I watched I am Legend tonight. I enjoyed it. It will make a great discussion film for those of us who enjoy talking philosophy and such after seeing a film. The gospel is in this movie, and I suspect some reviewers saw it and hated it.
The darkness hates the light to a degree.
If you don’t know the story, I’ll brief it for you. An air-born and contact virus breaks out in New York City and spreads across the world. 90% die; 9.9% become dark-seekers. The remaining are immune to the virus somehow. Robert Neville is the lone man on Manhattan island, what he calls Ground Zero. He believes he can stop the virus by staying there and working out vaccine.
Neville believes he is one man against a world turned bad, and in that role he plays a type of Christ. “God didn’t do this,” he says, “We did.” We made the world a hellish place. We turned ourselves into monsters—seekers of darkness.
And what does God care? He sits in his heaven, and all is right with the world as far as he’s concerned. But God is not absent. He still has a voice, directing, moving. Why he’s whispering may be a good question, but does it matter how he speaks if we refuse to listen? “The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.”
The cure for humanity is in the blood. Whose blood? That’s the final question.
When I got to the end of the story, I wondered how many bad ideas have some of us dressed up in biblical language. We need redemption. The closing song in this movie said we could find that redemption only in ourselves. That’s the human struggle, isn’t it? Can we save ourselves? Are we the hope we’ve been looking for?
If we saw ourselves as dark-seekers, we’d know there is no hope in us.
Richard Matheson’s work is very interesting. I particularly like his short story “The Distributor.” It’s similar in theme to Stephen King’s Needful Things, only without the gore and padded prose.
I just read your summary of “The Distributor.” Interesting. I don’t think Matheson’s story has the Christian elements that the movie does. I read over on Thinklings that the book ends without hope for humanity returning to normal. I doubt Neville has the same motivation in the book. Still for a story focused on the pain of isolation, I think the movie works.
Yes, I’m guessing Matheson didn’t have much of a theological background. I still want to see the movie, though. Comparison between it and the book would be fascinating.
In related news, the director of this film is trying to make a prequel to it work. The quote I read said he and others were working on ideas that could form a prequel.
Phil: I thought you’d like “Legend”…did you like it better than Hancock?
Maybe. I like them both, and Hancock is more fun or light-hearted than Legend. With Hancock, I left the film saying it was a cool story with good spiritual elements, but with Legend, I left it saying, “Wow, the Christian elements were strong in this story, but it seemed to argue against them.” It was a bit like The Matrix–lots of Christian ideas, but clearly unChristian. Legend isn’t clearly unChristian, and it looks like a great story for talking about the gospel.
I probably do like it better than Hancock, because it seems to be deeper. It depicted strongly the pain of isolation, and you could talk awhile on that subject alone. And Legend points directly at the gospel, whereas Hancock points more toward self-understanding and mutual sacrifice.