I Am Legend director Francis Lawrence expressed his regret for not utilizing the ending from Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel of the same name, saying that he would’ve done the post-apocalyptic thriller’s conclusion differently.
The 2007 thriller film centers on Robert Neville (Will Smith), who must fight to survive in a post-apocalyptic world where a virus has transformed humans into vicious, vampire-like mutants. Definitely outnumbered, Neville soon discovers he isn’t the only human survivor. In the film’s ending, Neville sacrifices himself in order to give fellow survivors Anna (Alice Braga) and Ethan (Charlie Tahan) some time to escape from the test subject in his basement lab.
The film’s original ending was hugely criticized for missing the novel’s entire point
The director recently sat down with Josh Horowitz on the latter’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, where they spoke about his upcoming feature The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes and the last three The Hunger Games installments, which Lawrence also helmed. Around 51:18, the filmmaker explains why they changed the ending and expressed regret about doing so.
“I prefer the original ending to the two that we have. But the truth is now I would’ve done and built it to be able to do the ending from the novella, to truly just do that story,” Lawrence explained. “But, I think, with the money being spent, everybody was nervous about doing something so nihilistic. But looking back I feel like everybody went to see The Last Man on Earth and enjoyed it for that reason and would’ve still enjoyed [I Am Legend] with the nihilistic ending.”
The “superior” alternate ending
The film’s alternate ending sees Neville returning the female test subject to the bloodthirsty creatures called Darkseekers as soon as he realizes the male leader might have only wanted to rescue the test subject believed to be his partner.
Neville figured out that he is, after all, the monster in the Darkseeker’s eyes due to his previous experiments on them and that they are actually capable of human emotions. Although considerably different from the book, some viewers consider the alternate ending to be the superior one, as it is more similar to Matheson’s book, which revealed that the infected view Neville as the real monster because he has killed numerous members of their species.
