

Who are the Monsters?

In order to understand the conflicting ideas set forth in the 1954 novel, I Am Legend, and the 1964 movie, Last Man on Earth, we need to understand a bit of the historical context which affects these versions. In an article for World of Tech News, Tamsin Oxford calls the decade of the 1950s a time of “dramatic [technological] evolution.” It was during this post-World War II time period that the “technology that had only been postulated and pondered was suddenly becoming reality.” The first microchip/ integrated circuit and the first stored program computer were developed. The 1950s also saw a boon in medicine. “Important Advances in Medicine During the 1950s” calls this time period, “Truly,… a turning point in modern medicine.” The synthesis of Penicillin “sparked the gold era of antibiotics”, but within four years doctors learned that bacteria could develop resistance to the new wonder drug of antibiotics. Thus the term “superbug” was first coined.

Any leap in scientific knowledge leads to a corresponding leap in fear of the consequences, so it not surprising that in these two versions of the story, humans have been infected by a germ that cannot be killed by antibiotics. Humans who don’t die from the virus, develop vampire-like qualities. In I Am Legend (1954) and Last Man on Earth (1964), the infected humans, like vampires, are repulsed by fresh garlic, mirrors and crosses, and only be killed with a stake through the heart. However, unlike traditional vampires, who are often suave and savvy, these mutations are virtually brain dead. They are driven to kill, however we do not see them drinking blood in either story. In both the novel and the first movie version, Last Man on Earth, the mutated creatures move like traditional zombies, all stiff-limbed and slow. They are unorganized and seem to be driven by pure instinct. These creatures do not inspire fear. They don’t have any supernatural abilities, such as turning into bats, they aren’t abnormally strong and they can’t even break into a poorly boarded house. But using the vampire motif allows the theme of science versus superstition to be prominent. It sets up a contrast between superstitious folklore and Robert’s pursuit of understanding through analysis. By extension, it sets the stage for question of who are the real monsters.
In the novel, I Am Legend (1954), Robert is a self-declared “unscientific” man who reads books about vampire mythology and compares it the reality of their being. He questions, “Is the vampire so bad?” He compares the evil of the vampire to the evil deeds of parents draining the spirit of their children until they become neurotic politicians. “Why do you wish him destroyed? ... [they have] no means of support…no measures for education…no voting franchise (I Am Legend, 1954).” By pointing to these specific skills, the novel shapes what is important in society: supporting yourself, educating your children, and participating in a cooperative government. The vampire, lacking these skills, is no real threat; he is simply another vermin to be exterminated. In Last Man on Earth, Vincent Price’s version of Robert says, “Reason is the only advantage I have over them… I must find where they hide during the day.” So in the novel and in Last Man on Earth, Robert hunts the vampires every day with a singular mindset, searching for their daytime hiding places, driving a stake through their heart, and taking their bodies to the pits for burning the dead which had been set up by the military before civilization collapsed. Robert even notices that he finds more bodies every day and thinks, “They live off the weak ones and leave them for the pit.” Yet he is unsatisfied with their slow demise and speeds their extinction by hunting them. In the novel, Robert says that, “Morality has fallen with society,” making a weak rationale for killing the infected randomly.

In both of these versions of the story we see the stark loneliness which has taken a toll on Robert over the past three years. His desire for companionship is intensified when he sees a dog that has survived the infection and “to his complete astonishment, he found himself offering up a stumbling prayer that the dog would be protected. It was a moment in which he found a desperate need to believe in a god that shepparded his own creations. But even praying, he felt a twinge of self-reproach and he knew might start mocking his own prayer at any second (I Am Legend, 1954).” The dog comes back later that day, which gives Robert a feeling of joy and normality. He ponders that if a dog can survive and learn to hide itself from the dangers in the night, surely if a human who could think could survive. However, he immediately stops himself, because “hope is dangerous.” Here is the obvious rejection of, not only religion and faith as objects of superstition, but hope which the rational mind cannot accept. Indeed, Robert’s rejection of hope is justified in these stories when he finally coaxes the dog into his home, only to discover the dog is infected after all. In Last Man on Earth, Robert takes the only logical course of action: he kills the dog. However, in the 1954 novel, I Am Legend, Robert desperately tries without success to cure the animal.

Robert reaches a new level of depression after losing the dog and realizes that “intense hope is not the answer and never had been. In a world of monotonous horror, there could be no salvation in wild dreaming. Horror he had adjusted to, but monotony was the greater obstacle (I Am Legend, 1954).”This statement is reinforcement for rejecting hope as an act of the superstitious mind. Then he sees a woman walking across the field during the day and yells to her. However, she is afraid and runs from him. Robert catches her. She struggles to get away from him, and he reassures her, “I’m not one of them…do you want to come with me or face them?” In both versions the woman’s name is Ruth. Robert takes takes Ruth home and tests her for infection by shoving garlic in her face and forcing her to look at mirrors and crosses. He insists she’s infected, but Ruth denies it. “She cowered in the corner, the way the dog had done.” Robert acknowledges that “if she were like the others, there was only one course open and it was better not to know too much about the people you kill (I Am Legend, 1954).” There is little thought to trying to cure Ruth. Killing is what Robert does best, hence what humanity excels at. Robert questions Ruth about how she survived all this time and she replies that she protected her house with crosses. Robert asks, “Why should a Jew fear the cross,” again questioning, analyzing the power of yet another superstitious believe.

That night Robert makes supper for them, but the creatures are outside his house calling for him to come out. Ruth can’t eat. Robert tells her that “they’re mentally weak, like animals after a long famine (Last Man on Earth, 1964).” Here is the justification; we see that the infected are no longer considered human by the protagonist. They are not only expendable, they are better off dead in these two versions of the story. Robert finally insists on testing Ruth’s blood. If she has the germ, he swears he will cures her, much in the same way he swears he will cure the dog. But as Robert checks her blood sample on the slide, “He doesn’t realize that his breath has stopped. His blank eyes met hers.(Last Man on Earth, 1964).” Ruth hits him in the head with a mallet three times until he is unconscious. She admits that she has medicine which prevents her from becoming a mindless creature of the night and that she is not alone. There is now a distinction between the “living dead” and the walking dead. There is an entire community of these “living dead” and, not only are they organized, they “may have to kill [Robert] and those like [him] (I Am Legend, 1954).” In the movie, Last Man on Earth, Ruth explains that since Robert has been killing members of their community along with the walking dead, he can’t join them because he’s “a monster to them.” In fact, she was sent to distract Robert so he could be captured. The live vampires come for him that night and Robert watches as the live vampires attack and kill the walking dead. Ironically, Robert is horrified by the way these new vampires slaughter the dead ones and he wonders if “this is the new society.” He feels more compassion for the vampires he has been killing all these years than for the ones rebuilding society. In I Am Legend (1954), Robert is injured and they capture him for execution. Robert finally makes the connection that “this is what they must have felt like when the pipe went into them,” and says to Ruth, “Did you see their faces when they killed?... Joy. Pure joy.” She reminds him that he had the same look on his face when he killed the vampires. “I’m the abnormal one now,” Robert realizes when he is taken out for his execution. Normal was a majority concept. He takes the pills Ruth gave him and as he dies, thinks, “I am legend.” In the movie, Last Man on Earth, Robert tries to escape from the living vampires. He hides in a church, but he is found and killed with a spike through his chest. Robert realizes at last that “they’re afraid of me.” As he dies, a baby cries and Ruth comforts it, saying, “Don’t cry…we’re all safe now.” The living vampires slowly leave the church.

The logical, rational human loses to the mythological vampire who is now the norm. There is an implication that if logic is conquered, then the superstition of hope may return, along with vampires and faith and all the other concepts which operate outside of investigation and logical deduction. In these versions, it is the analytic human who is the monster, the dangerous beast in the day who murders without concern for the victim. But then murder is also the norm for the new subspecies of humans … those “living vampires” … for they also kill with joy and have founded a society which justifies violence and murder. When we look at this, we realize that human society or any offshoot of it, whether superstitious or scientific, results in the same end: destruction.

Plague: The Great Equalizer

By the 1971 movie, Omega Man, the vampire motif is been replaced by the infected having symptoms of high fever, followed by loss of pigmentation in the skin, hair and eyes, extreme light sensitivity, insanity, and they can be killed like any other human. Even though they also attack Charlton Heston’s version of Robert every night, they do not inspire any more fear than the infected in the 1954 novel, I Am Legend, or the 1964 movie, Last Man on Earth. The all-white humans dress in black medieval robes with hoods and spurn all modern technology, blaming it for causing the plague. In this version of the story the infected show the ability to think and plan clearly as an organized group, much like the “living vampires” in the previous versions. They call themselves “the Family” and are led by the ex-reporter, Mathias. It is Mathias who says, “A scientist is a man who understood nothing until there was nothing left to understand.” The statement clearly shows the layman’s distrust of scientific advances which can open Pandora’s Box. In this version, superstition is the abstract fear of technology instead of the concrete fear embodied by the vampire. The use of black hooded robes and the anti-science attitude is an open comparison to the Medieval Inquest and witch hunts where scientists, like Copernicus, were excommunicated by the church for advancing scientific theories based on observation.

The use of the Inquest sets up a metaphor for McCarthyism, which in 1937 established the Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to investigate subversive activities. The HUAC interrogated and black-listed many artist and writers who were suspected of being communist because they expressed ideas which conflicted with the conservative government of the time. By 1947 this committee had turned its attention to the Hollywood Motion Picture Industry and began investigations into any questionable associations which actors, directors and film makers had. It was, in essence an Inquest based on the fear of communism. These investigations were still a source of contention for many actors, writers and directors throughout the decades of the 1950s and 60s. The 1960s were also a time of growing awareness of the social inequalities imposed on people of color and women. HUAC was supported in their activities by the white supremacy group, the Klu Kluz Klan, in a telegram which stated, “Every true American, and that includes every Klansman, is behind you and your committee in its effort to turn the country back to the honest, freedom-loving, God-fearing American to whom it belongs.” This statement implies that those honest, freedom-loving, God-fearing American are white. So it not surprising that one of the symptoms of the plague in the 1971 version is to turn everyone white. Black, red, yellow and all shades in between are turned white with albino-like effectiveness. Plus, if these infected display symptoms of insanity, it is the most uniform and consistent form of insanity in the history of the human race. All of the infected believe and act the same: they spurn modern inventions and their weapons are fire and catapults, which they turn on any person who is not like them. Thus white supremacy becomes synonymous with illness and backwards thinking.

However, Omega Man’s protagonist, Charlton Heston’s version of Robert, is not an innocent man under attack by a mindless mob like in I Am Legend (1954) or Last Man on Earth (1964). Robert is a military doctor who was searching for an antidote for the germ warfare which infected the planet and led to the complete collapse of civilization, but we don’t see the continuous battle for an antidote or the use of the scientific method during Omega Man, nor do we see the methodical search for the daytime lair of the infected. This Robert may not search out the daytime lair of the infected to murder them in their sleep, but he is more than willing to kill them on sight. Within the first few minutes of the movie we see Heston driving down the road in a convertible listening, ironically, to “A Summer Place”, a love ballad about a place where you can be “safe and warm…and my heart is free from all care”. He stops suddenly when he sees the flash of a black robe in a second-story window and fires his machine gun at person. Heston’s Robert begins driving again and crashes into some debris when he takes a corner too fast. His first line is, “There’s never a cop around when you need one.” When he takes a new car from a nearby dealership, he asks the corpse of the salesman how much he’d take on a trade in, then says, “Thanks, you cheating bastard.” These two statements show that civilization was not necessarily a good thing. There were problems with the government in the form of government’s willingness to use biological weapons, lagging police service, and greed in business transactions. There is cynical acceptance of civilization’s end in this 1971 version, as if humanity has gotten what it deserves. Here the attitude is one of surrender. Since he can’t beat the disease, he might as well kill the host if it’s not too much work. It’s an attitude akin to throwing the baby out with the bathwater and it shows that 20th century man must bend to the will of nature and make the best of the hand he��s dealt. So Robert drives his new car to the local theater where he watches footage from the 1969 Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music Director's Cut (40th Anniversary Two-Disc Special Edition), which was billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music". The 1960s were a turbulent time for Americans, who felt somehow lost or cheated after the widely televised assignation of President John F. Kennedy. Woodstock allowed many of the disillusioned teens of the period who were experiencing “the generation gap” to express their independence from the conservative ideas of their parents. Many of the bands who played at Woodstock voiced rejections of those conservative ideas by performing music which protested the Vietnam Conflict. President Lyndon B. Johnson had sent American ground troops to Vietnam in 1965, escalating the conflict. Young men were drafted to serve in the military to fight a war they didn’t understand and didn’t believe America had a right to be involved in. Some of those young men escaped the draft by running to Canada and some proclaimed they were conscientious objectors and refused to fight. So this clip of Woodstock footage works well with the anti-war ideas which dominated the hippie generation’s lack of trust in the government.

Charlton Hester’s version of Robert also finds a woman, a man, and a group of children who, though they are infected by the virus, are more resistant to it. They are in the early stages of the infection and only one is showing symptoms. In Omega Man the woman, Lisa, is African-American and Robert has an affair with her thus promoting the ideas of desegregation which dominated the 1960s, due in large part to civil rights activists like Martin Luther King, Jr. Mr. King encouraged non-violent protest and boycotts which desegregated buses, drinking fountains, and bathrooms in the South. Even though Mr. King endorsed non-violence, his opponents didn’t. In 1968 he was assassinated. The year before he was assassinated, Hollywood responded to the social changes by producing the movie Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. This movie was controversial because it featured a racially mixed couple. The young white woman in the movie is blind and often neglected by her parents. She meets a kind African-American man in the park and they strike up a friendship. When her parent’s discover she’s friends with a black man, they become abusive and insist that she no longer see him. But she rebels against her parents, refusing give up her new-found friend. In light of these events, it is not surprising that Omega Man features a mixed race couple in an attempt to keep up with the social changes. However, there are clumsy attempts at humor between Robert and his black lover about birth control, another controversial topic in the 1960s and 70s.

The band of survivors is hiding in the hills of California. Lisa and Dutch, a former medical student, led this small group of children. The children themselves play an active role in their own protection; the older children carry machine guns and guard the younger ones. The only child who is displaying symptoms is Lisa’s brother, Richie. Meeting Lisa and the other survivors stimulates Robert’s desire to find a cure for the plague in order to save Ritchie. Suddenly he realizes that he can make a antidote from his own blood because he’s immune. Robert and Lisa take Richie back to Robert’s townhouse, where begins and intense effort to synthesize the antidote. Oddly even, Robert finds the antidote and begins Richie on his road to recovery. At this point we have to ask what Robert was thinking for the past three years. He could have cured a lot of people in that time, yet he didn’t. This is evidence that Robert had given up all hope for helping humanity, which is perhaps a reflection of the original story’s aversion to hope as a form of superstition. It is during this attempt to cure Richie that we see another reference to race. Robert draws his own blood and Lisa asks if one bottle will be enough. Robert says, “It’s 100% Anglo-Saxon blood,” an ironic reference since he’s using this “superior blood” to cure a young African American boy, who becomes the voice of compassion and hope. As Richie regains his health, he tries to talk Robert into curing Mathias and the Family, but Robert refuses, saying they’re vermin and that is will “cure them or kill them, damn it,” and he gives a little laugh. Oddly enough, Robert says that Richie’s compassion and hope scare him more than Mathias does. Again we see the cynicism of the earlier stories. Hope is dangerous. But Richie is a believer. The antidote has helped him, and in his belief that it will also cure the Family, he goes to Mathias.

Now that Richie is getting well, Lisa and Robert plan to escape the city and take all the survivors someplace safe. While they go to scavenge for necessary supplies, Richie runs away. When Robert returns to the townhouse, he finds a note from Richie saying, “I have to find out who’s right,” and he leaves to try to save Richie from his own naivety. Richie’s takes the risk of facing the Family based on his faith in the possibility of curing the infected, but when he faces Mathias with this cure, Mathias says, “We don’t want to go back to the creatures we were.” This implies that, not only has 20th Century man has lost his humanity through the use of technology, but that close-minded, white-supremacist don’t want to change. “White is right” is thus an illness that cannot be cured with any amount of compassion or hope, and since Mathias kills Richie, close-mindedness kills hope. The scene changes and we see Lisa on her way back to Robert’s townhouse with two bags of groceries. She stops in the shadows of a building as the Family march past saying, “We have to cleanse the world. Outside of the Family, there is nothing.” Lisa drops her bags and removes her scarf. She has “crossed over” and is completely white. She joins them in them to attack Robert’s townhouse. Robert finds Richie dead at the Family’s “nest” and he is attacked with sticks and clubs. He makes it back to his townhouse, but the rooms are dark except for candles. Lisa is there in black robes with a white face and hair. Mathias and the Family are there, too. They restrain Neville while the “entertain” him by destroying his art with knives and breaking everything in the house. Mathias says, “It was all an illusion, a nightmare; your art, your science,” it’s all gone, now we can rebuild. Robert says, “Build coffins. It’s all you’ll need!” Thus there is a direct correlation between the absence of art and science and death. Robert breaks free and grabs Lisa, pulling her out of the townhouse while they are attacked with spears. Robert is hit in the chest with a spear and stumbles into the fountain in front of his townhouse. As he’s dying, Lisa says, “You’re evil, you don’t understand. I’m part of the Family.” So Lisa is absorbed into this all-white community, just as many African-Americans were accused of being “Uncle Toms”. Dutch arrives in the morning with the other children to find Lisa hiding from the sunlight under a bush and Robert dead in the blood-tainted fountain. He takes the bottle of Robert’s blood and pulls Lisa into the car. He says, “Let’s go, kids. We’ve got a long way to go,” leaving behind the last remnant of cynical science and the dying Family of all-white infected, and yes, indeed, civilization has a long way to go.

Lit with Hope in the 21st Century

In I Am Legend, the 2007 movie, infected humans have “devolved” into an animalistic state in which they live in “hives”. The do not talk or reason, but they are such excellent trackers and hunters that Will Smith’s version of Robert must pour ammonia on the sidewalk as he enters his townhouse to prevent them from picking up his scent. His home has thick metal shutters on the doors and windows which bolt from the inside and at night he closes his fortress and sleeps with a gun and his dog in the bathtub. The symptoms of this “krypto virus” include extreme sensitivity to sunlight, elevated temperatures in excess of 200 degrees and increased respiration. The creatures are totally hairless, computer generated images which are able to climb walls, hang from ceilings, jump abnormally high and open their jaws several inches further than normal humans. In short, they are closer to animals than they are to people, and as such generate greater fear in our protagonist when night falls. Even though they are more dangerous and less human than in the other versions of this story, Robert is shown methodically seeking a cure. It is the only version where we see a strong desire to cure rather than kill. Will Smith’s version of Robert only kills the creatures in self-defense. In this version we see the implication that science can help as well as harm, regardless of how far down humanity has devolved.

The methodical approach to analyzing and curing the disease is seen clearly in the 2007 movie version of I Am Legend. Robert is already a doctor working in the military’s version of the Center for Disease Control and he is decidedly trying to cure the infected, not kill them. Just as in the novel and the Karlof movie, Smith’s version of Robert uses a methodical approach to discover the creatures’ daytime lair, gridding a map of the city and marking buildings already searched. Smith however, captures the infected to test trial versions of the antivirus on them. Thus through seeking to cure rather than kill and the lack of corpses in the street, we see that the 21st century society values human life reflected in the 2007 movie. Humans, even devolved ones, have a right to live if possible. In fact, in this version all life is more values. This is seen in the opening scene when Robert is hunting deer. He finally has one in his sites when the deer is brought down by a lioness. Robert pauses and sees a lion and two cubs come up to enjoy the meal which the mother lion has caught. The fact that he cannot bring himself to shoot them shows us two things: 1) that all life is important and 2) that Robert feels some sort of sympathy with this lion family, possibly thinking about his own lost family.

This is the only version in which Robert is portrayed by an African-American doctor who is determined to make the world right. He fights the disease which has mutated humanity continuously and methodically throughout the entire movie. His one true focus is conquering the disease to cure humanity. This shows a definite change in attitude towards science as a tool to help and towards African-Americans, who in the 1950s and 60s were not depicted as professional, caring individuals. Most films during this period used a stereotypic depiction of people of color. It shows how far society has come from the white supremacist attitude. In his desire to cure the infected, Robert must periodically capture one so he can test a new antidote. After Robert accidentally discovers the “hive” of creatures in an abandoned building, he sets a trap for one. When he captures a female as a test subject, one of the males sticks his head out of the dark to scream at him and is consequently burned by the sun. In his notes, Robert says that they have become “completely dissocialized” and claim that the male’s behavior shows that their instinct for self-preservation is deteriorating. It is interesting to note that Smith’s version of Robert does not even consider that the female he captured could be a mate, which would have accounted for a basic instinct to protect and defend her.

The devolved humans show a capacity to plot and plan when they set a trap for Robert. It is a complex plan which involves taking one of Robert’s mannequins from the video store he frequents and putting it in front of their building. They set a camouflaged snare which springs when Robert steps into it, pulling him up by his foot with a noose. He is knocked unconscious when his head hits the pavement, allowing the creatures time for the sun to set. Robert regains consciousness as the sun is setting and cuts himself down, but he falls on a spike and is injured. He doesn’t quite make it to his car before the creatures unleash their own infected dogs to attack him. Robert’s dog, Sam, is bitten before he can kill the dogs and escape. Robert gets Sam back to his lab and injects her with the latest antivirus, but it doesn’t work and so he must kill his four-legged friend. It is at this point that Robert’s attitude changes. He is now bent on killing the creatures and avenging the death of his pet. Robert goes to the hive’s building and waits outside until the sun sets again. Then he runs over as many as he can until they turn his car on its roof and try to grab him front the inside. He is rescued at the last minute by a woman named Anna and the child she cares for.

The theme of science versus superstition is more subtle in the I Am Legend (2007) version, because the superstition is hope and it is not portrayed as the antithesis of logic, but rather a necessary component. We see hope and science tied irrevocably together in Robert’s refusal to give up on finding a cure. We also see it in the automatic radio transmission he has set telling anyone who is uninfected that he will be at the dock at noon every day and that he can provide shelter, food and safety. Hop is associated with faith in god and the rebirth of humanity as shown in many images of the butterfly. We see it in the opening scene as Robert races down the streets of Manhattan past a billboard with a butterfly that says, “God Love Us”. It is the image of his daughter’s fingers interlocked like wings and saying, “Look, Dad, a butterfly,” as he races to get his family out of the plague infected city before its quarantined. It is in the dialogue in which Robert tells Anna about Bob Marley’s idea of injecting love and music into society in order to cure hate. It is verbalized by Anna when she explains that “Gold told me [about the survivor’s colony in Vermont],” and Robert’s insistence that “There is no god.” And finally it is in Robert’s final scene when Anna, Ethan and he are trapped in the isolation chamber and the Dark Seekers hurl themselves against the glass. The glass splinters into the shape of a butterfly and Robert knows that he must give Anna the antivirus in his blood so she can take it to the survivor’s colony. Smith sacrifices himself; you might say injects himself into society, in order to save Anna, Ethan and humanity. They movie ends with Anna and Ethan arriving at the survivor’s colony. The final words in this version are, in 2012 they found a cure due to Robert Neville. “We are his legacy. This is his legend. Light up the darkness,” which is the perfect conclusion to carry home the idea that science, faith, and hope work together.

In all we see a transition from the belief that superstition will overcome logo to superstition and science as co-companions. Either way, I could be write or I could be wrong. Let me know what you think.
I could be write or I could be wrong, either way I'd like to hear from you.