For those who didn't know, here's the basic story, which means SPOILERS... you wouldn't understand the alternate ending unless you know the setup that comes before it and the ending that was in the theaters.
In the theaters, it's not much more than a standard monster movie, except that the monsters are altered survivors of a plague that killed most people, altered a few, and completely doesn't touch even fewer. Civilization was wiped out, and one man who's completely immune seems to be the last unaltered human in the world, looking for others and for a cure to return the altered victims to their original normal human state. By the end, he meets a couple of others like him, and sacrifices himself in an explosion to kill their pursuers so they can escape to a town where they believe there is a whole living population of regular humans. In his search for a cure before that, he had been capturing the monsters for medical tests, between episodes of being attacked by them, so he's killed a bunch in combat or in failed tests. No explanation of the title is given.
In the book it's based on, he doesn't blow himself up to protect other humans while they escape. He discovers at the end that, while he was thinking of the monsters as some kind of myth/legend in real life, like vampires, they thought the same thing of him: he had been killing and capturing and experimenting on them, and their minds were intact enough for them to know it and think of him as the monster/vampire/legend. The book's character's realization of their perspective is the whole point of the book.
Putting all of that in a movie might not be possible or might not make a good movie, but the "alternate" ending for this one goes just about as far as it could in one scene:
Must Watch: I Am Legend's Original Ending - This is Amazing « FirstShowing.net
Description of the scene in case there's some reason you can't/won't watch the video (and I don't know how long it will still be there)...
The "monsters" have gotten into his lab and are doing their rampaging & screaming thing, when the lead one, the one closest to him, stops and quietly draws a rough butterfly image and just looks at him and waits. So the unaltered human doctor (Robert Neville) realizes that the "monster" still has an intact enough mind to be trying to communicate with him, and looks down at a captured patient of his, who has a butterfly tattoo. Then he slowly puts the gun down, opens the door, takes her gurney out into the room where the "monsters" are, unplugs her IV, gives her an antidote, and waits. She becomes fully conscious and able to move, and she and the lead "monster" greet each other in a somewhat alien but still recognizable way. During the last couple of minutes of this scene, the "monsters"' yells and screams have not sounded aggressive and violent as before, but have taken on other expressions, like anguish and relief, as if it's a language only they can speak. Dr. Neville apologizes and the lead "monster" gives him some roars and facial expressions that make it appear that he's caught between being angry at Neville and wanting to thank him or talk to him about how much pain he's caused them and why, but ultimately leaves in peace and silence, carrying away the patient he'd come to rescue from Neville. Neville sits there in shock for a while and, before the camera leaves the scene completely, he looks at a wall full of pictures he'd taken of his test subjects to track their results of his tests. No words are spoken, but the implication is that now it looks like a serial killer's/torturer's wall of mementos of his victims.
In other words, in one scene, the movie flips inside out from monster-movie standards, and comes a lot closer to the point of the book, without taking as much time or going into as much depth about it as the book.
I had a friend tell me how the movie ended in the theater but didn't watch it because I'm not interested in monster/zombie/vampire movies. But this one scene makes me consider the possibility of getting the DVD and splicing the "right"/"correct" ending on in place of the theatrical one.
In the theaters, it's not much more than a standard monster movie, except that the monsters are altered survivors of a plague that killed most people, altered a few, and completely doesn't touch even fewer. Civilization was wiped out, and one man who's completely immune seems to be the last unaltered human in the world, looking for others and for a cure to return the altered victims to their original normal human state. By the end, he meets a couple of others like him, and sacrifices himself in an explosion to kill their pursuers so they can escape to a town where they believe there is a whole living population of regular humans. In his search for a cure before that, he had been capturing the monsters for medical tests, between episodes of being attacked by them, so he's killed a bunch in combat or in failed tests. No explanation of the title is given.
In the book it's based on, he doesn't blow himself up to protect other humans while they escape. He discovers at the end that, while he was thinking of the monsters as some kind of myth/legend in real life, like vampires, they thought the same thing of him: he had been killing and capturing and experimenting on them, and their minds were intact enough for them to know it and think of him as the monster/vampire/legend. The book's character's realization of their perspective is the whole point of the book.
Putting all of that in a movie might not be possible or might not make a good movie, but the "alternate" ending for this one goes just about as far as it could in one scene:
Must Watch: I Am Legend's Original Ending - This is Amazing « FirstShowing.net
Description of the scene in case there's some reason you can't/won't watch the video (and I don't know how long it will still be there)...
The "monsters" have gotten into his lab and are doing their rampaging & screaming thing, when the lead one, the one closest to him, stops and quietly draws a rough butterfly image and just looks at him and waits. So the unaltered human doctor (Robert Neville) realizes that the "monster" still has an intact enough mind to be trying to communicate with him, and looks down at a captured patient of his, who has a butterfly tattoo. Then he slowly puts the gun down, opens the door, takes her gurney out into the room where the "monsters" are, unplugs her IV, gives her an antidote, and waits. She becomes fully conscious and able to move, and she and the lead "monster" greet each other in a somewhat alien but still recognizable way. During the last couple of minutes of this scene, the "monsters"' yells and screams have not sounded aggressive and violent as before, but have taken on other expressions, like anguish and relief, as if it's a language only they can speak. Dr. Neville apologizes and the lead "monster" gives him some roars and facial expressions that make it appear that he's caught between being angry at Neville and wanting to thank him or talk to him about how much pain he's caused them and why, but ultimately leaves in peace and silence, carrying away the patient he'd come to rescue from Neville. Neville sits there in shock for a while and, before the camera leaves the scene completely, he looks at a wall full of pictures he'd taken of his test subjects to track their results of his tests. No words are spoken, but the implication is that now it looks like a serial killer's/torturer's wall of mementos of his victims.
In other words, in one scene, the movie flips inside out from monster-movie standards, and comes a lot closer to the point of the book, without taking as much time or going into as much depth about it as the book.
I had a friend tell me how the movie ended in the theater but didn't watch it because I'm not interested in monster/zombie/vampire movies. But this one scene makes me consider the possibility of getting the DVD and splicing the "right"/"correct" ending on in place of the theatrical one.
