I Am Legend

I didn’t even see I Am Legend in New York. I saw it in Palm Beach, Florida. Yeah, you heard me right. Palm Beach, that bright plastic playground; that sunny snow globe; that oversized, open-air supermarket, with aisles paved like four-lane roads and counters shaped like strip malls, where the only brand on sale is the brand known as Palm Beach. Every kitschy light fixture, every kitschy mirror frame, every plastic martini glass (“kitschy” would be redundant) sells and re-sells (to whom? to anyone) an airbrushed technicolor dreamworld known as Florida.

Palm Beach is to Miami as New Rochelle is to New York. Miami is to New York, of course, as day is to night. (In case you couldn’t tell, I’m a night person.)

All of this is by way of saying what I want to say about I Am Legend: different strokes for different folks. I went into I Am Legend expecting entertainment, nothing more. I was right, and happily. The production values were high. The zombies were scary. Will Smith’s acting was good. The CGI shots of post-apocalypse Manhattan were gorgeous. I even saw it in IMAX, which was awesome.

My movie companion expected a concept-driven dystopian thriller; he was disappointed. But I expected fluff, and was pleasantly surprised by any brain fodder that came along for the ride. The movie’s many implausibilities didn’t bother me, therefore. Why is the best scientist in the world such a bad scientist? What kind of serious Bob Marley fan listens to Legend, name coincidence notwithstanding?

Ultimately, who cares? In a zombie movie, little things like plot truly don’t matter.

Yes, there were things about the movie that did bother me; I couldn’t help it. For instance, the superfluous, preachy, quasi-religious moral. Thank god that when Will Smith was shedding his blood for humanity he didn’t strike a Christ pose.

But I feel uncomfortable making even this last complaint. I will always dislike condescending, forced religiosity; but that’s a pet peeve, and, as such, a personal opinion. Legend would have worked better for me if it had stuck to the gore and nihilism, thank you very much. But that’s me. Action movies and romantic comedies generally don’t work for me at all, while sci-fi blockbusters often do. Of course, that does not make one genre better than another.

I can’t imagine why anyone would live in Palm Beach. There are a lot of beaches in the world, after all. But that’s just my personal opinion. As much as I might like to, I can’t rightly judge people for their lifestyles.

Of course, forgiving Americans their tacky aesthetic preferences does not necessarily excuse their dubious moral choices. Palm Beach’s City Place, the monstrosity of a mall where I got my IMAX fix, was ugly–which, as we’ve already established, is just fine. But it was also a magnificent waste of resources, which is not fine. I can’t help but notice that the number of dystopian disaster movies, and books, has been rising like a red tide lately. Does America’s collective unconscious know something we don’t?