T2K / Post-Apocalyptic Movies

[WallShadow]

Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic

Having seen three movies based upon the book "I Am Legend", I must respectfully disagree that the Will Smith movie is the best adaptation.
While it's better than "The Omega Man", it's far too concerned with silly and in some cases utterly stupid, action scenes to portray the story well although I will give some credit to Will Smith in that the scenes where he starts to lose his sanity are well done.
In my opinion, the best version was the Vincent Price movie "The Last Man On Earth". While it suffers a little from having been made cheaply (filmed in Italy rather than the US and filmed in B&W rather than colour even though it was made in the early 1960s) it remains far closer to the book than any of the later movies. It remains a drama, like the book, rather than trying to be a horror/action flick like the later movies.

Uhhhh...me, too! I have to agree with SSC's choice for the best adaptation--both I Am Legend and Omega Man changed the resolution, Omega Man somewhat, but IAL completely lost the whole point of the story--the Changed are now civilization and the "hero" is a monster in their estimation and must be destroyed.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

While talking to some work colleagues this afternoon about the movies made from the "I Am Legend" book, one of them mentioned a movie I hadn't heard of before. With a little checking I found a review that proved quite interesting. Here's what the reviewer had to say in his first paragraph

"A black man, the last man on Earth, fends for himself in Manhattan after a global plague wipes out the rest of humanity. His loneliness overwhelms him. He slowly slips into insanity, speaking to mannequins he's set up throughout the city to approximate some form of normalcy. Every day at noon, he pleads into a short-wave radio, announcing his location, and his intention to broadcast indefinitely, hoping to get a response. Then he finds out he's not alone. That's the premise behind I Am Legend (2007), right? Wrong, but who could blame one for seeing the similarities?"

The movie is called "The World, the Flesh and the Devil", starring Harry Bellafonte and made in 1959
http://www.cinemaviewfinder.com/2009...nth-world.html
While this movie wasn't an adaptation of "I Am Legend", the movie of that name might be something of an adaptation of "The World, the Flesh and the Devil". Who can say but I thought it was interesting that the two movies share a lot of similarities - almost to the point of the Will Smith movie being a copy of some scenes.