Watch this video to see what the I Am Legend monsters originally looked like.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00What if I Am Legend used makeup FX instead of CGI to create The Dark Seekers? And why
00:05did the studio decide to go with the much-criticized CGI version instead?
00:09I Am Legend made a killing at the box office upon its release in 2007, pulling in nearly
00:14$600 million with its loose adaptation of Richard Matheson's 1954 novel. The story follows
00:20a virologist navigating the world after a pandemic has turned most of humanity into
00:25a race of blood-feasting mutants. However, the movie is less about vampires or viral
00:30outbreaks than it is about loneliness, and nothing demonstrates this better than the
00:34uncanny, feral monsters antagonizing star Will Smith.
00:38While the film performed well, the motion-captured CGI monsters, known as Dark Seekers, remain
00:43one of the most complained-about elements of I Am Legend. The director cites amped-up
00:47hormonal production and constant hyperventilation as reasons to go the computer-generated VFX
00:52route.
00:53However, the glossy humanoids were just too artificial-looking to counterbalance Smith's
00:57incredibly haunted performance. It could have been very different. Just one week into shooting,
01:02director Francis Lawrence was shown workups of actors wearing prosthetic pieces, but didn't
01:06buy into the look and went with CGI instead. But a decade prior, another I Am Legend was
01:12brewing, this time with proper practical effects.
01:14In 1997, there was a proposed version of I Am Legend floating around, with alien director
01:19Ridley Scott attached, and a post-eraser Arnold Schwarzenegger set to star. Dark Seekers
01:25were called hemocytes in Mark Protosevich's script. They were brought to life by a formidable
01:29team of FX artists, including Alec Gillis, who did CreatureFX work for several films
01:34in the Alien franchise. He would go on to work on Alien Resurrection when the I Am Legend
01:38project fell through.
01:40The way the hemocytes look in the 1997 version apparently stems from Ridley Scott's appreciation
01:45of 17th century sculptures. Sharing visuals from the original project, Gillis wrote on
01:50Ridley was influenced by wax figures from the 17th century. We did a test on a single
01:55female subject to show her in a few stages of emaciation. Despite the impressive preparation
02:00work, the project sadly fell through. As Gillis explained,
02:03The budget was coming in 10 mil higher than desired. It all got shelved until the Francis
02:07Lawrence Will Smith version years later. We did get an interview on that version, but
02:11there was next to no interest in makeup FX. These emaciated hemocytes are impressively
02:16textured, with desiccated skin, facial bone prosthetics, and diseased veins that the computers
02:21of the time just couldn't emulate seamlessly. In fact, it could be argued that these makeup
02:26looks have aged better than the film's creatures. It's a shame, as computer-generated imagery
02:30was otherwise deployed beautifully to create the eerie illusion of a humanless New York
02:35City in broad daylight.
02:36It's interesting to consider how the movie might have been different had Gillis and company
02:40at Amalgamated Dynamics been given the green light. Under the watchful eye of Ridley Scott,
02:45film designer Arthur Max apparently looked through countless photos of starvation subjects
02:50to get the right, wasted-away look. Importantly, they still would have been speedy creatures.
02:54In the greatest sci-fi movies ever made, conceptual illustrator Tani Kunitake revealed,
02:59"[Scott didn't want them lumbering around like Night of the Living Dead. He wanted them
03:03extremely fast, so they were running around like agile mummies."
03:07That said, the script, once rewritten by Scott and John Logan, was unrelenting and didn't
03:12have its lead character speak for nearly an hour. As a result, Warner Bros. reportedly
03:17called Pertosevich back to give the story another pass. So, while the creatures would
03:21have undoubtedly looked better using prosthetics, the tone would have been much darker. However,
03:25that's not really a bad thing in a story about the last mortal alive.
03:29Making movies is a balancing act, and 1997 was a time when visual FX technology was advancing
03:34fast, which the science fiction of the year reflects. For instance, Paul Verhoeven's Starship
03:39Troopers used a mix of CGI and animatronics for its big-bug baddies. Meanwhile, Paul W.S.
03:45Anderson's Event Horizon made liberal use of prosthetics for the various horrors that
03:50befall its deep space crew. In times like these, the tech doesn't always align with
03:54a director's vision, and Scott's ideas were ultimately too rich for the studio's wallet.
03:59"...I can still fix this."
04:00Still, it's fun to imagine what could have been, even more so with the news that an I
04:04Am Legend sequel is in the works, with Akiva Goldsman returning to write the script.
04:09Michael B. Jordan is said to be attached to the film alongside Will Smith, which might
04:13be surprising to those who haven't seen the 2007 film's alternate ending.