I Am Legend · reception & legacy
2007 · Francis Lawrence
How I Am Legend has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
A massive holiday-season hit in 2007 — Will Smith's star power carried it to record-breaking December box office — but critics dinged the CGI creatures and third act even then, and that verdict has hardened: it's now remembered as a great first hour attached to an ending everyone wishes were different.
What's debated
The eternal debate: the theatrical ending versus the alternate ending, which fans overwhelmingly argue is better and actually makes sense of the title.
Its footprint
The images of a deer hunt through an empty, overgrown Times Square became the modern template for 'abandoned city' imagery, and the fate of Sam the dog remains one of the internet's most invoked 'I was not okay' movie moments.
Where it stands
A mainstream blockbuster rather than a cinephile darling, but it endures as a touchstone of the 2000s post-apocalypse wave and a fixture of 'one-man-show performance' lists.