In my original review of I Am Legend, I dubbed the film “more of a tantalizing, middle-of-the-road misfire than an outright failure.” Having recently had the opportunity to view the alternate theatrical version of the film included in Warner Brothers Home Video’s upcoming two-disc special edition of I Am Legend, that original sentiment takes on even greater meaning than it did in the original review.

[Spoilers for both the book and film follow]

Walking out of the theater after my initial viewing of the film, I wasn’t so much upset by the cartoonish computer-generated vampires and the exhaustingly overwrought references to reggae legend Bob Marley as I was by the fact that the idea that propelled the original story into the realm of greatness was literally inverted to take on the exact opposite meaning as it had in the book. At the end of the original story, moments before he dies, Neville is horrified to realize that in a world of vampires, he is the freak. He is the thing that goes bump in the light - the monster who stalks the new children of the Earth and the terrifying myth that will be passed down for generations. Author Richard Matheson’s existential vampire story worked perfectly for three very specific reasons: The premise was horrifying, the protagonist was compelling, and the final revelation was truly profound. While the story would have still been a fun read had the first two elements been in place, it was the final component that made it an absolute classic. The original US release of Frances Lawrence, Mark Protosevich, and Akiva Goldsman’s film indeed retained those first two elements – thus making it an interesting and gripping action film – yet instead of elevating it to greatness, the final revelation ultimately relegated it to the realm of mindless, forgettable, summer blockbuster action film.

In order to translate a book into a film, there are going to be changes to the source material – to deny that is to deny the fundamental artistic qualities of literature versus film. Unfortunately, certain studio suits don’t seem to recognize the components that make the source material great while adapting said material for film. In his original story, Matheson used fantasy and myth as a means of forcing his reader to step outside of themselves and examine their role in the grand scheme of things from another perspective. Surprisingly, the original ending of I Am Legend retains this sentiment – only in a nauseatingly maudlin form as Neville remembers his daughter’s whispers of a butterfly, listens to God, and gives Big Daddy Bloodsucker his sickly girlfriend back. In short: The film didn’t necessarily work before old Neville whipped out his handy grenade, but at least it was trying.

From this viewer’s perspective, the primary problems with the film can best be summed up with the manner in which Neville watches his family die in the original novella as opposed to the Hollywood blockbuster: In the book, Neville’s family becomes infected and he is forced to stand helplessly by as they slowly fade before his very eyes; in the movie Neville’s wife and child are flying to safety in a helicopter when missiles start to fly, giant landmarks explode into balls of fire, a mob starts to riot, and another helicopter careens towards the one carrying his family as people clinging to the runners are send spiraling into the air. Of course there must be concessions to make the film more cinematic, but it isn’t hard to see that Protosovich and Goldsman went a bit overboard here.

Simply stated, Lawrence and company’s I Am Legend – at least in it’s original, pre-tempered with form – is a fairly noble failure. Still, I’ll take an ambitious failure over an unoriginal success any day of the week.

Now, about those silly CG vampires….