A decade and a half ago, the makers of Alien: Resurrection decided to bring back Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley as a clone of herself in order to continue the sci-fi saga following the character’s death in Alien 3. The move failed the logic test, but 20th Century Fox brushed all that aside because it wanted the series’ totemic star in the movie.
Perhaps Hollywood is learning. This week, Deadline reports that Warner Bros has abandoned plans for a prequel to I Am Legend. It would have seen Will Smith shoehorned in as the returning Lieutenant Colonel Robert Neville in the story of the US army virologist’s life prior to the apocalyptic events that left him trapped in a New York overrun by mutant vampires.
Despite having signed up last year for the abominable After Earth, Smith is famously picky about his projects, so it’s no surprise he turned down a second film. I Am Legend’s entire USP is its killer exploitation-tinged storyline, which sees our hero left alone on a planet that has turned against mankind. Going back to show what happened beforehand would be a bit like green-lighting a film about Luke Skywalker’s life prior to leaving Tatooine, or Spider-Man’s experiences leading up to the day he was bitten by a radioactive arachnid.
But that doesn’t mean the studio is going to give up altogether on I Am Legend, which knowledgable readers will know was the third big-screen adaptation of Richard Matheson’s sci-fi novel. Warner Bros has instead decided to retool a spec script by Gary Graham, a little-known screenwriter who was working in a Manhattan Apple store when he got the call from Hollywood, in order to launch an entirely new franchise.
Graham’s screenplay is said to be a science-fiction take on The Searchers, the classic John Ford western with John Wayne desperately hunting for his niece (Natalie Wood), who was abducted by Native American tribespeople many years before. Warner Bros apparently saw details that tied in to the universe presented in I Am Legend, so we can assume the mutant vampires will replace the Indians, with a new character setting out to retrieve a beloved family member from their clutches.
I have mixed feelings about this. I Am Legend took a huge $585m globally, but audiences dropped off after the movie’s excellent opening weekend, suggesting lacklustre word of mouth. I suspect most people were drawn to the concept of a Will Smith blockbuster and those enticing early trailers in which one man careers through the abandoned streets of Manhattan, seeing off wild animals and mutants in the company of his trusty dog. Were they really so interested in the wider universe presented by director Francis Lawrence, complete with crap CGI vampires and thinly written supporting parts? Will they turn up for another movie without Smith in it?
On the other hand, dropping Robert Neville from the picture certainly opens up the possibilities. Warner Bros didn’t help itself by jettisoning a radical finale for I Am Legend – one closer to the source novel – in which Smith realises the vampires are not incapable of human compassion, and that he has become their monster. You can watch the alternative ending here, and I wonder if the studio might just learn from it.
One of the most interesting points of The Searchers, especially for a movie shot in 1956, is that it avoids presenting Native Americans as entirely voiceless, alien bringers of death and destruction. When Wayne finally catches up with Wood’s now adolescent Debbie, he discovers that she is happy with her Comanche family and wants to stay with them. Then, just as Neville is exposed as the real villain of the piece in the alternative ending of I Am Legend, it is Wayne who becomes the epitome of cruel inhumanity when he tries to shoot his niece dead rather than let her go over to the enemy. Two very provocative storylines, given the genres the film-makers were working in, and the parallels are so clear you wonder if it’s a coincidence.
