#please dont drag me for the simp comments im being entirely facetious and i never picked up using the term myself

[rimurutempest]

I have no shame, so I’m posting another writing assignment for you all to either laugh at or ignore, your call.

Here’s the prompt:

“ Class ... Richard Matheson adapted I Am Legend for the bigscreen in the early 1960s.  He so hated the changes made to his script that he asked to have his name removed from it.  The movie, titled The Last Man on Earth and starring Vincent Price, is available to be watched on YouTube.  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feQIhzNpBLQ) After you watch the movie, write a three page (700-800 word) response focusing on the changes made.  Pick 3-5 significant changes made and describe them.   Discuss whether the change was a good, bad or horrific choice.  You may want to rank your choices such as the 5 worst changes in order or the best 3 changes.  Discuss what effect each change had on the story as a whole. You don’t need to do any research for this paper.  I want to read your own thoughts on this movie. 

Because we will begin next Wednesday’s class discussing the movie and the changes, you need to email your papers to me by 6:15 October 7, 2020.  Journals submitted after that cannot be accepted. 

Cut and paste your essays into the body of the email.  Don’t attach them or send me links to Googledocs or any similar site. 

Enjoy the film.”

and here’s my scorching hot take of 1200+ words:

I was looking forward to watching a classic Vincent Price film, full of playfully eerie campiness, but The Last Man on Earth didn't hold up to my expectations. It's not the first time I've seen Price play a villain, but the mood of this story just didn't seem to suit him. While I didn't love the book, the movie honestly sat with me even worse. I cant blame Matheson for hating it. My distaste for his writing, and the biases I noticed therein, stem from my personal conviction that it's crucially important to consume media critically and examine what messages are being conveyed, overtly, subtly, intentionally, or otherwise. As I mentioned in class, there were a fair many flaws that I found troublesome, but I absolutely acknowledge and appreciate the overall influence I Am Legend had on vampire – and in a broader sense, both sci-fi and horror – fiction. I deeply enjoy thorough world building and attention to detail, and I personally am very invested in plausible scientific explanations for fantasy tropes. The book delved into most of those details in a sensible way, but the film left much of them unaddressed, and that was disappointing to say the least.

The Last Man on Earth started out following the book well enough at first, some small details were changed, but none too important. These details were understandable given the limitations of the era, and didn't detract from the introduction to the post apocalyptic setting. Our main character, Robert Neville, has had his name changed to Robert Morgan. The movie started out with the 3 yr time skip, which happened a ways into the source material, contrary to the 1 year since the plague hit and 5 months we're told Robert spent surviving alone. There are significantly less sexy vampire women posing outside at night, and significantly less of Robert being insufferably horny as a result. The film also censored his alcoholism almost entirely, shaving a great many key events from the book.

In the film, vampires react to Robert during the day, albeit groggily and helplessly, whereas in the book they were fully catatonic and unresponsive, apart from a subdued dying gasp in some cases. On that note, there seem to be no vampire sub-types, all are apparently either fully alive or fully dead, and it is unclear which is the case. When Robert visited the mausoleum to mourn Virginia, there was no vampire to fry, and thus he didn't learn anything regarding exposure to sunlight. Instead he fell asleep in the mausoleum, rather than leaving to test effects of the sun on vampires further. His nap is also what leads to his returning home late, instead of a broken watch, and it's already night as he leaves the crypt, compared to night falling during the drive home. Robert's struggle to get into his house is quite different: there is no using his car as a decoy, no garage scene with Ben, no forgotten keys to retrieve, and no follow-up drunken shooting and punching after getting inside safely, just Robert plowing through the vampires recklessly, both bodily and with his car, until he's safely inside for the night.

The deviations from the source material are now piling up faster than I can count. Robert has his flashback to the plague days after watching home movies – not a detail from the book – and it starts much earlier, towards the onset of the plague. He is revealed to have been a scientist directly assigned to researching the plague, versus a former soldier working at an unspecified plant – I assume an electric plant, but nuclear would also be entirely plausible. The flashback continues, showing the events of the past all in one go, rather than being disbursed throughout multiple reflections over the course of the story proper. Movie Robert did not follow protocol to willingly burn Kathy, instead he actually fought authorities to retrieve her remains, unsuccessfully. The religious fanaticism and effects of religious paraphernalia are not really addressed, either.

The film is now so removed from the book, events are much harder to sync up – some events from the book don't happen at all, some happen out of sequence, and even still, some events in the film were not in the book in the first place. Movie Robert never seems to test the allyl essential oil, let alone isolate it, or sunlight at all for some reason. He doesn't work to gradually gain the dog's trust in the film, just chases it, gives up, then finds it outside his house shortly thereafter, suddenly offering its full trust. The topic of suicide vs continued, bleak survival is not explored. Film Robert also just flat out doesn't try to cure the dog and stakes it himself. In the book, it's implied he kept trying until it died, a week later, where it's unclear if he finished it off, or if it merely died of its infection and stayed dead. The differing ways the disease affects non human animals aren't really detailed in either media. Ruth appears immediately after the dog.

The entire Ruth encounter is vastly altered, with the whole sequence taking place within one night. Honestly, book Ruth was somehow more suspicious than this woman over all, perhaps because there is more time in which to build tension. The whole damn interaction is a mess in the film: somehow simultaneously nothing happens, and everything left in the story happens all at once in a jumbled up mess. Movie Ruth is never intimate with Robert, never knocks him out, never leaves to plead his case, leaves no note...Also I guess we have an answer to the earlier mystery, in that all vampires are actually alive? Meanwhile, rather than pills, the new vampires use a serum injection via syringe, and Ruth doesn't even remotely try to be subtle and sneaky about taking it, getting caught immediately by Robert.

Cue a very weird standoff followed by a sudden declaration of love? The so-called romance between Ruth and Robert wasn't half believable in the book either, but who the hell was supposed to believe that happened after the movie's sequence of kidnapping, shouting match, repeated physical assault, and like, a max of 5 minutes interacting...? Heteros are truly sick in the head, it must be rough. Now we've got a ridiculously unsafe blood transfer that instantly cures Ruth. Cue painfully stupid chase scene, featuring Ruth still simping for Robert in a downright offensively pathetic manner. Turns out bullets work on vampires in the film I guess. This ending begs the question: if all vampires are alive, why are they killing the ones with no serum? Also why did the women and children just like, suddenly file into that church in the middle of the chase-scene-slash-gun-fight? That was so weird. The poison tablets were obviously left out, since the whole scene just went off the rails anyway. Robert's parting title drop is omitted, presumably since the film didn't use the book title anyway. So many things left unaddressed, so many unanswered questions...What even happened to Ruth after that? Did she like, use her new antibodies to cure everyone else or did they kill her for simping crimes? Did she just...leave? When are we getting The Last Woman on Earth sequel film?

#back to school adventures #art is a breeze #i am legend #richard matheson #the last man on earth #vincent price #vampires #this professor really fuckin loves vamps but he's got such bad takes and such bad taste #and here i am to make this semester hell #an interesting hell but still #he doesnt know im just constantly making fun of him its kind of sad #i gotta oppress him though #please dont drag me for the simp comments im being entirely facetious and i never picked up using the term myself #my professor is just an old white catholique man and i have to trip him up at every opportunity