Section C US Film Comparison

Opening Sequence/Title Sequence Comparison– Similarities and Differences

Narrative

The Omega Man

For a very brief moment The Omega Man seems to share some commonality with I am Legend. There’s the conventional establishing shot, an ELS of Los Angeles’ skyline. The camera tilts down and zooms-in to a red sports car. A symbol of pleasure, a symbolic reference to someone living the American dream, but this Utopia is soon to be disrupted.

The sound fades up as we zoom-in from the ELS of LA to a long shot of the car and we hear the diegetic sounds of the car. We can see this scene is referenced in I am Legend as it uses the same devices. We hear what the character hears aligning us with his position and place.

In The Omega Man, Neville wears a beige jacket with military style epilates, is this a visual allusion to his past as an Army Colonel?

As Neville drives at speed round the streets of the deserted City we see various shots of the car passing. This seems to suggest he knows his way around. One from a rooftop where the decayed corpses of a couple relaxing on their rooftop garden was a simple and effective way of establishing that whatever killed the population must have been happened rapidly, this couple not having chance to react. We see shots of the car pass shops from an interior perspective, here the camera references the perspective of what was once a commercial business where capitalism was the order of the day. We see posters of foreign countries but travel to foreign lands is impossible now and America is landlocked. The posters contain indexical references to iconic buildings of these ‘exotic’ locations.

I am Legend uses the same red sports car as a symbol of the developments and progress mankind has made. This could be a homage, a respectful nod to The Omega Man. The films are very intertextual.

A gun can be seen in the car and this prop is associated with violence, is Neville a potentially violent man or someone seeking to defend himself from some as yet unseen foe?

Neville seems content smiling as he drives, he also seem relaxed in this strange landscape and put an 8-track tape on the car stereo. The mellifluous jazz that plays reinforces the class values of Neville’s character. He is associated, through his choice of music, as a cultured man, a man of class, style and sophistication, he also seems at peace.

What contradicts this is when out of his peripheral vision he sees movement in an upstairs window. The film fate increases and uses fast motion to convey Neville’s swift reactions, instincts and abilities to respond to the environment as it changes.

He shoots at a hooded/cloaked figure. The black shape is a binary opposite the white ‘hero’ and immediately suggests ‘an Other’. Something that stands in opposition to what has been constructed as ‘normal’, in this case Neville a WASP.

In this narrative the equilibrium we are presented with is almost immediately disrupted, we are in a period of disruption much earlier than in I am Legend.

This suggests that this is an action film. Pleasing fans of the genre with getting straight to scene involving gunfire, violence and action.

The titles in red a symbolic of the narrative relevance of blood as it is later revealed that Neville-s blood holds the anti-body to the virus and can reverse the viral process.

I Am Legend

This film opens with the production company’s idents and studio logos under a non-diegetic voice-over commentary narrating the day’s baseball events. The dialogue refers to Los Angeles and New York, a reference to the setting of The Omega Man and I Am Legend. Baseball is the national sport of America and will be well know and understood by American audiences.

The sports commentator makes the link to the next item and this takes us to the studio where we cut-in to a black, female news-presenter introducing us to Dr. Krippen (Emma Thompson) a well spoken (thus posh/educated) British scientist who is led to reveal she has found the cure for cancer. The women represent America as a culturally diverse and embracing culture where everyone is equal.

This interview reveals the declaration to the audience in quite basic terms, and it is simplified, the terminology used is not terribly scientific so it is easy to understand by most audiences, mainly action genre fans of ‘average’ intelligence.

This is seen as a frame within a frame and references television news and positions the cinema audience as an American watching at home. This makes it clear that this is an American representation of events and what is contained in this diegesis represents America and its people today.

This is the exposition sequence of the narrative and provides a simple, concise background to Legend’s diegesis very quickly.

Finding the cure for cancer by mutating a measles virus is obviously ground breaking news but after this revelation, whereas conventionally we’d expect to cut to the news being received with rapture by the populous, maybe a street party, family celebration or reaction shots of relief, we cut to black. This is rather ominous as it is accompanied with synchronous sound of a minor chord making a bass sound like a rumble and boom (this is an aural signifier, and symbolically it’s an omen, black references the end/death perhaps).

After this punctuation point we cut to an extreme long shot of New York subtly denoting a city that has come to an abrupt standstill with cars partly underwater at the entrance to the docks and crashed cars to the sides of the frame. A further narrative aid is the on-screen caption which projects us into the future, this anchors meaning and directs us to take the preferred and intended meaning, this is in the future, Thee Years Later. The world here is different.

The camera tilts upwards to reveal a New York skyline, the World Trade Centre’s ‘Twin Towers’ noticeably absent. This could represent the setting in a post 9/11 world, this new world is scarred by terrorist attacks and is aware of the dangers that surround us daily. Obviously something went wrong but we can infer that it was the fault of other nations, not the Americans for this unnatural disaster, by the way that Emma Thompson is a British actress and in both the original novel written in 1954 by Richard Matheson and the first re-make of I Am Legend starring Vincent Price, the pandemic (a world wide disease) is caused by a plague blown overseas from Europe.

We then move on, cutting to other extreme long shots establishing the city as empty. The atmos, or ambient sound, is quiet and we hear birds, the wind and not the usual sounds of the city ‘that never sleeps’, car engines, horns and sirens and pedestrian sounds. A picture is being painted and a city is being constructed for the audience to receive. Moving around the city we see other indexical references to NY in the architecture, and a crashed Yellow Cab serves as an index to New York’s once bustling commuter traffic which is now very much redundant.

As the shots, all delivered slowly as long takes at a round 10 seconds each so we have plenty of time to register them and this also could represent how time must drag with no-one else to socialise with, we move in to closer shots, in the foreground we see vegetation and plant growth that’s cracked through the concrete. This city has gone to seed. It’s been a long time and it’s evident no-one can take care of it because there is no one.

Scientists, botanists and horticulturalists were consulted on this aspect of the mise en scene to ensure it was believable and realistic.

In an over-head, aerial tracking shot, a god’s eye-view perspective picks up a car moving at speed, there’s sense of urgency and the soundtrack fades up the sound of a powerful engine. This creates an opposition to the calm we’ve previously been show. We have a cut-in shot and see the car in CGI speeding through the city, this is a person aware of his environment, maybe he’s been there a while. He drives at speed under the scaffolding of a building once due for regeneration. We cut-in further and see a gun which is promptly lifted to reveal Will Smith, we’re in the car with him, he looks like he concentrating and we are reassured by his presence, he looks strong and confident. In the car with him we are invited to travel with him and follow his journey in this story. Welcome the narrator. He will guide us through the narrative and we will see things form his point of view and perspective.

This is the beginning of the restricted narrational format the film adopts from this point on. Prior to this the TV had served to inform us from an omniscient perspective. Has Smith the ability to convince us he’s a realistic character, his performance has to build some empathy and along with being believable his story must be engaging. He is in all the scenes form now on until the resolution at the end where Anna (Braga) and Ethan enter the colony, a new world, a democracy in need and a possible Utopia.

The idea of Utopia is often evident in science fiction genres, this is where the world is seen as ‘heavenly’ in some way, like a garden of Eden. The other world vision conventional to the genre is the antithesis, dystopia. A dystopian world can be seen in the representations of the future in films like 1984 and is often associated with film-noir, is I am Legend a noir film as the theme of being alone in an world which is alien in some way to the character, usually a detective trying to solve a crime, Neville maybe a detective like Marlowe and Chandler’s investigative characters. I am Legend begins with Utopia (equilibrium) goes through Dystopia (disequilibrium) and returns to an illusion of Utopia at the end (a new equilibrium).

Several shots now show us Neville as he drives and he’s introduced as a man of action, a man who is willing to kill? The gun introduces us to an action code, we are positioned, and conditioned through film paradigms, to expect conflict.

We see Neville interacting with his best friend and sole companion, Samantha, a fully grown German Shepherd dog. He seems to know the dog’s needs well, opening the window for her to get fresh air, she may be able to smell the air for signs of wildlife, as we soon see Neville hunting deer. When he skids round corners he zooms through Central Park, a place often seen in representations of New York and is recognisable to most.

Neville stalks some prey, we see him as a man hunting. Later in the film we see he has well stocked cupboards but everything is canned. Maybe he’s hunting for a change in his diet. We have a representation now of a man hunting for survival, when we see the lioness eating a dear its just fell, we wee this world is a survival of the fittest, survival at what cost is one of the many themes in the film. When the male arrives with one of his young we see dangerous animals are free to roam the streets, and they are multiplying. This is now an obviously dangerous place to live. When, through shot/POV reverse-shot, he acknowledges the arrival of the dad and baby we realise the family of lions may respect this union as well as realise his place in the scale of things in this new, yet very familiar world.

We see cultural references like theatre and film advertisement hoarding and recognise the world of the diegesis as our own.

The sequence and mise en scene goes from calm to panic, quiet to noisy, still to movement, empty to full.

Robert Neville is the last man on earth and in the future black males are the dominant elite and the fate of the world’s future depends on an ethnic minority African American. A notable development from traditional representations of male action heroes who are white Anglo Saxon protestants (WASPS) and it is still common for minorities to be seen or viewed as ‘an other’ offering a contrast to the mainstream or what is otherwise seen as normal, or the majority

The title sequence, simplistic and minimalist in its black and white uses a serif font and looks to reference the past and heritage. It may appear to be hopefully, as the white letters are arranged to suggest light at the end of a tunnel.The same black background and bass boom soundtrack are as ominous now as they were at the start of this ‘present day’ sequence.