Three reasons why movies like "I Am Legend" make me sick

--- please be warned: this entry contains spoilers about the movie "I Am Legend" ---

No, it's not because of the Zombies. No, it's not because of the wealth of CGI effects that it is using. No, it's not because of the "let's pretend this is authentic by using hand camera and shaking it real well" effect that every movie needs today. And no, it's not because it doesn't do justice to the great book it bases on.

It's because of three other things:

1. Shameless product placement: believe me, I'm a big fan of Apple; in fact, im typing this on a Mac. But even I felt the urge to stand up and scream "STOP IT" after about 45 minutes of the most bluntest Apple product placement. Will was listening to his favorite music on iPods, was doing his video blog with a Macbook Pro while you could see another Apple logo on his Mac desktop in the background, and so on. Likewise, every bloody car used in this movie was a Ford. I understand the need to finance multi-million movies, but you could at least do it with a little hint of dignity and self-esteem and not as blunt as here.

2. Absolutely unnecessary elements of christianity to please the ultra religious parts of America: The following scene actually happened in "I Am Legend": The incredibly cool hero (Will) brings his wife and child to a helicopter that is waiting to take them to a safe place; it's the absolute last minute, they barely made it in time, and when wife and kid enter the helicopter and say a last goodbye to their father-hero-to-stay-behind, what do they do in this last seconds they are together? They say a prayer together. Please imagine the last sentence being written in 72pt font. Wow. This really hurts. Are Americans really like that? If yes, then they are a much much more foreign people than I ever imagined. And maybe then directors should create a separate European version without religios shit like that. But that's not all; actually the whole movie could easily be interpreted as a biblical parable like the big flood, because in the end, our hero - before offering his life to save the world - agrees that now he is fulfilling God's plan, contrary to the agressive anti-God speech he gave earlier. I'm sure I haven't seen this kind of Christian shit in US movies before, and I'm worried about the sad state of the one remaining superpower that seems to sacrifice sanity to faith.

3. The permanent feeling the movie emanates that big parts of the script went away after test screenings for the masses: There was so much potential in the movie. And there were many scenes which didn't fit to the basic message "the zombies are mindless creatures". Take the way one of them was leading "zombie dogs", the obvious way their leader was leading his zombie army, the way he seemed to stare longingly and hurt outside, even bearing sunlight, because Will was capturing his girl, the hate in their eyes, and so on and so on. But messages like "they are people too, but different" or "is the good-looking hero a bad guy actually" don't fit into the minds of the masses that today's movies are optimized for. Films like this one are such a blunt business...