I Am Legend Analasys Essay
The movie I Am legend is a science fiction about Robert Neville (Will Smith), who is a military scientist and the lone survivor of a biochemical disease which was supposed to cure cancer 3 years previous. His only companion is his dog Samantha, several mannequins scattered around the city that he talks to, several animals that escaped from the zoo, and the victims of the plague brought about by the cancer cure gone rouge. Robert spends his days scavenging homes for supplies and waiting on the docks of the naval base for any survivors who are reached by his radio broadcast.
However, his nights are spent hiding his trace and keeping a video log of his scientific research of a possible cure, tested on rats. Dr. Neville himself is immune to the airborne strain of the virus. During key parts of the movie Neville is haunted by flashbacks of his family who died while trying to evacuate the city. He is severely outnumbered and quickly running out of time. In the opening scene, a television news report between a news anchor and another woman who says the cancer treatment trials have had 100 percent success rate the news reporter responds with “So Doctor, you have created a cure for cancer haven’t you? a slight smile from the woman, “Yes, Yes we have. ” The camera blacks out and goes to several scenes of a destroyed New York City with a pre-recorded message of Neville himself “My name is Robert Neville. I am a survivor living in New York City. I am broadcasting on all AM frequencies. I will be at the South Street Seaport every day at mid-day, when the sun is highest in the sky. If you are out there… if anyone is out there… I can provide food, I can provide shelter, and I can provide security. If there’s anybody out there… nybody… please. You are not alone. ” During this sequence, the camera angle goes over the city in a top-down view to show the empty cars, destroyed buildings, some covered in battered and ripped quarantine plastic. During the course of the movie, the viewer discovers exactly how alone Robert is. He has prerecorded television news from years past, when he is bored he goes to the local movie rental store. There he has a friend named Fred, and a secret crush who he is too afraid to talk to. Both are mannequins.
His dog Samantha is a German shepherd handed to him by his daughter Harley as their helicopter was taking off before it was brought down by an explosion cause by a crashing helicopter into the bridge. Robert always has Sam by his side except when she runs into an abandoned building while chasing a deer. Neville panics and runs in after her. They discover a colony of diseased and Robert decides to set a trap for one. Taking a vial of his own blood, he smashes it over the trap and waits. Once he catches one he is surprised that one infected exposes himself to sunlight just to roar and pant at Robert.
All the while his skin begins smoking and he goes back inside. Back at his house he does his pre-dusk ritual of covering his scent with rubbing alcohol and shutting the metal shutters on the windows. He sedates the diseased and proceeds to inject her with the most recent possible strain of cure from his menagerie of lab rats. She begins to have slowed heart rate and she looks better, and then dies. He gives up hope and returns her to her previous self of infection. She is then kept in a sealed room on a stretcher. The next day as he is driving through the city he sees a mannequin the he left at the video store.
Obviously mannequins cannot move and possibly the loneliness has gotten to his mind but he begins yelling at it. “Fred, if you’re real you tell me now! ” with no response he begins shooting it and falls into a trap laid out by the infected leader that roared at him before. Three infected dogs run out of a building but are stopped by the last ray of sunlight. Roberts leg is crippled from the trap and can’t make it to his car. The dogs run to them and go after Robert but Sam stops one and gets bitten. Robert goes home with Sam and injects her with the potential drug that didn’t work on the infected girl.
The serum fails and Sam turns. Robert has no choice but to kill her. This moment seems to be the most memorable in the entire movie for anyone who watches it. Most people also seem to come close to tears or at least become depressed. The viewer becomes emotionally invested and hopes Robert finds a cure and Sam has always been there right by his side, it seems almost like counter logic for moviegoers to see the sidekick die. Robert flies into a depression fuel rage. Everything he has loved has been taken by this virus None of his serums have worked, and he is, as far as he knows, the last un infected alive.
He takes his land rover to the docks and begins running over infected on a suicidal mission. He is overpowered but is saved by a woman who is searching for the survivor’s colony. She also has a son. They all go back to Roberts’s house. She does not follow his strict trace removal and the hoard of infected find them. They fall back to the sealed room finding that the infected girl has been cured. Robert takes a vial of her blood and has the woman and son hide on a bunker in the wall till dawn. Robert sacrifices himself knowing they will not stop until they are dead.
The ending scene is a voiceover of the woman as she walks up to the colony handing them the vial. While it’s unlikely that the recipients of such biotech drugs would turn into raging night creatures that are afraid of sunlight, the truth is actually far scarier. The TGN1412 drug trial, in this drug trial, which tested an experimental arthritis drug on patients, things went terribly wrong: After being injected with the anti-inflammatory drug TGN1412, patients began tearing their shirts off, screaming that their heads were going to explode.
One patient’s head swelled to triple its normal size, and patients were passing out, vomiting, or screaming in sheer terror. Within minutes after the injections, patients were suffering from severe breathing attacks, convulsions and excruciating pain. As a relative to one of the victims explained: “He was completely lifeless, like a shell. He can’t even move his eyelids. This machine is pumping out his lungs and his face is puffed out like The Elephant Man. ” This is real life, not science fiction. And yet it sounds a lot like some of the side effects of the viral injection imagined in I Am Legend.
While the movie was science fiction, the truth is, modern medicine is quite capable of making a mistake that unleashes a deadly virus and devastates humankind. Sources Cited: DVD video. “I Am Legend Burbank, CA : Warner Home Video, [2008] I Am Legend Critique. Anti Essays. Retrieved March 18, 2013, from the World Wide Web: http://www. antiessays. com/free-essays/308801. html Interview/journal. New England Journal of Medicine. “Cytokine Storm in a Phase 1 Trial of the Anti-CD28 Monoclonal Antibody TGN1412. ” August 14, 2006.
