Will Smith attempts to save the world. Again. This time around, the superstar – or, rather, the character he portrays, an ace scientist cum respected military officer – is to be found in a future that mainly takes place three years after an English doctor named Alice Crippen (an uncredited Emma Thompson) goes on TV to announce that she’s found the cure for cancer. The year is 2011 and Dr Robert Neville (Will Smith) appears to be the last man left in a New York City both surreally deserted and starkly desolate.

Early on in the third film adaptation of Richard Matheson’s revered I Am Legend novel (but only the first to actually use the title), it is revealed that the powerful, engineered virus behind Dr Crippen’s much vaunted cure for cancer had quickly and unexpectedly mutated into that which, upon infecting people and other creatures, including dogs, turns them into hugely aggressive beings that prey on the immune 1% of the world’s population. Believing that he can find a way to cure this frightening condition and remedy what looks to be a well-nigh hopeless situation, Dr Neville has stayed behind in Manhattan – ‘Ground Zero’ for this epidemic as well as the good doctor’s beloved home turf – after sending his wife (Salli Richardson) and daughter Marley (played by Smith’s real-life daughter, Willow) to safety away from the Big Apple before it gets locked down and its remaining populace essentially left to die.

For three years, however, he’s not been able to make good his fatherly promise that “Daddy’s going to make the monsters go away”. And for all his brave talk (“I’m not going to let this happen” and “I can still fix this”), the fact is that as time passes, Dr Neville is not only not meeting with much success but, also, increasingly finding it hard to stay sane and alive.

At the I Am Legend press conference on December 7, Francis Lawrence talked about how Will Smith “carries the entire movie on his shoulders”. Since others in the cast and other selling points are not inconsiderable for this sci-fi horror film which co-producer and co-scriptwriter Akiva Goldsman described in the same press conference as a “small story in a big package”, the director was guilty to some extent of talking up the efforts of the major star.

At the same time though, it is also true enough that Will Smith spends a lot of time on screen on his lonesome and shares more screen time with Dr Neville’s dog Sam than with other human beings. Accordingly, not only does I Am Legend play out for a good part like The Will Smith Show but it also looks to be a film whose biggest appeal will depend on the viewer being more of a fan of this popular actor than of Richard Matheson’s book.

Yvonne Teh