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I'm definitely intrigued, but I hope the tone of the film stays dark right to the end. Meaning, I really hope he doesn't end up being reunited with his wife and kid at the end of the film.

As far as teasers go, it's great they didn't show any vampires yet but the opening sequence of the crowd of people at the ports and the post-apocalyptic city with stranded cars everywhere (except, it seems, when he's driving a bitchin' sports car at top speeds down Manhattan city blocks) has been done recently in other films.

I've been looking forward to this movie for a long time, always feeling that The Last Man on Earth and The Omega Man were flawed. But damn do I love this story!

I love the brief shot of him teeing off on the wing of a fighter jet.

International trailer.

If the overabundant special-effects/action-sequences (could be the way the trailers edited) or the lousy cgi (could be the quality of the rip) is any indication, it appears Richard Matheson's story will still not be done justice, once again.

Let's just hope it's better than the apogee of mediocrity that was I, Robot which the trailer is unfortunately reminding me of.

It's written and produced by Akiva Goldsman.

His genre writing credits include Batman & Robin and I, Robot.

His genre producing credits include Lost in Space, Deep Blue Sea and the recent Poseidon.

Utterly fucking fantastic new trailer.

They used some music from The Fountain! At least I am pretty certain at the end, regardless that trailer does look much improved.

Yeah, it's from The Fountain.

Improvement... but the cgi vampires and dogs still look ridiculous, and the action sequences looks like uninspired Hollywood 101 (once again, may just be the way the trailers cut). And like always, Will Smith seems to be playing Will Smith.

The Goldsman connection isn't promising either; together with the inevitable Pg-13 and "IMAX Experience" its receiving makes it seem like its just gonna be your run-of-the-mill boring blockbuster... with vampires.

I'm getting very tired of images of people being chased by running zombies/infected/new-podless-pod-people/what-have-you; it's become a visual cliche of recent horror films and I'm expecting it will be used amply here.

The only cause for hope that this could be faithful to the Matheson novel is the title. It won't make any degree of sense unless they remain faithful to the ending.

Not that making sense will necessarily be their priority...

P.

It turns out that none other than avant-wizard extraordinaire, Mike Patton, is providing the voices/screams/noises for the creatures in the film. That's some inspired casting.

Antoine Doinel wrote:It turns out that none other than avant-wizard extraordinaire, Mike Patton, is providing the voices/screams/noises for the creatures in the film. That's some inspired casting.

I'll say... given the pedigree of everyone involved, I would have expected that asshole from Korn to have been hired instead.
This has definitely wandered its way onto my "I really want to see it, but I'm not expecting much" list (which also includes Southland Tales).

It'd be a nice homage to The Omega Man to have Will Smith yelling, "THERE ARE NO GODDAMN PHONES RINGING!!!!" Otherwise I have no desire to see this.

Seriously, Omega Man broke the unintentional comedy scale. The aforementioned line from Charlton Heston, or when Heston is sitting in an old movie theater playing scenes of hippies and mouthing the dialogue (I can only imagine the codeine they had to give Chuck the hardcore Republican so that he didn't throw up watching it!)

So will this film nod to its predecessors or not? Ironically or not? Inquiring minds want to know...

jbeall wrote:Seriously, Omega Man broke the unintentional comedy scale. The aforementioned line from Charlton Heston, or when Heston is sitting in an old movie theater playing scenes of hippies and mouthing the dialogue (I can only imagine the codeine they had to give Chuck the hardcore Republican so that he didn't throw up watching it!)

Pretty sure that Chuck Heston was still hovering around the middle/center of the political spectrum in 1971. People forget that he was a Democrat throughout the 60s and early-70s (he campaigned for Kennedy, supported MLK, and actually lobbied for gun control legislation). He only started becoming a hard-core Republican in the 80s (or at least that's when he changed his party affiliation).

I still can't believe this film ever got out of Development Hell. I remember reading about it in the Coming Soon section of Cinescape in middle school.

domino harvey wrote:I still can't believe this film ever got out of Development Hell. I remember reading about it in the Coming Soon section of Cinescape in middle school.

I remember when this was first mentioned, I was really hoping to see Ahnuld in the role.

domino harvey wrote:I still can't believe this film ever got out of Development Hell. I remember reading about it in the Coming Soon section of Cinescape in middle school.

Here I go horribly off topic... but this is something I've noticed too.

The last 7 years have been especially interesting, with Hollywood producing most of the highly-anticipated and long in development projects those magazines used to cover. I think "The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made" is now something like 60-70% covered, if not more. Too bad most of these films have been terrible.

Among them:
Aliens vs. Predator
Fantastic Four (and Silver Surfer)
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (they literally waited for Douglas Adams to die so they could reject his creative notes)
Thunderbirds (live-action)
I Am Legend
I, Robot
Indiana Jones 4
King Kong (Peter Jackson's)
Lord of the Rings
Chronicles of Narnia
Superman (sequel/redo)
Batman (redo)
Spider-Man
Catwoman (took them 12 years, same project)
Hellboy
Hulk

Director Francis Lawrence talks about the film here

He takes a dump on both prior adaptations while talking about how important it was to replace the scene from Omega Man of Heston watching Woodstock with Shrek. I have absolutely no sympathy for anyone who goes to see this.

This film is dark. Very dark. Like a horror film crossed with Cast Away. Except Wilson is a dog.

So it's not good

Cde. wrote:So it's not good

People expecting blockbuster stuff will be in for an unpleasant surprise, let's put it that way.

Did You Like. The. Film!? Commit!

Grimfarrow wrote:

Cde. wrote:So it's not good

People expecting blockbuster stuff will be in for an unpleasant surprise, let's put it that way.

That's very reassuring, but is the film good?