The movie, I am Legend, starring Will Smith, is a great action packed movie that has little to nothing to do with the book by Richard Matheson. The movie is about a doctor, Robert Neville, who is the only survivor in New York City after a virus that has wiped out the population or turned the survivors into blood thirsty semi-vampire type creatures called “The Infected”. Robert Neville struggles to find a cure for the virus and find any survivors. The book, I am Legend,by Richard Matheson was written in 1954 and tells the story of a lone survivor, Robert Neville, of a vicious plague created by a bacteria that has either killed its victims or turned them into vampires.

The book and the movie’s synopsis are very similar and the titles are the same, but the point of the book and the point of the movie are completely different. The point of the movie is that Robert Neville is not a scientist who is trying to save the world and humanity from this virus. In the book, Robert is not a scientist and is a lonely guy trying to figure out how to save “The Infected” so that he is not the only normal guy in the world.  In the book, Robert is the abnormal.

The movie is about a hero and the hero’s job is to save the planet. The movie completely misses the point of the book and essentially why the book is called I am Legend. The main point of the novel is that the main character is the strange or weird, he has become what legends are made of. Director Francis Lawrence makes Robert Neville the hero, the man who saves the world because he feels responsible for creating the virus; while the Robert in the book is motivated more out of loneliness than responsibility. I am Legend, the movie, could have been made without basing any of its contents from the book. A hero, sidekick dogs, and vampires are pretty cliché for the movie business; there is no need to strip the bare necessities from a well written novel.

I loved the book and I loved how there was multiple layers of “what it means to be human” theme kept me pondering the book long after I had finished it.  The book is relatively short, so I was able to go back and reread it so that I could get a real sense out of what Matheson was trying to say.  I don’t mind if movies change some of the storyline so that it can get the point across without having to make the audience sit in a theatre for ten hours; but I do require that the essence of the book be the same and I Am Legend failed.

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