Waking up in ’23 to a brave new existence of healthy resolutions and being a better all-round person? But how about instead of getting out of bed to a new life, you woke up to a cinematic existence in an abandoned world….and how would you cope? With a sequel to Will Smith’s I Am Legend apparently on its way, Nina Romain looks at how different survivors stay alive in different disaster scenarios.
Differing fictitious heroes deal with isolation differently. In I Am Legend (2007) the pre-slap Will Smith plays Dr Robert Neville, living alone after losing his family in a virus-stricken New York. He overcomes loneliness by leading a purpose-filled life, with plans to find survivors and rebuild humanity (while playing golf and breaking quite a few speed limits in the city centre). The remaining murderous creatures, called the Darkseekers, hide during the day but come out at night to look for victims, leaving Neville to barricade himself in after nightfall.
Despite his ritual-filled life of obsessively noting the time of sunset for each day to ensure he stays inside during the night and keeping fit to outrun the Darkseekers, Neville starts seeing things. He notes that some shop mannequins that he pretends to talk to have moved, and begins to question his own sanity. The sequel was announced in development last March.
The first version of this film was 1964’s The Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price, and it was then re-made in 1971 as The Omega Man. This is set in the far-off future of 1977, where Neville (played this time by Charlton Heston) patrols an abandoned city, this time in a deserted Los Angeles. Heston’s character also starts to wonder if he is losing his mind as he hears phones ringing and also “talks” to statues. Like Smith’s Neville, he obsessively follows certain patterns, as when always he dresses up in ‘70s style for Sunday dinner.
Filming had of course had major difficulties of having to empty huge cities visually to shoot a fictitious abandoned world. Smith remembers annoyed NYC residents who couldn’t move around as much as they’d like, saying succinctly: “That’s the most middle fingers I’ve ever gotten in my career.”
Similar problems had previously taken place in London to recreate a disease-stricken urban wasteland in 28 Days Later (2002). As it was also difficult to get London closed down, some of the film was shot at 5am in the summer, to have daylight but no pedestrians, with a lot of kebab-seeking clubbers staggering into shot. The hero Jim (a bike courier) awakens to a deserted city, and wanders around shouting helplessly for any survivors, but has little time to question what has happened before he is under attack. Like Neville, he must then run for his life, but at least all the exercise on his bike allows him to outrun the Rage victims.
Pitch Black is set in another empty world when the survivors of a space crash find themselves on an abandoned planet. This was shot in outback Australia’s Coober Pedy, which also stood in for the futuristic hell of a deserted world in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) as well as Mars in Red Planet (2000). Dated from the core samples the heroine Fry finds, it’s set in 2578, with the survivors finding children’s toys and clothing from the previous inhabitants. Realising the former inhabitants left “their clothes on the hooks, photos on the shelves”, they see like Dr Neville, something evil is in the darkness waiting for them. As the (anti-)hero Riddick asks mockingly of the fate awaiting them: “You’re not afraid of the dark, are you?”
With the sequel of I Am Legend possibly on its way, again starring Smith and looking at the good doctor’s life before the Darkseekers took over, it looks like we haven’t seen the last of the last- person-left-alive genre. Well, it beats making resolutions to drink more fresh lemon juice and never touch junk food again, while staying fit to outrun anything lurking in the darkness and chatting to inanimate objects. Happy New Year!
