Rhetorical Analysis Of Roger Ebert’s Review Of The Movie I Am Legend

Roger Ebert was an American film critic. He cared about movies and wrote great reviews. Ebert was a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. Also he was the first who win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1975. Ebert published a lot of reviews and more than 20 books. Often in his reviews Ebert included anecdotes, stories, songs and poems. He wrote a lot of essays and articles about of film criticism. Each film, Ebert gives a star rating, four stars of high quality and the half of the star of the worst, but it does not always correspond to what was written, sometimes there were contradictions. Ebert gives more lenient ratings than most critics. He viewed films fairly and as he felt.

Considering the film ‘I am a Legend’ Ebert gives three stars. He persuades the audience uses his knowledge of the novel and previous two movies “The Last Man on Earth” (1964) and “The Omega Man” (1971) made adaptation of “I am Legend,” and explaining the current version is not faithful to the novel. It is missing the depth of the novel, there are problems with logic “In I am Legend,” the situation raises questions of logic.” Ebert frustrated with the movie, he used “Never mind.“ There are a lot of questions that the audience doesn’t need to look for answers. The protagonist Neville, left alone with a dog in ruined Manhattan, lives barricaded with iron shutters in Greenwich Village from zombies who were previously human. In his basement, he is trying to find a vaccine against a virus that develops cancer. But why is he looking for a vaccine if he is left alone? In the film, there are also new people who add questions and dramas at the right time. Neville drives out at night in his car and tries to kill as many zombies as possible. He is saved by the girl Anna, who is trying to get to the colony of survivors with the boy Ethan. As Ebert noted, logical questions again arise as a girl with a boy hit the island if all the bridges are destroyed “… every bridge into Manhattan blown up as a part of a quarantine of the island so how did the get there? Boat? Why go to the risk?“ Ebert has no other answer like “Never mind, again.”

There are some emotional scenes when people are being evacuated and Neville says good bye to his family and “when he confides in his dog.” They are not strong enough to help the movie to tell a good story that is worth seeing by audiences. “The movie works well while it’s running, although it raises questions that later only mutate in our minds” Ebert explains that it’s not the best movie that he recommends to watch. The novel “I am Legend” by Richard Matheson had the greatest impact on Ebert “Matheson developed a kind of low-key realism that was doubly effective.’ Neville fought against traditional vampires, using mirrors and garlic. Francis Lawrence in the movie created super strong ugly zombies that do not add any effect. Ebert criticizes every moment of the film “I am not sure it is an advance to make him a scientist, arm him and change the nature of the creatures.” What the director wanted to change in the novel, for an audience of a new generation, worsened perception. “The special effects generating the zombies are not nearly as effective as the other effects in the film.” Scary, frightening zombies are created only for the purpose of adding threat. Ebert did not mention an important moment of the film, when Neville still managed to find a cure and he experienced it on one of the zombies. He managed to show zombies that he did not harm them, but rather wants to save. As a result, the zombies left and Neville with Anna and the boy Ethan left for the survivors’ colony, although Neville did not believe in its existence “Neville doubts that such a colony exists.”

After watching the film “I am Legend,” Ebert has more questions and he often focuses on the fact that there is no logic in the actions. The emotional part is very small and does not make the movie fascinating. The focus of the audience is on Neville and his method of survival. From solitude and despair, he goes mad and leaves at night to kill zombies. When the girl saved him, Ebert writes that Neville took her home with the boy “He takes them home, and she explains they are trying to get to a colony of survivors in Vermont,” Neville couldn’t take them home, as he was unconscious, a girl brought him home. This again raises the question “How could she bring him home if she did not even know his address? “Never Mind” as Ebert would say. The film is not so logical that Ebert explains to the audience with every line that the novel is much more exciting and it is better to read the book than to go to the movie “I am Legend.”