Sarah and I watched I Am Legend last night. With four young children, we don't see theatrical releases much any more; thank goodness for Netflix.
Jeffrey Tucker says that Legend is a decidedly Christian movie. Hmm, maybe. Having read the first part of his article (up to the word "spoiler") before the film, I did take note of one or two messages about God early in the film, including a poster that said, "God still loves us."
More interesting to me is the fact that the plot of Legend appeared to be a complete rip-off (and mostly improvement) of about half of The Circle Trilogy by Ted Dekker. The Circle Trilogy consists of three books with one word titles: Black, Red, and White. It's explicitly Christian fiction and takes place between our earth and a parallel universe, in much the same way as The Chronicles of Narnia, with the same kind of usually very obvious Christian metaphor, although looking a little more like The Matrix than Narnia. Dekker's no Lewis, though; I personally felt the quality of writing began to deteriorate with Red and really got bad with White, becoming somewhat comparable to the disappointment many folks felt with the Star Wars prequels, although all three books had a significant impact on my faith (though none so much as Black). Dekker targets young folks, so if you consider yourself a young folk and appreciate (or can tolerate) Christian metaphor, you might like it.
So I see Legend is based off of a 1954 novel, and that novel has widely influenced many genres including zombie films and apocalypse disasters. It would seem then that the truth is not so much that Legend rips off the Circle trilogy, but the trilogy rips off or is influenced by Legend the novel or its descendants. Except for one thing: many of the similarities between Legend the film and the Circle trilogy are the things that were changed from the book to the film, as well as the things that Tucker says make Legend "Christian." So maybe the influence goes both ways.
Re:Alternate ending!
jdavidb on 2008-04-04T13:05:19
We didn't get it.
:( It's apparently on the second disk, and we only got the first disk from Netflix. I'm not even sure if the second is available. We were extraordinarily disappointed by the only special features we got on the disk: animated cartoons. They mostly reminded me of the kind of bizarre and bloodthirsty things my friends drew and watched in junior high and high school. There seemed to be no point to them other than to shock and terrify and traumatize. I wanted alternate scenes; we got bloodthirsty American anime.
I did read about the alternate ending yesterday; I meant to tell my wife but had forgotten; thanks for the reminder!
