I Am Legend ....


certainly borrows heavily from this excellent film

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[deleted]

Interesting, since the book was written before this film came out...

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The OP makes a valid point if he/she is comparing the movie version of I Am Legend to this film. I have read the novel version, and there is no talking to mannequins or transmitting radio messages in it, so the film version couldn't have gotten those scenes from the book.

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I am legend borrowed a ton of scenes from this film.

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I have heard Will Smith in interviews discussing this movie and how he admires Belanfante's acting, and he hoped he could hold up a film for so long alone. :)

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So did Heston's "The Omega Man"...

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Z for Zachariah was similar.

Reality is Nothing - Perception is Everything!

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Well it certainly borrows some elements... but there must be crossed influences. The book was written in 1954. Then in 1959 the World... with a black man trapped in a love triangle and an open end. Later on, the first movie actually drawn from the book, called "The Last Man on Earth" (1964), which deals with a white man alone (no love triangle :)) against an army of zombies/vampires. The end is absolutely closed since the only human left is killed. And finally the recent adaptation is a mix of these 3 influences. A black man saves the world, another open end.
I guess that's what makes the whole "alone in the world" series of books and films more and more interesting as time goes by: there are numberless variations still to come :)

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"I Am Legend" is based upon a book of the same name by Richard Matheson, which is about a strain of bacteria that turns people into vampires. "The Last Man on Earth" starring Vincent Price is much closer to the book than the Will Smith version.
"The World, The Flesh, and The Devil" is based upon "The Purple Cloud" by M. P. Shiel, or so it says. The movie diverges significantly from Shiel's book. The protagonist in his book survives a volcanic eruption of cyanide gas that sweeps the earth, killing mankind and most animal life, by virtue of being at the north pole (the 'winner' of a contest to see who could reach the pole first) - the gas doesn't quite make it that far north, though he does get violently sick a few times when he gets a whiff of peaches (the aroma of cyanide). Shiel's 'hero' then proceeds to go insane, spending 20 or more years traveling the world, mostly burning cities for his own jollies, before finally discovering a female survivor. During all of this he is plagued by conflicting voices in his head each telling him to do the opposite of the other. There are no race issues in Shiel's novel.
Stephen King borrowed heavily from "The Purple Cloud" when he wrote "The Stand".
"The World, The Flesh and The Devil" is so different from the book that they could have left Shiel's name out of the credits.
"The Purple Cloud" is relatively easy to find and well worth the read.

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Thanks for the input! I guess reading the original books is becoming a necessity as time passes and more films are made...

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I'll second that, it's a great book.
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"Look! - it's the Invisible Man!"

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In the event anyone is interested, here is perhaps the first apocalyptic/last man on earth novel written.

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/18247/pg18247.txt

The Last Man - written by Mary Shelley 8 years after having written Frankenstein. It's interesting on several levels, particularly how a person in 1826 would envision the future of the 21st century. It's like alternate reality fiction combined with the earliest of sci-fi.

Some people are afraid of the unknown. I don't know why, and it scares me.

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Thank you for clearing up all those annoying details so often muddled by those who think the world began with their generation.

For an example of high class borrowing, consider the connection of Brave New World(1932) and Nineteen Eighty-four(1949), among others, to the novel We(1921) by Yevgeny Zamyatin.

CB

Good Times, Noodle Salad

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I haven't seen it but thematically it sounds a lot like The Quiet Earth too.

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