It's
flattering that anyone is comparing Mary Shelley's THE
LAST MAN with a huge blockbuster like I
AM LEGEND but these two films have little in common besides
both being of the post apocalyptic genre.
I
AM LEGEND has the 28 DAYS
LATER type of super-mutants (or super-zombies, however you
feel most comfortable referring to mindless killing machines), where
Mary Shelley’s THE LAST MAN
has desperate human survivors with a degenerative disease instead
of zombies of any kind.
I
can't repeat this often enough: There
are NO
zombies in Mary Shelley's THE LAST MAN.
I
think that gives our story much more depth and creates greater conflict
than removing the morality of killing people from the dramatic center
of the story.
But
comparing a 170 million dollar Warner Brothers blockbuster to a no-budget,
two-hour feature film shouldn't be possible, theoretically. Nevertheless,
it's not always the number of cars you blow-up that makes a movie
popular, it's how the material was treated by the writer, the director
and the actors. Maybe Shelley's underlying story is just as compelling
as the blockbuster, if not more?
Obviously,
Will Smith is a big Hollywood star but he's just as alone on the screen
as Santiago Craig, the very talented actor who plays Lionel Verney
in our film.
I'm
confident that THE LAST MAN will have many entertaining aspects
that people will enjoy watching. That's what we've been doing every
day for those seven months of arduous principal photography. That's
why I was climbing along the outside of a moving semi-trailer and
flying in helicopters with the doors off, we were all trying our best
to make the most entertaining movie possible.
I
think Mary Shelley's THE LAST MAN might be a film that people
would like to own to watch over and over again, just like THE LAST
MAN ON EARTH, THE OMEGA MAN, and perhaps even I AM LEGEND,
the cornerstones of this genre.
Just
seeing our film mentioned in the same context as I AM LEGEND
on FILMSTALKER is amazing, considering our meager origins.
But after all of the hard work my talented Cast and Crew put into
making Mary Shelley's THE LAST MAN, I can say with confidence,
They Are Legend.
